Pocket Bringhurst

PO CKET BRINGHURST

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Pocket Bringhurst

P O C KET BR I NG HURST Charlotte Peloquin ❧

Copyright © 2019 Charlotte Peloquin This publication may be copied and republished for academic reasons only. Include publishing and copyright information when copied or expanded. This publication is based on Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style and mirror’s the chapters based in the book.

This Pocket Book Volume II guide may be updated, expanded or edited come upon new information or copy for future publications. For permission requests, write to the publisher.

Designed, typeset, printed and bound by Charlotte Peloquin.

This pocket guide is dedicated to Natalie F. Smith for tastefully providing guidance throughout Typographic Systems 444 with genuine interest and confidence in her work and students.

Also, to the current students of Typographic Systems 444 for binding together to create a better design and typographic experience for current and future students of University of Illinois.

Lastly, to the future generation of designers and typographers to come through this program. This pocket book was gracefully thought of and designed by students who were once in your shoes yearning for more guidance and information regarding typography.

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Contents

Introduction 1 Chapter 2 Rhythm & Proportion 3 3 Harmony & Counterpoint 7 4 Structural Forms & Devices 9 5 Analphabetic Symbols 13 6 Choosing & Combining Type 15 7 Historical Interlude 19

8 Shaping The Page 21 9 The State of The Art 23 Glossary 25

Introduction

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s graphic design students, we find ourselves fresh from graduation without a sense of belonging in the type world. The lack of influencial, benefi cial typography classes and lack of professors with the ability to teach these classes grows stronger as the academic semesters go on. We as designers must not only dive into typographic systems, but be able to understand and start to master the practice with a level of knowledge emerging designers should have. With this Pocket Bringhurst guide, students may be able to find themselves exploring and grasping typographic concepts with richer sense than before. Think of the importance of typographic studies with Beatrice Warde’s metaphor of The Crystal Goblet.

“Imagine that you have before you a flagon of wine. You may choose your own favorite vintage for this imaginary demonstration, so that it be a deep shimmering crimson in color. You have two goblets before you. One is of solid gold, wrought in the most exquisite patterns. The other is of crystal-clear glass, thin as a bubble, and as transparent. Pour and drink; and according to your choice of goblet, I shall know whether or not you are a connoisseur of wine. For if you have no feelings about wine one way or the other, you will want the sensation of drinking the stuff out of a vessel that may have cost thousands of pounds; but if you are a member of that vanishing tribe, the amateurs of finevintages, you will choose the crystal, because everything about it is calculated to reveal rather than hide the beautiful thing which it was meant to contain.”

This pocket book shall not just be used as a style guide, but more of a brief history of typographic art, an encyclopedia of typographic symbols, concepts and traditions, and a learner’s tool that is supplementary of class learning. This book shall be used during practice whenever needing typographic reference for projects and should be the bridge between student to designer. Students may use this book as a stepping stone in their career to better understand and teach typographic systems and styles.

This Pocket Bringhurst can be republished with further explanatory guides and examples for expansion of examples or information that should grow as semesters pass to new students in the graphic design/ typography studies. This pocket book will make students become more knowledgeable of typographic systems and masterful of putting the studies into their practices. This pocketbook encourages to help future design students of the University to understand these studies and systems while giving them a substantial amount of confidence when working with and teaching typographic systems. The Spring 2019 Typographic Systems class hopes to shed light on the importance of typograhic systems and build a more capable group of students when transitioning from student to professional designer.

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introduction

Chapter Two Rhythm & Proportion

Define the word space to suit the size and natural fit of the font Type is normally measured in picas and points, but horizontal spacing is also measured in ems, and the em is a sliding measure. One em is a distance equal to the type size. Half and em is called and en. If you choose to use justification when typesetting, the minimum amount of word space is a fifth of an em.

Choose a comfortable measure Most books now printed in the Latin alphabet carry from 30 to 45 lines per page.

