Comments for Typography for Lawyers

Comment on Font recommendations by Jack White, Abingdon VA

Jack White, Abingdon VA — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 01:47:04 +0000

Years ago, I standardized my firm on Palatino and have used it since. To me, Palatino has a bit more class than the other common serif fonts, but is not gaudy. And it is included in most OS sets, so no new purchase is required.

Comment on Justified text by JLS

JLS — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 22:10:26 +0000

oh dear, I hate hate hate HATE left-justified text. It looks so unfinished, unpolished, unprofessional, sloppy. I find it hard-to-read, and annoying. I don’t care at all about the differences in spaces between words with fully justified text (unless they are gaping, that is an obvious problem).

Comment on Hyphens and dashes by rubywednesday

rubywednesday — Wed, 01 Sep 2010 21:19:52 +0000

Thanks for this site! I didn’t know how to correctly use the en-dash vs. the em-dash before reading this post, I was just incorrectly using the en-dash all the time!

It drives me nuts to see people using a hyphen in place of an em-dash (now that I know it should be an em-dash and not an en-dash!), which I see all the time. It is so confusing to the reader.

Comment on Apostrophes by Andy B

Andy B — Mon, 23 Aug 2010 22:38:21 +0000

The other common use for a prime is the abbreviation for Minute (one sixtieth of a degree of latitude or longitude). The double prime stands for Second (one sixtieth of a minute).

Comment on Hyphens and dashes by Chris Smeder

Chris Smeder — Mon, 16 Aug 2010 02:25:00 +0000

I am loving the comments and responses. Thank you for making such a great site Matthew.

Comment on Font recommendations by Omoplata

Omoplata — Tue, 03 Aug 2010 19:11:29 +0000

Ah, this brings back many memories. I was first introduced to fonts, all novelty, when I was in 5th grade. I turned in assignments using every novelty font I could think of.

It didn’t take me long to figure out, especially when I had to proofread these before I handed them in, that reading 10pt “check book routing number” font was next to impossible. Not to mention the “F” for unreadability grades I got back on some of them.

Typography. They need to teach this in grade school, especially since we no longer teach penmanship.

Comment on Font recommendations by MB

MB — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 17:37:15 +0000

I haven’t used Andron, though it looks to me mostly like a revival of the classic book font Bembo, which I like very much.

Many fonts get revived (and re-revived) over time. Sometimes the revivals fix flaws in the originals or add new features. That’s good. (For instance, Palatino Nova is a huge improvement over the Palatino system font.) Sometimes the revivals toss out what’s good about the original without replacing it with new material. That’s bad.

So if given the choice to use the original or the revival, I will prefer the original unless there’s a compelling reason to use the revival. The mere fact that Andron is newer than Bembo does not make it better than Bembo.

Comment on Font recommendations by your name

your name — Wed, 21 Jul 2010 15:53:04 +0000

How do you feel about the Andron family designed by Andreas Stötzner?
(http://www.signographie.de/cms/front_content.php?idart=69&changelang=2)

Comment on License & colophon by C Idenob

C Idenob — Fri, 16 Jul 2010 17:28:50 +0000

I concur with all the kudos extended for this site. I am not a lawyer or working with/for lawyers. I teach at a university and am working on a text. I am doing the graphic design for the book, learning Indesign. The book is small 81/2 by 51/2, almost all text, with a lot of sections of italics. The text needs to be very readable for older adults. A professional recommended Constantia but it does not kern well for the size of page (relatively narrower column) and size of the font needed (11 in Constantia, 12 in TNR). The next person I asked recommended TNR instead as being one of the more readable. I do want every aspect of the book to reflect excellence to the extent I can do that. You do not seem complimentary toward TNR in that regard. Do you think Mercury will kern as well as TNR, would it be worth paying for to increase the appearance of the book? My concern is that I could buy it and then find out it will not do as good a job as TNR.

Comment on System fonts by MB

MB — Thu, 15 Jul 2010 03:47:33 +0000

Most of the fonts in the top tier are included as part of Office 2007.

http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fonts/product.aspx?PID=148

Since it’s a new machine, you may want to run the installer again to make sure you instructed it to install all the fonts.