Horizontal spacing is measured in ems , one em is equal to the type size; 6 point type would be 6 em. An em is meant to be proportional. Typesetting machines tend to divide an em into units that art standard. A half an em is an en. Thinking of type areas as gray boxes is helpful. If one is using a bold type, to avoid the area becoming too dark the words or letters will need to be spaced out more, balancing the whitespace with the blacker text to achieve the medium gray again. The spacing between letters in words usually needs to be elastic, especially with justified text. Word spacing can be affected by what language you are writing in as well, latin uses actual characters for spacing instead of just an empty space.
Some Good Rules For Body Text:
- Justified text should usually be a minimum of m/5 and a reasonable maximum of m/2 (1/2 of an em).
- 45-75 characters per line in a single column layout is usually satisfactory.
- For multiple column layout 40-50 characters is good.
- But as always if the type is actually set well, anything up to a 90 character line is reasonable.
- on a conventional page the length of the line (point-wise) is about 30 times the size of the type
- add extra leading for block quotes.
- The most common paragraph indent is one em.
- with hyphenating words leave two letters behind and at least 3 forward (fi-nally). Also consider the flow of the words (syllables)
- don't hyphenate a lot (3 lines or more in a row)
- don't begin a page with the last line of a paragraph, its just dumb.
- pages with more than 2 columns look best with columns of varying depths.
- REALLY don't end a page with a hyphen.. even dumber.
When setting with narrow measures, ragged right text is usually a good solution to over hyphenation or sloppy spacing. Don't hit the spacebar twice after a period, once is enough. Though for initials, as little space between the periods as possible is good. We know we're reading initials we don't need to pronounce them as a word, so the period between them actually has as a good enough space, it makes for quicker reading. Though some all caps acronyms such as CIA should be in small caps and have a little increased space. Don't letterspace the l o w e r c a s e without a good reason, it causes some issues as illustrated a few words back. Letterspacing comes into play when the letters matter more than the word itself.
Kerning - altering the space between selected pairs of letters. Some capitals need their space or they can be misread. Though one has to be careful with kering because uneven letter space is very noticeable. Don't alter the widths or shapes of letter forms without a good reason. There are type designers are work very hard to make the letter work perfectly at its shape. Squashing and stretching the letter forms is considered a big no no unless for a good reason. Be careful with adding a lot of space between letters, it make break the word.
Leading - the space between lines (vertically). Type set as 11/11 is basically no space between the ascender of the bottom line and the descender of the top line, if not spaced correctly the letters may connect. Negative leading is good for short bursts of text, as in for advertising. Don't change the leading in the piece without good reason; like changing from body text to a quote block or a footnote. Once a leading is chosen for a body text in a whole book, it should stay that way and change only for other elements.
Indenting is important with paragraphs, whether it be a hanging indent(outdented paragraph) or not, but try to indent all paragraphs after the first with at least one en (which as we've learned is 1/2 an em so 6 point type indented with at least a 3 point indent). Ornaments can be used as an indent, but they're not really that cool. Be sure to add enough leading to help the block quote flow back into the actual body text.
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