About Type

_ What are the advantages of a multiple column grid? Whereas columns increase flexibility and provide unlimited compositions options, multiple columns are better for more complex projects that require the interaction of diverse visual elements. Discourages symmetrical compositions too.

_ How many characters is optimal for a line length? words per line? 66 character line is regarded as ideal, this is approximately 10 to eleven words with an average of five letters

_ Why is the baseline grid used in design? Imaginary grid that type sits upon that allows for continuity within a design.

_ What is a typographic river? When there are uneven spaces between words that are justified, causing large gaps in the paragraph.

_ From the readings what does clothesline or flow line mean?The flow line or clothesline is an imaginary line that aligns horizontally to text and allows for easy readability and flow.

_ How can you incorporate white space into your designs?Leave margins of paper open, break text into smaller paragraphs and group them.

_ What is type color/texture mean?How type is used to create a visual tone within the text. Includes typeface, size, spacing, line measurement, etc.

_ What is x-height, how does it effect type color? The height of lower case letters of a typeface without ascenders or descenders, the higher the type color, the lighter it seems, it's also more readable.

_ In justification or H&J terms what do the numbers: minimum, optimum, maximum mean? If text is justified, there is reasonable minimum word space (usually M/5 or a fifth of an em), as well as their is a maximum word space and optimum word space in order to avoid bad rivers.

_ What are some ways to indicate a new paragraph. Are there any rules? Ornaments, drop lines, pilcrows and boxes and bullets can be used to mark breaks in streams of continuous text, outdented paragraphs, white space. One rule about paragraphs is to set the opening paragraphs flush left. In continuous text, mark all paragraphs after the first with an indent of at least one en or equal to the leading.

_ What are some things to look out for when hyphenating text.

At hyphenated line-ends, leave at least 2 characters behind and at least three forward. "Fi-nally" is okay, "finally" is not.

Avoid leaving the stub-end of a hyphenated word or any word shorter than four letters, as the last line of a paragraph.

Avoid more than three consecutive hyphenated lines.

Hyphenate proper names only as a last resort.

_ What does CMYK and RGB mean?CMYK is cyan, magenta, yellow black, the color model for printing. RGB is additive color model, uses red, green, blue light to produce color.

_ What does hanging punctuation mean?Quotation mark hangs outside line of text.

_ What is the difference between a foot mark and an apostrophe? A foot mark is often referred to as a dumb apostrophe, just like a inch mark is referred to as a dumb quote, they were common in typewriters and are straight apostrophes.

_ What is the difference between an inch mark and a quote mark (smart quote)? Inch marks were common in type writers, they are straight quotation marks. Quote marks is the one that should be used.

_ What is a hyphen, en dash and em dashes, what are the differences and when are they used. Hyphens are used to separate the worse in a compound adjective, verb, or adverb. En-dashes are used to express a range of values or distance. Em dashes is used to separate abrupt parenthetical elements.

_ What are ligatures, why are they used, when are they not used, what are common ligatures? Two or more letter combined into one character make a ligature. Ligatures used to improve the appearance of type are usually character pairs or triplets that have features that tend to overlap when used together. The ligature creates a smoother transition or connection between characters by connecting crossbars, removing dots over the i, or otherwise altering the shape of the characters, common ligature would be ff.