simple rules for good typography

[Barbara B]

When talking about good typography today, we also need to think about good web typography and web standards.

On the web there are four html elements that are, by the browsers' default settings, rendered as bold or italic. The text that is marked with these html elements can be styled differently than the brower automatically does- you can change fonts or colors etc using CSS. But most folks never bother to style these elements and just go with what the browser provides.

Most browsers render <b> or <strong> as bold text and render <em> or <i> text as italic.

The good folks at the W3 have debated long and hard about what meaning is conveyed when using these tags. An interesting and understandable by mortals, article by the HTML5 Doctor, Oli Studholme , can be found here.

His article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non-Commercial 2.0 share alike license. So here is a small excerpt; but be sure to treat yourself to the whole article where he gives lots of examples.

• <i> — was italic, now for text in an “alternate voice”, such as transliterated foreign words, technical terms, and typographically italicized text (W3C:Markup, WHATWG)
• <b> — was bold, now for “stylistically offset” text, such as keywords and typographically emboldened text (W3C:Markup, WHATWG)
• <em> — was emphasis, now for stress emphasis, i.e., something you’d pronounce differently (W3C:Markup, WHATWG)
• <strong> — was for stronger emphasis, now for strong importance, basically the same thing (stronger emphasis or importance is now indicated by nesting) (W3C:Markup, WHATWG)

[Gare]

I guess you definitely don't want to underline something in HTML, or people will think it's a link ;)

-g-

[Soquili]

Underlining has been used in handwriting and typewriting to convey emphasis for many years. Before typewriters Aldus Manutius of Alpine Press used italic in 1501 to convey emphasis using the printed word. Other typesetters have used Bold type to convey emphasis.

So our first instance of a rule for using Italic or Bold is to convey emphasis to the word or words within a different form of type. Before getting into more rules we must recognize that this forum font does not actually use a true Italic font. Simply slanting the letters does not make a true Italic, it does make an oblique, slanted, sloped, or inclined font form. Through repeated usage these font forms have become more commonly known as "Italic". Just remember that through repeated usage the words ain't and cowabunga have become commonly known in the English language.

Bold text is pretty much relegated to be used for emphasis so we have run out of rules for it's use.

Italic - no that isn't a typo, in the beginning of the use of an italic font capitals at the beginning of a word were always a Roman character. Just a bit of trivia for you.

A few more rules for using Italic text.
Titles of works like books, albums, plays, and periodicals. Titles of short stories, songs, acts, or articles should not be italic, enclose them with quotes.
Names of Ships should be in italic.
Foreign words should be in italic. For example, hasta la vista.
Mentioning a word as an example rather than it's symantic content. "The word the is an article."
Mentioning a letter or a number as itself. "Jon noticed someone had added the letter h when spelling his name." "The name Albus was beside the 1 on the passenger list."


There a more but I'm not usually this verbose. See the wiki article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Italic_type.

[Gare]

Oh, and never, never, never use quotes for emphasis. It makes the person who created the sign look like a fool.

When you put quotes around a phrase, generally it means that the phrase within has a meaning other than the author's intention. Sarcasm usually involves quotes. Example:

Get that "antique" out of my driveway.

The person saying this sentence really doesn't believe the car is a valuable antique, but instead a piece of junk.

So when you see a sign that says:

"Free" ice cream today, the reader probably won't assume the ice cream is free, even though the sign creator used the quotes to emphasize FREE.

Use quotes to quote people!



-g-