The average length of line in most of those books is 60 to 66 characters. In English and the Romance languages, a word is typically assumed to average five letters plus a space. Ten or eleven such words fit on a line of 60 to 66 characters, and the page, if it is full, holds from 300 to 500 words. This book carries about 65 characters a measure. Outside these conventional boundaries lie many interesting Typographic problems. If the text deserves the honor, a handsome page can be made with very few words. A page with 17 lines of 36 characters each, as an example, will carry only 100 words. At the other extreme, a page with 45 lines of 70 characters each will carry 525 words. If you want more than 500 words to the page, it is time to consider multiple columns. A two-column book page will comfortably carry 750 words. If it must, it can carry a thousand. This page carries 340.

Set ragged if ragged setting suits the text and the page You need to know the difference when to use ragged and justified text depending on the type face and also the body copy itself. Correct ragging can change the way a body paragraph looks and interact completely. Just because justify may look concise and symmetrical does not mean it may suit the body copy well. Majority of the time, unserifed faces like Avenir or Geneva look better ragged right instead of justified.

Use a single word space between sentences Many people to this day still place two spaces after a period because of the way typewriters worked. It is important to know that modern technology has changed the way we type and that most manual things from a typewriter have turned automatic.

Do not double space after punctuation unless you are on a typewriter!

Add little or no space within strings of initials Names such as W. B. Yeats and J. C. L. Prillwitz need hair spaces, thin spaces or no spaces at all after the intermediary periods. A normal word space follows the last period in the string.

This section provides insight on initial spacing, such as adding a hair line in after the periods of J .C. L. and that they need little to none when doing so.

This can apply to regular design practices by noticing the small differences that these changes make. For instance, a “normal” person may not care to notice the hair line space after the periods in that initial spacing, but adding that in can drastically change the readability for people. Think about how much that changes by itself, then, how much readability and legibility changes if you correctly add more changes to a whole body of text.

Letterspace all strings of capitals and small caps, and all long strings of digits Acronyms such as c i a and p l o are frequent in some texts. So are abbreviations such as c e and b c e or a d and bc . The normal value for letterspacing these sequences of small or full caps is 5% to 10% of the typesize. If your software sees the em as 1000 PostScript units, that means 50 to 100 units of letterspacing. This section of Bringhurst explains what to do with small caps and lines of digits, such as 10,000.

Paying attention to small details like adding a hairspace in between small cap acronyms and letterspacing them out will increase readability and fluidity of the paragraph they are in.

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rhythym & proportion

For example, WA VA D O P A T T I M M I L T L WAVADOPATTIMMILTL Minion Pro, 10 /14, with 200 tracking above Minion Pro, 10 /14, with 0 tracking below

Don’t letterspace the lower case without a reason Many times, the only place where you will find this done is in captions or wordmarks of companies. As a general rule, you should never letterspace lower case words.

Whar ves and wharfingers Wharves and wharfingers Minion Pro, 10 /14, with 75 tracking above Minion Pro, 10 /14, with 0 tracking below

Kern consistently and modestly or not at all If and when you kern, be consistent with your spacing. It is better to be the same and not kerned than kerned and inconsistent. Inconsistent kerning causes confusion and sticks out like a sore thumb more than a set of words unkerned. Along with this, don’t alter the widths or shapes of letters without cause. Can you see the difference between this and this? Ugly, right?

rhythtm & proportion

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Chapter Three Harmony & Counterpoint

Don’t compose without a scale The simplest scale is a single note, and sticking with a single note draws more attention to other parameters, such as rhythm and inflection. The early Renaissance typographers set each book in a single font - that is, one face in one size - supplemented by hand-drawn or specially engraved large initial letters for the openings of chapters. Their pages show what sensuous evenness of texture and variety of rhythm can be attained with a single font of type: very much greater than on a typewriter, where letters have, more often than not, a single width and a single stroke-weight as well as a single size. In the sixteenth century, a series of common sizes developed among European typographers, and the series survived with little change and few additions for 400 years. In the early days, the sizes had names rather than numbers, but measured in points, the traditional series is this: 7 pt. minion 8 pt. small text 9 pt. galliard 10 pt. garamond 12 pt. pica

Use the old familiar scale, or use new scales of your own devising, but limit yourself, at first, to a modest set of distinct and related intervals. Start with one size and

work slowly from there. In time, the scales you choose, like the faces you choose, will become recognizable features of personal style.

