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In Part 2 of the series, the author recommends "hanging punctuation" (no indentation on the left side, bullets and quotation marks pushed out into the left marg
by kijin 14y ago
In Part 2 of the series, the author recommends "hanging punctuation" (no indentation on the left side, bullets and quotation marks pushed out into the left margin) because indentation on the left side "interrupts the flow of text".
But I don't think that's right. When you switch from a regular paragraph to a list, and then back to another regular paragraph, you usually want to interrupt the flow of text. You want the reader to know that what follows is a list, not just a continuation of the last paragraph. Similarly, when you put a quote in its own paragraph, it's usually because you want the reader to notice that what they're reading is a quote from somebody else. Or if it's a novel, you want the reader to know that one person is done speaking and another person has begun to talk.
Texts have structure, and typography should make the structure clear to the reader. Not indenting on the left side at all might make your blocks look prettier, but I would much rather have large margins around lists so that they stand out from the surrounding text. Large gaps and indentations are much more effective at conveying interruption than some symbols in the left margin.
- tiddchristopher 14y agoDesigner here. I recommend aligning your bullets with the paragraphs above and below for inline text, and hanging to reinforce the grid when you have blocks of content next to each other horizontally -- say, two paragraphs and a list. I hope this makes sense.
- Jare 14y agoI had the same doubts as the parent poster, and I couldn't make sense of your example. I'm very intrigued, and would appreciate further details.
- tiddchristopher 14y agoThis is an example I threw together to demonstrate: http://i.imgur.com/0z73s.png http://i.imgur.com/0z73s.png I hope it helps explain. Also, lbotos posted an excellent example of hanging quotes and other non-bullet punctuation. If you find yourself liking typographic details like these, consider checking out The Elements of Typographic Style by Bringhurst. Old editions are cheap, and it's the best book on typography I've come across.
- lbotos 14y agoI think this makes perfect sense and is excellent advice! Typography and typographic style do not have rigid rules that exist in isolation but merely guidelines to better display and define groupings.
- lbotos 14y agoHis example of lists as hanging punctuation was poor in my opinion. Lists are a separate element and there should be extra line spacing in front of them to signify this. I agree that typography should be used to better define the structure of the text but I don't think hanging punctuation is a problem. I thought the example was better illustrated here: http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/120/ http://www.artlebedev.com/mandership/120/ It can be considered a "perfectionist's touch" as it usually takes some form of manual intervention to set up. Hanging punctuation can be thought as the difference between Typophiles and type aficionados.
- Chris_Newton 14y agoI never understand examples like that. The point of hanging routine punctuation (or letters and numbers, for that matter) is to give the margins a nice, even look to the human eye. The adjustment is too subtle to notice when reading, but tidies up the overall design of the page. However, arbitrarily shoving an entire symbol outside the text body doesn’t achieve that. If anything, it is often worse than just mechanically aligning everything: instead of slight indentations, which the reader’s brain will “fill in” up to a point, you’ve now got glaring protrusions, which break the pattern in a way we don’t gloss over so easily. I think the article you cited gets it right when talking about hyphens: they can usefully move out a little, to even up the “indent” effect, but in most fonts they shouldn’t move over the whole way. However, the same advice holds just as much for any other symbol.