I’ve claimed throughout this book that many bad typography habits have been imposed upon us by the typewriter. Here, I’ve collected them in one list.
- Straight quotes rather than curly quotes (see straight and curly quotes).
- Two spaces rather than one space between sentences.
- Multiple hyphens instead of dashes (see hyphens and dashes).
- Alphabetic approximations of trademark and copyright symbols.
- ellipses made with three periods rather than an ellipsis character.
- Non-curly apostrophes.
- Pretending that accented characters don’t exist.
- Using multiple word spaces in a row (for instance, to make a first-line indent.)
- Using tabs and tab stops instead of tables.
- Using carriage returns to insert vertical space.
- Using alphabet characters as substitutes for real math symbols.
- Making rules and borders out of repeated characters.
- Ignoring ligatures.
- underlining anything.
- Believing that monospaced fonts are nice to read.
- Abusing all caps.
- Thinking that the best point size for body text is 12.
- Ignoring kerning.
- Ignoring letterspacing.
- Too much centered text.
- Only using single or double line spacing.
- Only using the line length permitted by one-inch page margins.
Tag: typography
New Look for Boffo Socko
For a while I’ve been contemplating a change in the look of the site, particularly given the changes in the internet for the past several years.
I generally wanted something that has the following attributes:
- Responsive (easily viewable on multiple platforms)
- Works well with the IndieWeb movement
- Good readable typography
- Simple and elegant
- Still fits in with the site’s philosophy and structure
I’m sure there will be some hiccups and problems in the transition, but I hope to get these ironed out shortly. If you notice something bothersome, please don’t hesitate to drop me a note.
An Asterisk Does Not Denote a Hard Problem†
It should be noted that an asterisk does not denote a hard problem: we have reserved the dagger for this.
