Overview
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Discover how the 33 laws of typography can help you design documents that are beautiful and easy to understand.
Syllabus
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Introduction
- Introduction
- 01 Distrust default software settings
- 02 Ensure good contrast between text and background
- 03 Avoid chart junk and page junk
- 04 Enforce a consistent style within a document
- 05 Maintain a visual hierarchy
- 06 Group related page elements
- 07 Set printed body text from 9 to 11 points
- 08 Set body text two to three alphabets wide
- 09 Favor flush-left, ragged-right body text
- 10 Separate sentences with one space, not two
- 11 Don't allow less than seven characters on a line
- 12 Avoid bad paragraph breaks
- 13 Avoid line-breaking hyphens
- 14 Signal new paragraphs once, not twice
- 15 Break up large blocks of text
- 16 Emphasize ten percent or less of text
- 17 Avoid all caps and underlined text
- 18 Set acronyms and initialisms in small caps
- 19 Hang punctuation in small chunks of text
- 20 Hang bullets and numbers in lists
- 21 Avoid bad line breaks
- 22 Use symbols and special characters as needed
- 23 Use proportional old-style figures in body text
- 24 Adjust leading and kerning for large text
- 25 Verify software alignments optically
- 26 Connect thoughts, using em dashes
- 27 Show ranges, using en dashes
- 28 Clarify, and improve readability, using hyphens
- 29 Designate feet and inches, with prime symbols
- 30 Replace missing characters with apostrophes
- 31 Limit typefaces to two per document
- 32 Use typefaces that reinforce a document's mood
- 33 Choose serif or sans serif, based on aesthetics
- Goodbye
