Type Tips – Proportional Vs Tabular Figures

by Ilene Strizver, founder of The Type Studio

Some numbers add up, and others don’t – no, it’s not your tax return. It’s the difference between proportional and tabular numerals. Know which style you need before you choose a typeface and you’ll reap a big savings in time and effort. Tabular numerals are those where each numeral has the same total character width (that’s the width of the numeral itself plus the white space on both sides). Tabular spacing (also referred to as monospacing) allows numerals to align vertically in tables, financial statements and other columns of figures. Tabular figures are usually lining figures, meaning that they sit on the baseline and have the same height as the capital letters, but on occasion you’ll see old style figures that are tabular. (Old style figures are also called lowercase or non-aligning figures.) On the other hand, display typefaces usually contain proportional figures. The total character widths of these figures are based on the width of the numeral itself plus a small amount of white space around it, so an 8 takes up more width than a 1, for example. Proportional figures can be of the lining or old style variety. In either case, their varying widths give them a more even color and texture, especially around the numeral 1. Proportional figures are not intended for use in charts and tables, since they won’t align in vertical columns. When selecting a font for a project, think about how you’ll be using numerals in your design and make sure the font you choose offers the style of figures you need. While it’s fairly simple to kern a tabular 1 to improve its spacing in a text setting, it’s nearly impossible to kern proportional numerals for vertical alignment in a financial statement. For maximum flexibility, consider using OpenType fonts, which are becoming available from more and more foundries. This new font format often comes with both tabular and proportional figures in both lining and old style varieties, but requires using an application that supports this feature.

Editor’s Note: Ilene Strizver, founder of The Type Studio, is a typographic consultant, designer and writer specializing in all aspects of typographic communication. Read more about typography in her latest literary effort, Type Rules!, published by North Light Books. This article was commissioned and approved by Monotype Imaging Inc.

Type Tips – Open Type

by Ilene Strizver, founder of The Type Studio

If you’re a graphic designer and work on a Macintosh system, chances are you typically use PostScript® Type 1 fonts. If you primarily do web design, or work on a Windows machine, you probably use your share of TrueType fonts. Both formats have their advantages and disadvantages, but now there’s OpenType – offering the best of both worlds, and much more. New Features OpenType is a kind of superset of Type 1 and TrueType font formats, with added enhancements. It is backward-compatible with applications that support Type 1 and TrueType fonts (including design applications and printer drivers), and you can mix OpenType fonts with other font formats without a problem. OpenType also offers some remarkable new features that require OpenType-compatible applications. (If you’re using the latest version of your operating system and applications, you may already have this capability – check with the manufacturers to be sure.) Three of these new features that are of particular benefit to designers are multi-platform support, expanded character sets and glyph substitution. Read more about the features…

Editor’s Note: Ilene Strizver, founder of The Type Studio, is a typographic consultant, designer and writer specializing in all aspects of typographic communication. Read more about typography in her latest literary effort, Type Rules!, published by North Light Books. This article was commissioned and approved by Monotype Imaging Inc.

Type Tips – Bullets

From FontShop founder Erik Spiekermann

Use bullets or centered points instead of hyphens (-) when you list items. Bullets are part of the standard character set and are located in the following positions:
• option-8 (Mac), ALT+0149 (Windows)
· option-shift-9 (Mac), ALT+0183 (Windows)

Type Tips – Not Justified

From FontShop founder Erik Spiekermann

Avoid flush settings! Most applications create justified text by hideously stretching and squishing words and spaces. Note that it takes many hours of tedious work to typeset justified text that is truly well-proportioned and legible. For this reason, professionals prefer to use ragged-right composition, either with or without hyphenation, depending on how much line-length variation they wish to allow. This gives the text a more harmonious appearance and makes it easier to read, since all wordspaces have the same width.

If you are up for a history lesson on the origins and use of justified typesetting, ITC's U&lc tackles the subject quite well. And please people, there is no such thing at right- or left-justified type!

Type Tips – Ligatures

From FontShop founder Erik Spiekermann

A ligature is defined as the visual or formal combination of two or three letters into a single character. They consist of letter combinations such as ff, fi, fl, ffi. Ligatures keep letters from overlapping and improve legibility. For example: affluence, configure, deflate, affinity.

For more info on ligatures, kerning and tracking the Design Center has a pretty good article posted.

Type Tips – Figuring It Out

From FontShop founder Erik Spiekermann

Good text typefaces have “old style”, “text”, or “lowercase” figures – 1234567890 – instead of “lining” ones – 1234567890. Lining figures were originally designed to be used with setting of all capital letters. Lowercase figures blend in better with the text settings, as the figures behave like lowercase letters with ascenders (6 and 8) and descenders (3, 4, 5, 7, 9) and x-height-only characters (1, 2, 0). While they fit in text very nicely, the good looks have one disadvantage: each of the figures have individual widths, meaning they won’t sit directly underneath each other in columns. Their descenders may also clash with ascenders when the columns sit closely on top of one another, as happens quite often in tabular settings. Lining figures are, however, all the same width, making for a somewhat uneven appearance, as the 1 takes up the same space as the 8, but in tables, they are much easier to add up. Some fonts offer “tabular oldstyle figures”, which will allow table setting.

Read more about figure styles.

Type Tips – Smart Quotes

From FontShop founder Erik Spiekermann

A dead giveaway for unprofessional “desktop typography” are wrong quotes and apostrophes. Quotes can have different shapes. They generally look like “this”, and can be remembered as beginning and ending quotes by thinking of “66” and “99”. Beginning quotes are found on the Mac by pressing option-[; closing quotes, option-shift-[. The apostrophe is simply a raised comma, the shape of a ’9 in most typefaces. It is identical to the closing single quote, while the open single quote looks like a ‘6. Beginning single quotes are found on the Mac by pressing option-]; the apostrophe and closing single quote, option-shift-].

And don't get me started on the use of apostrophes. I can't tell you how many times I have tried to fill out a form online only to be told that I need to use a “correct name”. If you are a programmer, please include the apostrophe character. I really want to be correct. U&lc also covers this quite well.

Type Tips – Connections

From FontShop founder Erik Spiekermann

There are three different ways to connect or separate words: the hyphen -, the en dash –, a little wider than the hyphen, and the em dash —, wider still. The regular hyphen is easily accessible on any Mac or PC keyboard, whereas the en dash needs the combination option-hyphen on the Mac. The em dash is accessed by pressing option-shift-hyphen on the Mac. The use of these dashes depends on house styles and tradition. The em dash with no space around it is traditionally used to separate thoughts—like this one—but I think its length is a distraction in running text. Try using the en dash to separate thoughts – like this one – with a character space on either side. En dashes without space on either side are also used between numbers and compound words as in: the shop is open 10–7, while you can take the New York–Kansas City train or the New York–Baltimore train only 8am–3pm.

This is a good, if overly-simple, description of usage from Washington State University. And if that wasn't simple enough for you keep this in mind “Dashes tend to separate elements and hyphens to link them.”

Type Tips – The Capital Mistake

From FontShop founder Erik Spiekermann.

NEVER use CAPITAL letters to accentuate words in running copy. They STICK OUT far too much spoiling the LOOK of the column or page. Use italics instead. If you have to set words in capitals, use proper small caps with or without initial capitals.

For more from FontShop about setting type in all caps, read this post.