Use titling figures with full caps, and text figures in all other circumstances So the date is 23 August 1832; it could be 3:00 am in Apartment 6-b, 213-a Beacon Street; it is 27°c or 81°f; the price is $47,000 usd or £28,200; the postal codes are nl 1034 wr Amsterdam, sf 00170 Helsinki 17, Honolulu 96814, London wc1 2nn, New Delhi 110 003, Toronto m5s 2g5, and Dublin 2.

BUT IT IS 1832 AND 81° IN FULL CAPITALS. Arabic numerals entered the scribal tradition of Europe in the thirteenth century.

Before that ( and for many purposes afterward ) European scribes used roman numerals, written in capitals when they occurred in the midst of other capitals, and in lowercase in the midst of lowercase letters.

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harmony & counterpoint

Chapter Four Structural Forms & Devices

Make the title page present and purposeful The title should hold properties of text— if graceful, make graceful. If devoid of dignity, make it the same. Also, don’t forget about white space. The title does not need to take up the whole page. Screened text: how much ink is permitted by the screen. For example,

50 75 100 Set titles and openings in a form that contributes to the overall design Renaissance books usually would have over the top, ornamented text filled pages while modern covers may only cover one third of the space provided. Space alone will not just convey richness but can be a type poverty.

Mark each beginning and resumption of the text The most common and easy way to start text is from the left margin and flush left.

Fluerons, or typographic ornaments are often used to highlight specific text openings. The most common color to do this in is red. These typographic ornaments can be used freely if they are used correctly.

Use quotation if the beginning of the text has them Quotation marks did not come into play until the late sixteenth century because they messed with scribe’s ability to work with large initials. Use the quotes for the reader’s sake!

Set headings in a form that contributes to the style of the whole There are two different types of headings: Symmetrical which are centered on the measure ( cross heads ) and asymmetrical which take the form of left side heads ( flush left ) or really indented from the left margin. Right side heads work well in certain contexts but usually only as main heads. If you do not want to make your headings large, a good way to make them stand out is to put them in them margins ( running shoulder heads ).

Use as many levels of headings as you need but no more and no fewer You should predominantly stick to one kind of heading- symmetrical or asymmetrical form. Don’t try to mix them because it become confusing stylistically and logically. Headings are named in order such as a head, b head, c head and so on.

If the texts include notes, make them optimal Unless the notes are superior with the text, they should be set large than subordinate details. Footnotes are the emblem of fussiness, but if you use them right they can be useful and have their place. Endnotes are cleaner and cheaper, however they are more tedious for the reader to go back and forth between the text and the notes.

Side notes give variety and changed to the page and above all are easiest and quickest to access. Footnotes need to be set in small text, nothing bigger than 8 or 9pts.

Superscripts Check the weight and spacing of superscripts as well. This can be a big change stylistically in the notes and allow numbers to be more transparent and order is easier to understand. Use superscripts in text but full-size numbers in the notes themselves. This is due to minimizing interruption while reading but large to allow easy access and understanding.

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Avoid ambiguity Readers should never have to question what they are reading when it comes to endnotes. Don’t force them to hunt for answers. Endnotes should not appear in small clumps at the end of each chapter but rather to place them all together at the end of the book.

Edit tables with the same attention given to text, make them easy to read If the table is not readable to begin with, typeset will most likely not help it. Redesign it from scratch. Some rules to follow: I. All text should be horizontal, in rare cases oblique.

II. Letter forms too small or too condensed for comfortable reading III. IV. V. VI.

should not be part of the solution.

There should be a minimum amount of furniture throughout the table.

Rules, tint blocks or other guides should be in predominant reading direction in order to not confuse the reader.

A rule located at the edge of a table have absolutely no function.

A table must contain within itself an adequate amount of white space.

Avoid over punctuating lists A list should be spatial and numerical. The list should be clear through spatial features such as bullets, dashes or numerals. Dot leaders ( which lead the eye from one word or number to another ) are rarely beneficial in tables. Set the left and columns flush left because this makes it easier for the reader.

