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Microtypography is a range of methods for improving the readability and appearance of text, especially justified text. The methods reduce the appearance of large interword spaces and create edges to the text that appear more even. Microtypography methods can also increase reading comprehension of text, reducing the cognitive load of reading.
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Micro-typography is the art of enhancing the appearance and readability of a document while exhibiting a minimum degree of visual obtrusion. It is concerned with what happens between or at the margins of characters, words or lines. Whereas the macro-typographical aspects of a document (i.e., its layout) are clearly visible even to the untrained eye, micro-typographical refinements should ideally not even be recognisable. That is, you may think that a document looks beautiful, but you might not be able to tell exactly why: good micro-typographic practice tries to reduce all potential irritations that might disturb a reader.
— R Schlicht, Themicrotype
package: Subliminal refinements towards typographical perfection, v2.7, 2017 [1]
Several methods can be used.
The following methods are not usually considered part of microtypography, but are important to it.
Adobe Indesign provides microtypography and is based on the Hz program developed by Hermann Zapf and Peter Karow. As of August 2007 [update] , InDesign is available for Apple Mac OS X and Microsoft Windows operating systems.
Scribus provides limited microtypography in the form of glyph extensions and optical margins.[ citation needed ] It is available for Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, various BSD flavours, and others. [7]
The pdfTeX extension of TeX, developed by Hàn Thế Thành, incorporates microtypography. It is available for most operating systems. As of June 2022 [update] , pdfTeX is not fully compatible with XeTeX, an extension of TeX that makes it easier to use many typographic features of OpenType fonts (in 2010, support for protrusion was added to it. [8] ). pdfTeX is almost fully supported (except for the adjustment of interword spacing and of kerning) with LuaTeX, yet another extension of TeX which offers all of the benefits of XeTeX (and some others). [9] For LaTeX, the microtype
package provides an interface to the pdfTeX microtypographic extensions; ConTeXt, another typesetting system based on TeX, offers both microtypographical features such as expansion and protrusion (a.k.a. hanging punctuation) and OpenType support through LuaTeX.
Heirloom troff, an OpenType-compatible (and open-source) version of UNIX troff, supports protrusion, kerning and tracking. [10]
The word-processing packages OpenOffice.org Writer and Microsoft Office Word do not, as of August 2015 [update] , support microtypography. They allow pair kerning and have limited support for ligaturing, but automatic ligaturing is not available.[ citation needed ]
GNU TeXmacs support microtypography features such as expansion, protrusion, kerning and tracking.
Robin Williams suggests methods for achieving protrusion with word processors and desktop publishing packages that do not make it directly available. ( Williams 2006 )
Asym [11] is a real-time microtypography platform developed by Asymmetrica Labs that subtly modifies word spacing, and claims to make significant improvements to engagement, conversions, and E-commerce purchase rates.
TeX, stylized within the system as TeX, is a typesetting system which was designed and written by computer scientist and Stanford University professor Donald Knuth and first released in 1978. TeX is a popular means of typesetting complex mathematical formulae; it has been noted as one of the most sophisticated digital typographical systems.
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing (leading), and letter-spacing (tracking), as well as adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning). The term typography is also applied to the style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols created by the process. Type design is a closely related craft, sometimes considered part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers. Typography also may be used as an ornamental and decorative device, unrelated to the communication of information.
Palatino is the name of an old-style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf, initially released in 1949 by the Stempel foundry and later by other companies, most notably the Mergenthaler Linotype Company.
A typeface is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight, slope, width, and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
In writing, a space is a blank area that separates words, sentences, syllables and other written or printed glyphs (characters). Conventions for spacing vary among languages, and in some languages the spacing rules are complex. Inter-word spaces ease the reader's task of identifying words, and avoid outright ambiguities such as "now here" vs. "nowhere". They also provide convenient guides for where a human or program may start new lines.
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark of Microsoft Corporation.
In typography, emphasis is the strengthening of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text, to highlight them. It is the equivalent of prosody stress in speech.
In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual letterforms, while tracking (letter-spacing) adjusts spacing uniformly over a range of characters. In a well-kerned font, the two-dimensional blank spaces between each pair of characters all have a visually similar area. The term "keming" is sometimes used informally to refer to poor kerning.
In typography, leading is the space between adjacent lines of type; the exact definition varies.
In typography, letter spacing, character spacing or tracking is an optically consistent adjustment to the space between letters to change the visual density of a line or block of text. Letter spacing is distinct from kerning, which adjusts the spacing of particular pairs of adjacent characters such as "7." which would appear to be badly spaced if left unadjusted.
Kashida or Kasheeda is a type of justification in the Arabic language and in some descendant cursive scripts. In contrast to white-space justification, which increases the length of a line of text by expanding spaces between words or individual letters, kasheeda creates justification by elongating characters at certain points. Kasheeda justification can be combined with white-space justification.
In typesetting and page layout, alignment or range is the setting of text flow or image placement relative to a page, column (measure), table cell, or tab.
Type color, or colour, is an element of typography that describes how dense or heavy the text appears on the page. Finding the correct balance of type color and white space can make text more easily readable. The term type color should not be confused with the usual meaning of color, ; instead it has more to do with the blackness or boldness of the text on the page. A bold font creates more contrast on the page, therefore creates more emphasis. Using a bold font is therefore one way that type color can be adjusted.
In typography, line length is the width of a block of typeset text, usually measured in units of length like inches or points or in characters per line. A block of text or paragraph has a maximum line length that fits a determined design. If the lines are too short then the text becomes disjointed; if they are too long, the content loses rhythm as the reader searches for the start of each line.
Sentence spacing concerns how spaces are inserted between sentences in typeset text and is a matter of typographical convention. Since the introduction of movable-type printing in Europe, various sentence spacing conventions have been used in languages with a Latin alphabet. These include a normal word space, a single enlarged space, and two full spaces.
Hz-program was a proprietary, patented typographic composition computer program, created by German typeface designer Hermann Zapf. The goal of this program was "to produce the perfect grey type area without the rivers and holes of too-wide word spacing."
In typography, a margin is the area between the main content of a page and the page edges. The margin helps to define where a line of text begins and ends. When a page is justified the text is spread out to be flush with the left and right margins. When two pages of content are combined next to each other, the space between the two pages is known as the gutter. The top and bottom margins of a page are also called "head" and "foot", respectively. The term "margin" can also be used to describe the edge of internal content, such as the right or left edge of a column of text.
A subscript or superscript is a character that is set slightly below or above the normal line of type, respectively. It is usually smaller than the rest of the text. Subscripts appear at or below the baseline, while superscripts are above. Subscripts and superscripts are perhaps most often used in formulas, mathematical expressions, and specifications of chemical compounds and isotopes, but have many other uses as well.
The history of sentence spacing is the evolution of sentence spacing conventions from the introduction of movable type in Europe by Johannes Gutenberg to the present day.
Sentence spacing studies analyse the effects of sentence spacing techniques on the readability of text. The only direct scientific studies have been conducted by researchers from the University of Georgia, for on-screen text. There are currently no direct sentence spacing studies for printed text.
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