5 More Typography Mistakes You Can Eliminate

This is a continuation of my earlier post “7 Typography Mistakes You Can Easily Eliminate.” That post garnered quite a few reader comments, including some who pointed out “mistakes” I didn’t include. So I’ve decided to share five more: 1. Over Centering This is one of my biggest pet peeves. Many non-designers use centered text way too often. Mind you, I’m not against centering … I like it. But you need to know how to do it in a way that does not make your text unreadable. Our eyes read from left to right. When we finish a line of text, our eye slides left to the beginning of the next line almost automatically. An edge is formed by the flush left text and helps our eye find the beginning of the next line. Each new line starts in the same place. It’s easy and we don’t think about it. When you center multiple lines of text, your eye struggles to find the beginning of the next line of copy. The line does not line up with the line before it. The straight edge is not formed and our eye now needs to search for the start of the next line. This searching slows down reading and tires our eyes. Not what you want when trying to communicate a message. What’s the solution? First, center only a few lines at a time. Do this to grab attention — to highlight copy. There are also ways to center text where you don’t actually center every line. Center the block of text instead. This gives the “feel” of centered text without the readability issues. [caption id="attachment_55041" align="aligncenter" width="520"] Everything centered is difficult to read. Use centering sparingly. Center copy blocks instead.[/caption] 2. Justified Text This is when all the type lines up on the left and right margins. Although not used as often as centered type, justified text also can make type difficult to read. It’s also very difficult to make it work, even for the best designers. Again, use it sparingly. Make sure the line length is long enough. Short line lengths have fewer words per line and therefore more space is added between words to justify the text. Be ready to edit your text to create better word spacing. This way, you can adjust the spacing a word at a time. My recommendation: Don’t do it. It’s just too difficult to make type look good with the tools available to most non-designers. [caption id="attachment_55042" align="aligncenter" width="520"] Justifies text causes overly large word spacing making text difficult to read. Plus it just looks bad.[/caption] 3. Proximity What is proximity? It’s the grouping together of items that relate to each other, such as a title with descriptive copy or a price with a product description. Grouping them together makes them one visual unit, organizing the information in a logical way that makes it easier for readers to take it in In the wonderful book “The Non-Designer's Design Book” (4th Edition) by Robin Williams, there’s a great example depicting how appropriate proximity and group content can improve look and readability. [caption id="attachment_55044" align="alignleft" width="221"] Typical proximity[/caption] [caption id="attachment_55043" align="alignleft" width="220"] Better proximity[/caption] Notice how much easier the example on the right is to read. Each block of copy now reads as a unit and has clear separation. The larger image has more visual appeal too. 4. Underlining Underlining is a holdover from typewriter days when there was no other way to boldface or italicize type as we do now on computers. Remember them? If not, here’s a link to read about the Typewriter — which is exactly why you shouldn’t underline any more. Why? Because today, it represents a hyper link. When people see one, they think it’s a link that’ll take them to a page on a website. You have better options to highlight text such as bolding, italicizing and using color. 5. Hyphenation Many non-designers pay little attention to how their text is hyphenated. It can be the difference between “just okay” or good type. Proper hyphenation is crucial for optimum readability. Hyphens can make your copy harder to read, and if too many happen in a paragraph — or worse, several consecutive times in a paragraph — readability suffers even more. Hyphenated words are sometime a necessary evil. But try to avoid them at all cost. The first and easiest approach: adjust your settings. Most applications default to hyphenate automatically. Instead, set this to “off.” Problem solved. This might cause a large gap or space in your paragraph rags (the right edge of your text), which is not good typography. The easiest way to fix this? Consider rewriting the sentence first. If rewriting is not possible, consider an optional or soft hyphen. An optional hyphen is used to control where a word or phrase breaks at the end of a line. When you insert an optional hyphen in a word not at the end of a line, the word will look normal. But if that word appears at the end of a line, it’ll break where you set the soft hyphen. Why use a soft hyphen? Have you ever manually hyphenated a word and then edit the text early in that paragraph? The manually hyphenated word now shows up in the middle of the page with a hyphen — you now need to remove it. A soft hyphen would automatically remove itself. In Microsoft Word, you can insert a soft hyphen click in the word where you want to insert the optional hyphen and press CTRL+HYPHEN. Almost all applications have this ability. This is the best way to control your hyphenation at the end of lines. Here are the basic rules for using hyphens: Don’t have more than two hyphenations in a row. Don’t have too many hyphenated line endings in a single paragraph, even if they’re not in successive rows. Check the “rag” (the right edge of the text) for any glaring holes, words that “stick out” unattractively. A good rag has gentle in-and-out as the eye travels down the text. In Review … Don’t center too often. It makes your text hard to read. Especially if you have more than a few lines. Justified type can be difficult to read too and if possible should be avoided. PROXIMITY is a very helpful way to group your thoughts together. Underlining will confuse your modern-day reader into thinking there’s an online link attached (and also tell everyone you’re an old-school dinosaur). Hyphens-are-not-a-good-thing-except when they appear at the end of a line break to help read-ers know that the sentence continues.

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5 More Typography Mistakes You Can Eliminate

1. Over Centering

Patrick Fultz

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Patrick Fultz