Typography

Typography is the art or science or both (if you insist) of making the literature/masala/content/dummy text worth reading/more presentable/attractive. Typography has been defined as science of writing with prefabricated letters at the Royal Academy of Arts. Typography can often help influence the decisions of the reader in favour of the writer or the sponsor. To an extent typography the visual aspect of printed verbal language means something, i.e it is meaning making.

Typography is not all art and fancy design. Typography is a lot about practical science, for example, consider the typographic rule that only the first character of the first word in the sentence be in upper case. This rule was formulated in the interest of economy as well as that of ergonomics. Uppercase letters take upto 30% more space than lowercase letters. More often than not the publisher would aim to lower to printing costs and aim at lowering

Let’s learn a bit more about typography and the various attributes one needs to be aware of. There are a few adjustments that can be made between to enhance or modify the look and feel of letters.

In addition to these there are

Hyphenations: Hyphenation is placing a hyphen (-) at the end of lines to maintain continuity and help prevent problems in readability or make justification look better. Most Web designers ignore hyphenation, as it is not something that is handled well automatically by Web browsers.

Rag: The uneven vertical edge of a block of text is called the rag. One should look at the text blocks as a whole to make sure the rag is not adversely affecting the design. If the rag is jagged or uneven beyond a point it can affect the readability of the text block and distract the reader who might not be very tolerant or patient.

Widows and Orphans: A single word at the end of a column is a widow and if it’s at the top of a new column it’s an orphan. Widows and orphans are often unappealing and can be hard to read.