The Elements of Typography

Posted by Daniel Stout on Tue 13 Mar 2007 at 10:52 PM

If you’re up on matters of typography, then you’ve surely read or at least seen Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style. It is the book on typography. It is not surprising then that some enterprising webists are using the book as direct inspiration for a website entitled The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web. It contains a burgeoning list of rules and ideas for setting type in the web world. For example:

2.3.1 Set opening paragraphs flush left

“The function of a paragraph indent is to mark a pause, setting the paragraph apart from what precedes it. If a paragraph is preceded by a title or subhead, the indent is superfluous and can therefore be omitted.”

Paragraphs, and other block level elements, are indented using the text-indent property. To ensure a paragraph is set flush left, the text-indent should be set to zero:

p { text-indent: 0; }

This rule is rarely necessary, however, because CSS specifies that the default initial value for text-indent should be 0.

Also of interest on this site is a presentation slideshow recently given at SXSWi 2007, entitled Web Typography Sucks. I recommend downloading the PDF with notes as it contains the actual text of the presentation. At any rate, a useful primer in web typography with some handy references.

For additional information, check out the article The Trouble With EM ‘n EN (and Other Shady Characters) by Peter K Sheerin, over at A List Apart.

Tags: em-dash · en-dash · typographic style · typography · web typography

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