Balance the front and back matter 16-page signatures are the most common ( signatures are a unit of 8 ). Design the book to be of appropriate length. Most books that are heavy in length include paraphernalia ( standard pages plus extra detailed pages ). Copy fitting the main text for a high volume may be complicated, but complex books and simple books should both have balance front and back matter. If not, it is careless and not kind to the readers.

structural form & devices

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Chapter Five Analphabetic Symbols

To invoke the inscriptional tradition, use the mid-point The dot ( the midpoint or small bullet ) was never used in early forms of writing.

There was no such thing as analphabetic furniture. Broad nib pens create a modulated stroke- when the weight varies within the direction the scribe writes the type.

Use symbols and diacritics that match with the basic font Normal typefaces usually come with two dozen forms of punctuation like period, comma, colon, quotation marks, etc. They should also include about a dozen diacritics such as acute and grave accents, the circumflex, tilde, ogonek, etc. Be careful when using these because some families have poorly designed symbols or simply have borrowed from another font that may differ from the new. The typical poorly designed symbols usually are brackets, parentheses, the asterisk, pilcrow, and the section sign.

In heads and titles, use the best available ampersand This symbol originated from the Latin et meaning and. It is one of the oldest abbreviations in the alphabet. The ampersand is usually used more in display work than regular text.

Use spaced en dashes – rather than close-set em dashes or spaced hyphens – to set off phrases Normal keyboards only include one hyphen, when there are actually three ( en dash, em dash ) In typescript a double hyphen -- is usually used for a long dash. Use the em dash to introduce speakers in narrative dialogue.

—So, this is a pocket bringhurst? She asked.

—No, this is better than that, he replied.

Use a dimension sign ( × )instead of an x when dimensions are given Treat the punctuation as notation, not expression, most of the time. Use the best available brackets and parentheses and use them with adequate space. If you are forced to use a font that has poorly designed parentheses, like symbols you can borrow from another typeface.

Minimize the use of quotation marks, especiallywith Renaissance faces First, quotations were just simply listing the speaker. In later year, it became as changing fonts from roman to italic or the other way around. There are three common forms of quotation marks: Inverted and raised commas “quote” ‘quote’ Duck foot quotation „quote‘‘ Guillemets «quote» Position quotation marks consistently in relation to the rest of the punctuation “Houses are built with 2 × 4s” “The terrible twos” “The 1930s and 40s” Eliminate any unnecessary punctuation, be simple but use caution Add punctuation, or preserve it where it is needed to meaning. Omit the apostrophe from numerical plurals. Use accents and alternate sorts that proper names and imported words and phrases require. Simple is good, but not if it disrupts the text.

Type’s principal function is communication and the greatest threat to communication is sameness.

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analphabetic symbols

Chapter Six Choosing & Combining Type

Consider the medium for which the typeface was originally designed All faces designed before the 50s must be set in metal and printed letterpress, and the majority must be set by hand. Do you research on the type.

When using digital adaptations of letterpress faces, choose fonts that are faithful to the spirit as well as the letter of the old designs Letterpress printing places the letter form into the paper, while offset printings only lays it onto the surface. There can be a lot of subtle differences when you print in these two difference ways. For instance, the metal press may make thin strokes more dominant. With this, you should consider the font when printing so that it will survive the process. Choose faces that suit the appear you intend to print on, or a paper that suits the faces you wish to use. Choose faces that suit the task as well as the subject. The type you choose should not be burdened with extra baggage.

Choose faces that can furnish whatever special effects you require If your text uses a vast amount of certain symbols, try to use a typeface that uses them well. If you need small caps, do not choose faces that do not have them.

Use what there is to the best advantage Whatever you have available, use it to the best of its ability. Always use less than what is available because majority of what is available is not the best.

Choosing faces Choose a face whose historical echoes and associations are in harmony with the text.It is not that good typographers object to mixing centuries and cultures. A seventeenth century text shouldn’t be set in Helvetica.

