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Book Design Basics: Quotation Marks and Primes

Writers often ask about the difference between "straight" or "dumb" quotation marks and traditional printers' quotes, commonly referred to as…

11 months ago

Book Design Basics – Use Hyphens for Justified Type

Hyphens are an important contributor to elegant, easy-to-read typography, especially when text is fully justified as is the convention in…

11 months ago

The Grammar of Book Design

Are images analogous to words? Is what makes a sentence sound "right" the same thing that makes an image "pop"…

11 months ago

Proposed Standards for Book Typography

The word processor has placed new burdens on writers to understand how to use italics, big and small capitals, dashes,…

11 months ago

Book Design Basics Part 3: Running The Numbers

Part 3 of Book Design Basics explores better ways to present numbers on your pages. Numbers (called figures) look simple…

11 months ago

Book Design Basics Part 1: Margins and Leading

Book design is a lost art. Though book design discussions usually focus on covers, consider how much more time a…

11 months ago

Book Design Basics Part 2: Optical Margins, Indents and Periods

Part 2 of Fundamentals of Book Design explores optical margins, paragraph formatting and spaces. Read about margins, layout and leading…

11 months ago

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