Typesetting principles remain the same for both traditional and computer typesetting.
Books, pamphlets, posters, newspapers and magazines all obey certain typesetting rules in order to provide the reader with a legible reading experience. A good product makes proper use of font styles, font sizes, character spacing, line spacing, paragraph alignment and dashes. In addition, a knowledgeable typesetter takes the time to thoroughly proofread the work prior to finalization and printing.
Font Style
A wide range of fonts exist, but most fonts fall into several categories. Serif fonts suit the body of text and have feet and arms that hang off the ends of letters, like Times New Roman. Sans serif fonts, literally translated into "without serifs," have no feet, like Arial or Verdana, and typically work best for small amounts of copy and headlines. Text fonts and script fonts look like hand-drawn or hand-written letters, which are suitable for more formal invitations and correspondence.
Font Size
Fonts come in a variety of sizes referred to as "points." Traditional typography used 72.27 points per printed inch, but computer typography only uses 72 points per printed inch. Any two fonts may have different physical sizes at the same point size, but most body copy requires a point size between 9 and 12 points.
Character Spacing
Every letter and character has a different shape. As a result, some characters fit together better than others. Typesetters use kerning--the process of manually adjusting the space between two characters--to perfect the way the letters within a word fit and improve the readability of a given word, particularly in headlines.
Line Spacing
Leading refers to line spacing. Proper line spacing depends on font style, font size and line length. Some fonts need more line spacing than others to keep ascenders and descenders from touching. Larger font size typically requires more leading, especially for body copy. Longer line lengths usually require more leading as well.
Paragraph Alignment
Paragraph alignment refers to the portion of the page the text evens out with. "Flush left" alignment refers to text even with the left margin, "flush right" refers to text even with the right margin, "centered" refers to text evenly centered and "justified" refers to text flushed on both the left and right margins. Body text usually appears flush left or justified, and headlines usually appear flush left or centered.
Dashes
Hyphens, the smallest type of dash, separate phone numbers and words. En-dashes, which roughly have the width of the letter "N," separate numbers in series or dates. Em-dashes, roughly the length of the letter "M," set off a section of a given sentence for special emphasis.
Proofreading
Check documents and projects typed in a word processing computer program with spell-check to catch the most basic spelling and grammar mistakes. Even with these spell-check programs, however, some errors often slip past, so manually proofread your work even after using spell-check for added thoroughness.