Choose faces whose individual spirit and character is keeping with the text. A typographic page so well designed that it attains a life of its own will be based on real affinities not on a coincidence of names. Letter forms have a life and personality of their own. Learning how to use and manipulate each spirit takes a long time but can dramatically change the liveliness of the text.

Start with a single type family Most documents can be perfectly executed with just one type family. However, be careful when mixing two families or fonts. Respect the integrity of roman, italic, and small caps. Choose tilting and display faces that reinforce the structure of the text face. Pair serifed and unserifed faces on the basis of their inner structure.

Consider bold faces on their own merits Before using a bold weight, especially a bold italic ask yourself if you really need it. If the answer is yes, avoid Bembo, Garamond, or Baskerville. You rarely need to use bold if you correctly utilize hierarchy.

Choose non-Latin faces as carefully as Latin faces You must decide whether to emphasize or minimize the differences between to the languages. A general rule of thumb is to keep the color and size as close as possible if the alphabets are more closely mixed.

Match the continuity of the type with the thought The continuity, or lack of should underlie the text as a rule to be revealed, not concealed. If the alphabets are mixed, they should be very close together in contrast and color.

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choosing & combining type

Balance type optically over mathematically Torso ( x-height ) and extension are two factors that should be taken into account when types sit side by side.

Choose a type that is visually distinct The texture of a typographic page not only depends on the type and the set but also heavily on the language (this determines the frequency of letters). Most languages need more consonantal characters. Plan from the beginning on how words will look with the typeface.

Choose your library of faces slowly and well Simple is always better. Find the fonts that work and stick to them. You do not need a wide range of fonts for your type book. Add no unnecessary characters.

choosing & combining type

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Chapter Seven Historical Interlude

The earliest surviving European letter forms are Greek capitals scratched into stone.

There were done by freehand and later got thicker as type became more of what it is today. Many old scribal conventions are still used today: titles set in large formal letters, large initials mark a new begging, small capitals mark an opening phrase.

The Latin letters each have a distinctive feature to them. The Mannerist Letter — Mannerist art is Renaissance art to which subtle exaggerations of length angularity, or tension have been added. The Baroque Letter — Baroque typography is rich with activity and takes delight in the restless and dramatic play of contradictory forms. In general, Baroque letter forms appear more modeled and less written than Renaissance forms. The Rococo Letter — this period of type almost entirely belongs to black letters and scripts. The Neoclassical Letter — this is more static and restrained than either Renaissance or Baroque. This type follows a pattern. The Romantic Letter — this was part of the eighteenth and majority of the nineteenth centuries. It has a rationalist axis and thinner, more abrupt serifs. This change in type design ultimately changed handwriting. The Realist Letter — blunt and simple letter, based on the people who were denied the opportunity to learn, read, and write. Geometric Modernism: Distillation of Function — this period of time makes no distinction between main stroke and serif. Serifs are equal in weight with the main strokes or are missing altogether. The Expressionist Letter — these letters were often cut into metal or wood from their own. Elegiac Post modernism — Modernism is more than a phase of fad.

These letter forms frequently recycle and revise Neoclassical, Romantic, and other premodern forms. And lastly, Geometric Post modernism — these faces are rich with nostalgia for premodern typefaces.

Here, we transition into modern day typefaces. These are mechanically typeset.

The Linotype Machine — invented in the 1880’s by Ottmar Mergenthaler. Its complex mechanism composes a line of matrices, justifies the line by sliding tapered wedges into the spaces between the words, then casts the entire line as a single metal slug for letterpress printing. The Linotype Machine — invented in the 1887 by Tolbert Lanston.

Sold as a monotype machine. Two-Dimensional Printing — with the development of lithography at the end of the eighteenth century, printing moved another step back toward the two-dimensional world of the medieval scribes. Phototype Machines — light flashes through the image of a letter carried on glass or photographic film, altered with a lens, location fixed with a mirror, and exposed onto photosensitive paper or film. And to finish, Digital Typography — this has been quickly developed since the 1970’s and turned into computerized bit mapping.

