Before we can get into this, though, we have to start with terminology. Typography requires a new language. Much of this is based on historical printing usage and the font design process. Without at least a few of these terms you will be lost. This has been complicated now that all of the digital terms have been added to the mix.

So, we really need to start with a little of font design. Not only the different fonts, but the internal measurements of each font, the pieces which make up those fonts, and the various characters which are necessary—particularly in our field of book design.

People often start with font design

But this brings us to the first major confusion in typography. Many believe that typography is font choices. They spend a huge amount of time on which fonts to choose, how fonts developed historically, and the reader reactions to these fonts.

This indeed is a good portion of typography, but this pursuit misses the entire point. The point of typography is to use words to communicate. Font choices can help—but this is really a small portion of what we need to be concerned with as typographers and book designers.

I am not minimizing the importance of choosing fonts which are easy to read and comfortable for your target audience. But we mustn’t confuse the tools and materials with the techniques for using those tools. In addition, we cannot focus on these two areas without maintaining the end product as our primary goal.

For example, let’s first consider woodworking for furniture.

• The type and species of wood chosen (as well as the fabric and hardware)
• The saws, chisels, planes, and power tools used
• The smoothing, fitting, and joinery skills employed
• And the finishing techniques of shaping, adjusting, polishing, and coating
• Are all subservient: to the beauty and comfort of the chair being built.

All the pieces of the process are part of the whole, but they only serve the end goal: comfort and beauty. Plus, of course, how the chair fits the decorating style used.

In this blog, I’m focused on typography for books.

• The fonts chosen (as well as the words and images)
• The drawing, image manipulation, and layout tools used
• The paragraphs, columns, pages, graphics, and formatting skills employed
• And the final adjustments necessary to make the type beautiful and polished
• Are all subservient: to the beauty, clarity, and comfort experienced reading the book.

A book is all about the author (& illustrator) communicating easily and comfortably with the readers. The readers should not even notice the book, but be drawn into the content unavoidably. If the book is noticed, it needs to be a pleasurable complement to the content.

Some of the basic letterpress terminology has already been covered in earlier posts.

Many of you are probably grumbling to yourselves at this point: You say in your twenty-first-century superiority, “Who cares?” Actually, you care or you will care. Most of you will find that the longer you design documents, especially books, the more you will fall in love with type. Type will become a very important graphic tool for most of you. This importance will increase throughout your career. Often the shape of the letters is the only graphic element in your designs.

The stick controlled a lot

We need to remember how type was set. All the slugs had to be placed in rows on the composing stick — one letter at a time. This is where the rectangles of letterpress were built, and they had to be precise. If anything was out of size, the slugs would move or fall out as they were printed. There are hundreds of specialized terms used for all this equipment. If you are curious, read almost any book written on printing up to the end of the twentieth century.

As a result, many terms in your software are from letterpress and font design. For example, the sizing of type remains the same — from top of ascender to bottom of descender, with the capital letters being slightly shorter than the ascenders and all characters fitting within that height. This was determined by the necessities of the composing stick. But there are more words to define.

Type parts: the vertical metrics

The baseline is the imaginary line that all the letters and numbers sit on. The x-height is the height of the lowercase x (the x is the only lowercase letter that is normally flat both top and bottom). However, I saw it called a mean line in a diagram on a typography Web site a few years back [although I have never actually heard anyone use that term]. Ascenders are the portions of lowercase letters that rise above the x-height as in b, d, f, h, k, and l. A t doesn’t ascend far enough to be called an ascender, usually. Descenders are the portions that sink below the baseline as in g, j, p, q, and y. The cap height is the height of the uppercase letters [usually a bit shorter than the ascender].

The reason that x is specified is that it is normally the only lowercase letter with a flat top and bottom. Curves have to extend over the lines to look the proper height. Yes, it is an optical illusion. The same is true of letters such as A or V that have points. If the point does not protrude past the guidelines, the letter looks obviously too short. Even people who know nothing about type will know that something is wrong. Type design has many of these understandings that have become rules.

You will discover that this optical alignment is crucial to excellence in type. You need to even align the sides of the columns optically to make them seem straight, clean, and perfect.

TERMS: Some of you may have noticed that a few paragraphs back we used two old letterpress terms. Most of you didn’t. Those two terms are uppercase and lowercase. The original terms were majuscules for large letters and minuscules for handwriting using small letters. Majuscules came to be called capital letters. Minuscules remained a mouthful. Uppercase and lowercase come from common typesetting practice where two wooden cases of letters were used in a standard setup. The upper case contained all the capital letters. The lower case contained all the minuscules. In other words, the common phrase caps and lower case (or C&lc) is just one of those things we do in English {though more properly, it is U&lc—upper and lower case].