I’m so guilty.
I read the list of Typographic Sins and found I had committed a lot of them.
Take a look at these “sins” and tell me, are you as lowly of a typographic sinner as me?
Thirty-Four Typographic Sins
[Click for Larger view or Download the PDF]
Here’s the list of 34:
Two spaces between sentences.
Repent of this sin by using only one space.
Dumb quotes instead of smart quotes.
Evil: “Thou shalt not misuse type”
Good: “Thou shalt not misuse type”
Dumb apostrophe instead of a smart apostrophe.
Profane: Don’t use prime marks
Sacred: Don’t use prime marks
By the way, apostrophes always face this way: Pot o’ gold.
They never face this way: Pot ‘o gold.
Failing to tuck periods/commas inside quotes marks.
Immoral: “I love type so much”, she confessed.
Chaste: “I love type so much,” she testified.
Failing to kern display type.
Unseemly gaps can impede readability and be distracting to the reader.
Adjusting the spacing between letters will assuage your guilt.
Using a hyphen instead of an en dash.
Use an en dash to indicate a duration of time instead of the word “to”:
the 8–10 commandments, not 8-10 commandments.
Using two hyphens instead of an em dash.
An em dash signifies a change in thought—or a parenthetical phrase—within a sentence.
Too many consecutive hyphens.
It is sinful to have more than two hyphens on consecutive lines of type,
and even that should be avoided.
Large amounts of bodytext in uppercase letters.
IT BECOMES REALLY DIFFICULT TO READ.
Large amounts of reversed type
ARE HARDER TO READ. Type on a busy background is also unreadable.
Using process colors for body text.
It is harder to read, but more importantly, it is hell to register on press.
Underlining titles instead of italicizing them.
Thou Shalt Not: The Holy Bible Thou Shalt: The Korán
Failing to eliminate widows.
A widow is a word that sits on a line by itself at the end of a paragraph.
Avoid this or risk being cast into a lake of fire and brimstone.
Failing to eliminate orphans.
An orphan is the last line of a paragraph that sits alone at the top of a
column or page. Type does not like to be alone.
Rivers in justified text.
Unsightly large spaces between words occur if the line length is too short or the point size of the text too large.
Inconsistent leading.
Paragraphs should have the same leading for each line.
Indenting the first paragraph.
The first paragraph is never indented, subsequent paragraphs are.
Indenting a paragraph too far.
The standard indent for a paragraph is 1 em, not ½ inch. Most software has default tabs set for ½ inch, so adjust the tabs.
Failing to hang punctuation into the margin.
Punctuation has less visual weight than letters or numbers.
Compensate for this in display text by hanging the punctuation into the margin.
Failing to use or create fractions.
Wicked: 1/2
Righteous: ½
Incorrectly abbreviating AM and PM.
Unclean: am, AM, A.M.
Relatively Clean: a.m. (this is in small caps on the poster)
Clean: a.m. or AM
Failing to provide margins for type in a box.
ugly (poster has a keyline around the word with no margin)
beautiful (poster has a keyline around the word with a margin)
Faux italic/oblique, bold and small cap type.
Impure: Italic (faux italic on poster) | Pure: Italic
Sinful: Bold (faux bold on poster) | Virtuous: Bold
Unkosher: SMALLCAPS (faux smallcaps on poster) | Kosher: Smallcaps (smallcaps text on poster)
Strokes that encroach upon letterforms.
Hellacious (heavily stroked word on poster) | Heavenly
Horizontally scaled type.
Unrepentant: Scaled (stretched text on poster) | Penitent: A condensed typeface
Vertically scaled type.
Purgatory: Scaled (squished text on poster) | Heaven: An extended typeface
Negative letterspacing.
Not very readable.
Bad line breaks in headlines and body text.
If you don’t break lines for
sense, they can be harder to read.
Stacking lowercase letters.
eyesore (each letter is stacked on top of another on poster) Vertical baselines are celestial. (basline for this text is rotated 90 degrees)
Failing to indent bulleted lists.
- Bulleted lists look better when the second line aligns flush
with the first letter of the line above it, instead of with the bullet.
Failing to use accent marks.
Sinner: No esta aqui | Saint: No está aquí.
Failing to align baselines of type in adjacent columns of body text.
Baselines of all columns of text on a page should align. This creates a pleasing margin of pure white space.
Failing to correct bad rags.
For centered or non-justified text, avoid obvious shapes (like pyramids,
steps, wedges, angles and overly short or long lines).
Failing to use ligatures.
unholy: finish (f and i aren’t connected by a ligature) | holy: finish
How did you do? Do you need to repent and turn from your wicked typo ways?
You can purchase this 11 x 17 poster for $65 plus shipping and tax.
[via Jim Godfrey Design]
Michael says
Pretty cool, although I personally did not the en-dash point at all. I’m surprised there’s nothing about Comic Sans, though.
On a grammatical note, why did you hyphenate the adjective/noun combination of “10-years” in your bio? You totatly had me hooked until that.
Eric Dye says
Thanks for the en dash info 😉
Douglas T says
Every designer has made som of those at one point or another. We’re not always in control of the text. Even if we are, I think some of these “sins” are grammatically correct. Punctuation should only go inside quotes if it’s part of he quote for instance. Looks better the other way maybe, but its not always correct.
First make make the text correct, then make it pretty. Style isn’t the only consideration.
Eric Dye says
True story.
BenJPickett says
I constantly make the 2 spaces at the start of a sentence mistake. Because that’s how it’s been done grammatically for years. I’ve had papers returned to me since 2nd grade when I’ve made that mistake and by the time I got through high school I learned; I even had a professor acknowledge the correctness of my double spaces. If this is talking about formatting type for the web, double spaces are removed unless you us the HTML &nbps in carrots or whatever it is.
On another note, is the advice of someone who failed to meet the first commandment of publishing really to be trusted? Thou shalt not release blurry, hard to read documents.
Eric Dye says
Good point.
James Cooper says
I’m a two spacer… Some of these seem more grammatical rather than typographical, hmmm
Eric Dye says
… as long as you don’t submit your posts with two spaces …
Warren says
APA style mandates two spaces between sentences. Not sure if the others still do, but I know APA does. I still do it out of habit.
Some blogging software auto corrects the two spaces.
Eric Dye says
True.