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historical interlude

Chapter Eight Shaping The Page

The golden section is a symmetrical relation built from asymmetrical parts. Two numbers, shapes or elements embody the golden section when the smaller is to the larger as the larger is to the sum [a: b = b: ( a+b )]. This ratio is never ending. You can find the exact proportions of the golden section in several simple geometric figures. Nature chooses this figure; it doesn’t invent it. Sinkage is white space at the top. You can base how much sinkage on the golden section if desired.

Choose page proportions suited to the content, size, and ambitions of the publication There is no one ideal proportion, but some are clearly more obvious and riskier than others. Most typographers gravitate towards 5 : 9 ratios. When illustrations are involved, they usually decide the shape of the page. Pick a proportion of the page that would feel comfortable, not mechanical.

Shape the text block so that it balances and contrasts with the shape of the overall page Creating the geometrical shape of a square text block does not always encourage reading. You must work with the text in order to create an inviting and easy text to read. You must create a sense of balance.

Bring the margins into the design Typography must do three things: First, they must lock the text block to the page and lock the facing pages to each other through proportions. Second, they must frame the text block in a manner that suits its design. Third, they must protect the text block.

Bring the design into the margins The boundaries of the text blocks are rarely absolute. The text should be designed to give life to the page. Mark the reader’s way — folios ( page numbers ) are useful in most documents longer than two pages. They are either at the head of the page, the foot of the page, or in the upper quarter indented.

Don’t restate the obvious Like folios, running heads pose an interesting typographic problem. They are useless if the reader has to go out of their way to look for them and they have to look different from the text.

Use a modular scale if you need one to subdivide the page Modular scales serve much the same purpose as grids, but they are more flexible.

It is normal to create a new scale if needed.

Improvise, calculate then improvise more Important calculations and precision are needed in typography, but don’t follow that to a tee. Use it as a guideline. Proportions are more flexible than picas when filling empty space.

Keep the page design supple enough to provide a livable home for the text The text takes precedence over the purity of the design, and the typographic texture of the text takes precedence over the absolute proportions of the pure but silent page.

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shaping the page

Chapter Nine The State of The Art

Glyphs and Characters Typographers are frequently surprised to learn that small caps, text figures, swashes and other things they need and use are seldom to be found in the voluminous Unicode catalogue. Characters are the smallest components of written language that have semantic value. Glyphs are representations of characters. Create a glyph palette and each character will need at least glyph palette to represent it. The text is a string of characters; the font is a palette of glyphs along with all the information needed for stringing the glyphs to match the characters.

Size, Color, and Scale Two things were lost in the transition from hand cut to digital type and that was the sculptural bite of type into paper and the other was the rich singularity of detail, weight, and proportion inherent in handmade fonts and letter forms. Infinite scaling of type is the best part of digital.

Use the best available justification engine Good paragraphs are justified as a whole, not line by line. The best computers now use microscopic changes for justification.

Pixels, Proofs, & Printing If the text is to be read on screen, design it for that medium As a rule of thumb, good text faces for the screen are with low contrast, a large torso, open counters, sturdy terminals, and slab serifs or no serifs at all. Good on-screen paragraphs are ragged right and short. Follow the work to the printer. Everything about type starts with the assumptions of how it will turn out with printing.

Consult the ancestors Typography is an ancient craft. Maintaining the system means more than buying new fonts but rather using the fundamentals to experiment and create new narratives. The future should be in touch with the past.

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the state of the art

Glossary Characters & Terms

characters Ampersand. The sign & (standing for and, as in Smith & Co., or the Latin et, as in &c ) Apostrophe. A punctuation mark ( ’ ) used to indicate either possession (e.g., Harry’s book ; boys’ coats ) or the omission of letters or numbers.

Arithmetical signs. In common numeral notation (which is used in arithmetic and elsewhere), the sign of a number is often made explicit by placing a plus or a minus sign before the number. For example, +3 denotes “positive three”, and −3 denotes “negative three”.

Asterisk. An asterisk ( * ) is a typographical symbol or glyph. It is so called because it resembles a conventional image of a star.

Bar. The horizontal stroke in letters. Also known as a Bar. The (usually) horizontal stroke across the middle of uppercase A and H is a crossbar. The horizontal or sloping stroke enclosing the bottom of the eye of an e is also a crossbar.

