Typography gives finishing touches to web pages. By correctly using typography a page can look finished, professional, and visually appealing. However, if typography is poor and ignore the page can look incomplete and viewers may not return to the site. Below are tips that can be used to asses typography and how to properly use it.
Measure -- Having text lines that are too short or too long can be confusing and distracting, because the reader is always looking to the next word and next line it is important to use a consistent length. An ideal length is 65 characters. (Note: A trick to set the length of your text is to use Robert Bringhurst's method. This method is to multiply the font size by 30. The result gives you the amount of pixels for around 65 characters per line.)
Leading-- The amount of space that is between each line of text is crucial important for readability. Finding a good medium can be hard to do, however the extremes can be visually appalling. Take a collage paper for example, often times these are double spaced, however if this much space was used on a web page the content would be very spread out and hard to read. On the other hand if the text is too close the content can look like it was crammed into a space and can be difficult to distinguish between different lines. (Code for this is line-height: XXpx; A tip for line height is to set it a few pixels greater than the text size (e.g. if the text is 12px then use a 15-16 px line-height)
Hanging Quotes -- By placing the quotation mark in the left margin the reader's focus is not disrupted. These hanging quotes will allow for the text to remain left aligned and not force the paragraph to start further right. To achieve the hanging quotes simply use a block element and set a negative indent. (Code: blockquote { text-indent: -0.8em; font-size: 12 px; }
Vertical Rhythm -- Having a consistent vertical balance is important to the readability of your pages. By being inconsistent with the margins and the way you pad the elements can create an unbalanced vertical rhythm. By retaining a base grid line you can keep the vertical rhythm in your page. Make sure that the spacing between elements, line spacing, and margins are all equal amounts of pixels.
Widows and Orphans -- A widow is a word or small line that is left at the end of a paragraph. An orphan is a word or small line that is at the beginning of a page or column. These create abrupt endings or beginnings that reduce the readability. In order to avoid these it is important to carefully use page breaks and no-space breaks so that these do not happen. By eliminating orphans and widows you can create a professional and complete looking page.
Emphasis -- Important parts of text that you want the reader to remember can be emphasized by using elements such as bold, italic, caps, and other formats. By placing these elements on selected words the reader realizes that this is an important part of the content. However, it is just as important to not disrupt the flow of the content. By making the emphasis dramatic or using more than one element the text can be busy and abrupt. When using emphasis only use one element at a time and use them sparingly.
Scale -- Setting the scale is very important. Using either a traditional or custom scale is acceptable. Scales are normally used to set apart different size headers and content. This helps the reader distinguish the differences between them and helps with overall readability.
Clean Rags -- This is how the rough edge of the paragraph appears. As a result of a paragraph being left or right justified the opposite edge can turn out to be choppy and distracting. In order to avoid these rough edges you have to make manual adjustments to the block of text. Another way to correct this is to use hyphens so that some words can be split on different lines.
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