“Good typography” is the minimum acceptable solution; “fine typography” is what we aspire to. It includes things like hanging punctuation, using small capitals and creating “invisible” rags. Sections in this module provide the basis for the best typographic design.

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  Oldstyle Figures

  Oldstyle figures are a style of numeral which approximate lowercase letterforms by having an x-height and varying ascenders and descenders. They are considerably different from the more common “lining” (or “aligning”) figures which are all-cap height and typically monospaced in text faces so that they line up vertically on charts.

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  It's About Legibility

  Typographic clarity comes in two flavors: legibility and readability. What’s the difference? Legibility is a function of typeface design. It’s an informal measure of how easy it is to distinguish one letter from another in a particular typeface. Readability, on the other hand, is dependent upon how the typeface is used. Readability is about typography. It is a gauge of how easily words, phrases and blocks of copy can be read.