Braces. The bracket is a curved or wedge-like connection between the stem and serif of some fonts. Brackets may taper all the way to the end of the serif or attach at a midpoint before the serif ends. Brackets are tall punctuation marks used in matched pairs within text, to set apart or interject other text ( { } ).

Colon. The colon ( : ) is a punctuation mark consisting of two equally sized dots centered on the same vertical line. A colon precedes an explanation or an enumeration, or list.

Comma. The comma ( , ) is used in many contexts and languages, mainly for separating parts of a sentence such as clauses, and items in lists, particularly when there are three or more items listed.

Dashes. Historically, the names of en dash and em dash were loosely related to the width of a lower-case n and upper-case M, respectively, in commonly used typefaces. An em dash or a spaced en dash can be used to mark a break in a sentence, and a pair can be used to set off parenthetical statements ( — ).

Dumb quotes. Dumb quotes, or straight quotes, ( " ) are a vestigial constraint from typewriters when using one key for two different marks helped save space on a keyboard. Don’t use these.

Ellipses. A regular oval shape, ( … ) traced by a point moving in a plane so that the sum of its distances from two other points (the foci) is constant, or resulting when a cone is cut by an oblique plane which does not intersect the base.

Parentheses. A parenthesis is a tall, « ( » curvy punctuation mark used to set off material that isn’t fundamental to the main topic, like an afterthought or an aside quotation marks.

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glossary & terms

terms / and x. A way to classify your type size and leading. 10/14 would be read as 10 pt. font on 14 pt. leading.

Baseline. The baseline is the imaginary line upon which a line of text rests. ... In typography and penmanship, the baseline is the line upon which most letters “sit” and below which descenders extend.

Body. This refers to the text or content of the work. The body is usually a large amount of copy.

Dot leader. A leader in typography is a series of characters, usually lines of dots or dashes, that are used as a visual aid to connect items on a page that might be separated by considerable horizontal distance. dpi. For printing, this refers to dots per inch. It is a measure of spatial printing, video or image scanner dot density.

Flushed Left FL. This refers to the text set flushed left. An example is this text on the page.

Fleuron. A fleuron ❧ is a typographic element, or glyph, used either as a punctuation mark or as an ornament for typographic compositions.

Folio. The page number in a printed book.

Justify. May be referred to as FL FR (flushed left flushed right). This means the text is symmetrically aligned to the left and right side of the text box.

Kern. Kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual letter forms.

Leading. This refers to the space above and below measures of texts. For instance, this text is 10pt. on 14pt. leading.

glossary & terms

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Lining Figures. Lining figures are most often the height of the capital letters, aligning with the baseline and the cap height. Lining figures (also called aligning, cap, or modern figures) approximate capital letters in that they are uniform in height, and generally align with the baseline and the cap height.

OSF. Acronym for old style figures. Old style figures are one of two styles of numerals, the other being lining figures. Old style figures (also known as non-lining, lowercase, hanging, or text figures) have varying heights and alignments, as opposed to lining figures, which are of uniform height and alignment.

Pica. A pica is a hair less than 1/6 inch and contains 12 points. Picas are typically used to represent fixed horizontal measurements, most often column width.

Text Figures. Text figures (also known as non-lining, lowercase, old style, ranging, hanging, medieval, billing, or antique figures or numerals) are numerals typeset with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the name.

Word Space. Word spacing in typography refers to the size of the space between words. It should be distinguished from letter-spacing (the spacing between the letters within each word) and sentence spacing (the spacing between sentences).

X-Height. X-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lower-case letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the letter x in the font.

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glossary & terms

Pocket Bringhurst Guide was printed in Champaign, Illinois in the Art + Design Building of University of Illinois. This volume was created based from Natalie F. Smith’s Typography 444 class. This book is typeset with Minion Pro family and printed with HP Laser-jet ink and paper. Designed, typeset, printed and bound in Champaign by Charlotte Peloquin. �

P O CK ET BR I NG H U R ST — C HA R LOT T E PE LO QUI N