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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…

5 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…

5 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"…

5 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,…

5 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…

5 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…

5 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…

5 months ago

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