In fiction, authors can break chapters into sections, often called scene breaks. These breaks, at their simplest, include only a single blank line. Flourished section breaks have a small graphic centered in the blank space and...
Pick up a book, any book. Look through its pages. Certain elements are evident: individual pages, columns of text, titles, headings, illustrations, indexes. When did these book conventions develop? Would you be surprised to know they were present almost since the very...
When we read material composed mostly of text and headings our eyes track in typical ways. You can put important elements in these locations or change up the design to control the scanning.
A quick list of formatting areas to check at the paragraph level.
Whitespace characters don’t result in a visible mark but do occupy an area on a page. The space character, inserted into text when you press the spacebar, is the most common. Other whitespace characters are narrower or wider than the space character and used to optically align text or numbers. Use these to avoid typing two or more space characters in a row or nudge a little space around punctuation.
Word Spacing is the space between words that results from pressing the spacebar. This space is flexible; it can be expanded or compressed; it can be fixed and unchanging or elastic and adapt to circumstances.
Each letter is designed with a small amount of blank space on the left and right sides. This spacing is set by the font's designer and is part of the letter itself; it cannot be changed. In technical terms, any character (letter, punctuation mark, number) is called a...