3 Typography Tips to improve your design projects
Typography is a key element of design. Having worked as a designer for the last 20 years, I’m always ‘reviewing’ peoples’ material subconsciously.
There are 3 typography mistakes that jump out at me every time:
1 – Widows and orphans
2 – Hyphenation
3 – 2 spaces or not 2 spaces
1 – Widows and orphans
A ‘Widow‘ in typography is a line of text from a paragraph that either sits at the bottom of a column with the rest of the paragraph starting at the top of the next column. Or a single line from the end of a paragraph that has flowed on to the top of the next column on it’s own.
An ‘Orphan‘ is a single word, or hyphenated part of a word that is left at the bottom of a paragraph. This to me is a dead give away that whoever created the piece of material hasn’t had any design training.
How to solve this issue:
Keep your layouts regularly and reflow ‘widows‘ and ‘orphans’ if you can, to get them together in one paragraph. What I do with ‘orphans’ is use what is known as a ‘soft return‘. Normally when you do a paragraph return on a computer to create a new paragraph, this creates what is known as a ‘hard return‘. If you turn on ‘the invisibles‘, the invisible characters that show spaces and returns, in Word and other processing programmes you can see what a ‘hard return‘ looks like.
Soft return
A ‘soft return‘ keeps the word/s following as part of the original paragraph and doesn’t make a new paragraph. To make a ‘soft return‘, hold down the the Shift key as you’re pressing the paragraph return key.
To get rid of an ‘orphan‘, I will read back through a paragraph. I move small words down the paragraph by using a ‘soft return‘ at the end of each line. Eeventually another word, or two/three will drop onto the last line of the paragraph where the orphan is. You no longer have an ‘orphan‘ and your paragraph looks much more professional.
You can use a ‘soft return‘ on ‘widows‘ as well. Review your paragraph to see if there is another line or two that can be brought onto another line using a ‘soft return‘. Are you able to make two lines rather than just a ‘widow‘ at the top of the new paragraph?
Using a ‘soft return‘ will help you make your typography much cleaner and tidier, as well as looking more professional.
2 – Hyphenation
Another very obvious sign that someone has little experience in typography is that of inappropriate hyphenation. Sometimes a word won’t fit in at the end of a line and so the automatic hyphenation in the programme kicks in and breaks the word.
From a designer’s point of view, this looks incredibly ugly.
How to solve this issue:
The easiest way to solve this, is to go into the programme type controls and turn off ‘automatic hyphenation‘. This means that any word that doesn’t fit at the end of a paragraph will drop to the next line. The only hyphenation will be where a manual hyphen has been used.
3 – 2 spaces or not 2 spaces
This one is often the most contentious. I’ve seen, and taken part in, long ‘discussions’ on various forums as to the rights and wrongs of 2 spaces after a full stop.
Origins of 2 spaces
In the days of manual typewriters, it was standard practice to add 2 spaces after a full stop. This apparently had to do with the spacing of different physical characters, to make it easier for people to read the copy.
One space
Now a days, with computer typesetting and design, fonts are designed specifically with spacing in mind, so it is no longer necessary to add 2 spaces to your copy.
As a designer, it is standard practice when laying out client copy, to remove all double spaces from the text. This makes the text flow better. Even if you put them in when you supply your copy, your designer will most likely strip them out, to make your design look better.