Tag Archives: Adobe InDesign

Control your spacing & alignments with tabs & fixed spaces

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Tabs and fixed spaces Spaces cause many other problems for people trained in typewriting. On a typewriter, the spacebar is a known quantity. This is because every character in monospaced type is the same width—even the space. This is definitely not true for type. In fact, in type, the space band is often a different size than it was the last time you hit the key. This is caused by several factors. First, the word space character … Continue reading →

Space, space and a half, double-space Horrors!

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Space, space and a half, or double space? None of the above! This is why we use leading instead of spacing. Spacing is old typewriter terminology. The three options listed above were the only ones available for typewriters. In almost every case (unless you are trying to mimic a typewriter) a single space is too close, a space and a half is too far, and a double space is ridiculous. Again, the focus has to be on … Continue reading →

No, No! to double-space and double-returns

Skilled Workman Posted on by

What follows is an excerpt from my new release, Writing In InDesign Second Edition. ******************************** Typography determines reader reactions It goes far beyond your font choices—important as they are. This is the first and most important thing you must understand. You are not only trying to control or at least predict the reaction of your typical reader to your content. You are also working you make your book a comfortable, friendly, and familiar part of the life … Continue reading →

Margins are more important than many think: Make the margins bigger

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Make the margins bigger | I love typography, the typography and fonts blog. The I Love Typography blog is often over the top. Even as a typographer who has focused his career on type—both font design and page layout (the two parts of typography)— this blog is always fun, often beautiful, but commonly irrelevant to my daily work. On the other hand, the item discussed in the posting this morning is critical to excellence in typography. Margins … Continue reading →

Writing in InDesign is the only sensible choice for writers in the new paradigm of on-demand self-publishing

Skilled Workman Posted on by

The greatly expanded and rewritten Writing In InDesign Second Edition has been released Buy it Now! Versions available so far Spiral-bound premium workbook $19.99 7×10 perfect-bound paperback $17.99 Kindle (with embedded fonts for Fire) $7.99 (Available in the Kindle Lending Library) What started as a relatively small update turned into a large scale revision when I began adapting my popular Writing In InDesign book to the responses and suggestions I received. I have been pleasantly surprised at all the people … Continue reading →

InDesign CS6 is all about promises for the future…

Skilled Workman Posted on by

There are many exciting things to be found in the new version of InDesign. But if you read carefully, most of them are focused on an unspecified future where ePUB3 and HTML5 /CSS3 are the normal standards of ebook publishing. They are not now. In fact, there is no ePUB3 reader in common use at this time. In fact, there is really nothing out there for readers of ePUB books. I love CS6. It makes excellent ePUBs. … Continue reading →

Using styles enables global control of your book’s typography

Skilled Workman Posted on by

Today I’m mentioning the basic structure of typography. There is one concept which enables typography as we know it in modern book publishing. This is the concept of styles. These styles are contained in styles panels. InDesign has five of them: paragraph, character, object, table, and cell. Styles are also available in word processors—even though they are not nearly so powerful there. What is a style? A style is a collection of specialized typographic defaults that can … Continue reading →

Sizing your type

Skilled Workman Posted on by

The major point to remember is that all letters of a given typeface and a given size fit into rectangles that are the same height. We’re spending a lot of time on this because it is an important concept to understand. Often paragraphs or lines of type look very different in size, but in fact they are the same point size. This is primarily due to variations in x-height and built-in leading in the specific font chosen. … Continue reading →

Fonts are not typography, fonts are used to create typography

Skilled Workman Posted on by

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 … Continue reading →

Typography: Type has nothing to do with typing

Skilled Workman Posted on by

It is obvious that even the terminology is different. However, we have hardly begun. Much more significant than the new language are the actual mechanics of typesetting. The rules have changed! In fact, one of the difficulties in teaching publishing classes today involves a paradox. Writing classes are secretarial. Classes all teach writing using Word: but Word cannot produce professional typography or the formatting services required by the reader. Writing groups assume Word: if you give them … Continue reading →