Matthew Butterick just released the second edition of Butterick's Practical Typography. It's a great, reader-supported resource for anyone who just needs to know how to make text look professional. Butterick himself is an interesting guy—a lawyer, programmer, and typographer. I learned of the release from his newsletter, which I suggest subscribing to (he only posts … Continue reading Second Edition of Butterick’s Practical Typography Released
Category: Typography
A recent study is making waves. The shocking conclusion: two spaces after a sentence are better than one. Two spaces versus one—a perennial debate, like the Oxford comma and how to pronounce GIF. Many of us, myself included, were taught to space double after each sentence. It’s how we learned to type. It's how we … Continue reading Are Two Spaces Better Than One?
Writers get jazzed up about punctuation, with good reason. Those dots and squiggles have a lot to do with the character and clarity of writing. And there's no mark that exemplifies the many uses of punctuation better than the em-dash. I was reminded of the em-dash by Jeremiah Shoaf of Typewolf, whose newsletter included a … Continue reading Fear Not the Em-Dash
Unlike most lawyer-tech enthusiasts, I use Windows and I enjoy it. But the OS has always lacked good writing apps. (I love Microsoft Word, but it's meant for editing and publishing, not writing.) Windows lacks writing apps like Ulysses. Apple's ecosystem has spawned a plethora of apps meant to do one thing: get you to … Continue reading Finally, a Good Writing App for Windows 10
Like most lawyers, I learned poor typography from childhood. Throughout college and my first year of law school, I typed two spaces after every sentence, double-spaced my papers, and wrote everything in Times New Roman. Then I read Typography for Lawyers. Once an expert explained how to make documents look professional and why it mattered, … Continue reading Why You Should Heed the Typography Experts
If you're at all like me, you spent your entire college and law school career writing papers with required formatting: double-spaced, Times New Roman, and one-inch margins. You put two spaces after each sentence because that's how you were taught to type. You hit the tab key at the start of each paragraph because how … Continue reading How To Make Your Documents Look Professional