Typesetting: Rules, Theories & Practical Uses

Typesetting : Composition of text by means of arranging

The Line: The reading process 
Your eyes spring jerkily along lines and this movement is known as a saccade. A line is perceived as a series of saccade followed by a large saccade.

Typography 
Typography has three elements. 
Letter - design of individual characters/glyphs and anatomy 
Word - how glyphs fit together 
Line - combination and arrangement of words in a body or sequence of text

Principles 
Hierarchy - size, style, weight, colour & treatment 
Hierarchy adds a degree of importance to each line of text.
Alignment - Left, justified, centred and right aligned 
The rag - irregular or uneven vertical margin
Aim : to fix this go by method in, out, in and out.
Paragraph - indented text or full line break 

Letter spacing
Leading - space between baselines of successive lines of type 
( - ) leading (tight)
( + ) leading (space)
automatic (in between) 

Tracking 
The amount of space between a group of letters.
-40 (tight)
0 (normal)
+40 (space)

Kerning & Pairs 
Adjusting space between individual characters or letterforms.

Hidden Characters
Help us understand how text has been formatted. 
e.g. 
. (Space)
>> (End of story) 

Line Length
Between 40 and 75 characters or 7-12 words.

Widows & Orphans 
Lines or words left hanging or separated from a complete block of text. Tracking or line spacing can remove these. 

Dashes and Spaces 
Hyphen 
en dash
em dash

Grids 
The raster system: Josef Mulle Brockmann - type is set to grids to keep it organised 

Baseline Grid
A technique used in modernist typesetting

Hyphenate 
Hyphenation makes text more difficult to read but is mandatory in justified text. 

Rivers 
Where spaces are formed within text, a disadvantage to justified text.

Parameters to Experiment with within Typesetting :
- Grid
- Line length
- Paragraph style 
- Spacing
- Hierarchy
- Alignment 
- Rag