The Twofold Task of Typography
Representing the linguistic intention of the writer and conveying exactly that to the reader
Why is it, that we – as typographic designers – cannot tolerate that three successive text lines all end with a hyphenated word? Why is it that we rework every text page so that a new page or column never begins with the last word of a paragraph? Why do we labour so intensely over tiny details? In other words: Why do we care about typography?
AESTHETIC TEXT
There are different ways to answer these questions. One perspective could be that we know that every experience (of a book or anything really) is constituted by a host of details. These by themselves insignificant details collectively make the experience, the product, the book. Experience is a sum of details. To craft a truly delightful book or reading experience, we are obliged to let every detail contribute towards that goal. Delight is in the details. As designers we naturally pay a great deal of our attention towards these aesthetic considerations. But let us leave this aspect for now.
The perspective we will take in this article, in answering the questions summarised in “why do we care about typography,” will be more functional and even neurophysiological. To know not only the how’s of typography but the why’s as well is the difference between a designer and a typographic designer. Typography is a woefully underappreciated aspect of publishing – or at least its contribution to the “functionality of the text” is underappreciated. Most publishing professionals would readily acknowledge typographic quality as an aesthetic value. Far fewer will see typographic quality as a contributing factor in simply making the text a better and more functional text.
“Then the function of the text – and in turn, the task of typography – is twofold: to represent the linguistic intention of the writer and to convey this intention to the reader”
We will here take a closer look at the “reasoning” behind some of the typographical rules and conventions. A reasoning that is not as much a personal insight as a 500-year process of trial and error in continuous conversation with the technology of the day. Typographic rules, conventions, established style, and best practices almost never rest exclusively on aesthetic ground. More often than not, technological or functional considerations are the primary reason for a given practice. It should already be noted here though, that even if the technological developments at some point in history render earlier established conventions obsolete, they could still hold functional value being precisely that: established conventions, whereby they serve the reader in defining the genre and usage of a given text.
We will get back to this later, but let us for now take a closer look at the basic function of a text and its layout on the page.
FUNCTIONAL TEXT
At a fundamental level, the text serves the function of an interface between the writer and the reader. Or even more at the base level, the text is an interface to language itself. The Swiss linguist and semiotician Ferdinand de Saussure said: “Language and writing are two distinct systems of signs; the second exists for the sole purpose of representing the first.” Writing encrypts language utilising visible marks for storage and transportation through time and space. Reading then decrypts the writing, and when read aloud the text resurfaces as language in a given time and space.
Then the function of the text – and in turn, the task of typography – is twofold: to represent the linguistic intention of the writer and to convey this intention to the reader. The success of both relies not only on the communicating parties, the writer and the reader, but also on the medium between them, the typographic text.
Another way of describing this could be that the task of the typographic presentation of a text is to establish a contract between the writer and the reader. This contract includes elements such as how to enter or access the text, what genre it represents, what different types of information it holds as well as their respective hierarchy, what to expect upon flipping to the next page or scrolling/swiping further along, how to follow internal links or references in the text. These elements are generally more crucial the more non-linear the text is intended to be accessed and consumed. A (structurally) simple novel could do with a less explicit “typographic contract” than for example a study bible or a reference handbook on gardening.
The task of the typographic designer is then to establish a clear and unambiguous contract that supports the intended use and most likely reading strategy of the text. Errors in this task include failure to provide clear access, clear reading paths and possibilities, clear indications of the structure and internal logic to the text.
Almost regardless of what kind of text a designer is working with though, there are time-tested rules, conventions, norms. Think of these as standard contracts to work with, that have evolved through a process of natural selection, with the overall selective pressure being comprehension of the text. If we wish to succeed in the primary typographic task, we need to think in these terms, and always assess how we can increase comprehension at every point in the process. And to improve text comprehension, we need to have a base knowledge of how reading works.
Karawane is a piece of “sound poetry” from 1917 written by the German author and poet Hugo Ball (1886-1927). Apart from the title, there are no meaningful words or sentences in the poem. The meaninglessness of the poem reflects the guiding principle of Dadaism, the movement founded by Hugo Ball.
It is an abstract and concrete poem, built of words that sound like rhythms and as graphic expression on the paper. It is essentially words as pure form, words without semantic meaning, but still with typographic and thus aesthetic value or (when spoken) with performative value.
READABLE TEXT
The reading brain is a very distinctively and intricately developed brain. No human being is born with even the facility to be able to read in the same way that we are born with the facility to see and recognise objects or the facility to hear and understand spoken language.
The literate brain is actually developed through combining and recycling these two centers, merging the information from recognised letterforms with linguistic expertise already present. The skill of reading is the skill of rapidly obtaining the symbolic information perceived through the vision of (in the case of the Latin alphabet) horizontal left-to-right strings of letterforms, phonemes, words, clauses, sentences and then “enriching” these with lexical and grammatical information.
To improve the comprehension of text then is to support this process in every possible way. The last part – the semantic enrichment of symbolic information – relies heavily on the reader’s experience level and intellectual capacity, and as such, there is no direct influence point for the typographic designer. Nevertheless, insofar as the typography can reduce the cognitive workload needed for lifting the task of recognising symbolic information, it indirectly helps as more cognitive focus can be freed to be assigned to the other part of the job.
The brain leverages pattern constructs to interpret the world. When recognising letterforms, phonemes, and words the skilled reader has an extensive library of pattern constructs that it immediately identifies. When reading, the eyes of the reader move along the typographic lines in staccato and fixate several times along the way to obtain the information around that fixation point. Fewer fixations along the lines result in increased reading speed, or – if comprehension and not speed per se is the main goal – more time for the reader to make sense of the symbols.
Naturally, this means, that the design of the typeface is highly influential upon reading speed and/or comprehension. On the one hand, if the individual letterforms of a typeface look too similar to each other, more phoneme and word patterns will look similar and cause potential confusion.
On the other hand, if the individual letterforms are designed to point in different directions, the overall text pattern will be confusing, and especially unusual and long words that the readers do not have in their “library” for immediate recognition will be hard to read. The reason for this is that the pattern construct interpretation also works at a micro level; recognition of individual letterforms is based upon how the similar details of other letters in the typeface are constructed. If the brain already knows how the letter “n” looks in a typeface, then it gets confused if it cannot rely on simple extrapolation to immediately recognise the letter “m” of the same typeface.
These considerations all have to do with the typeface design and legibility. But a typographic designer’s job is of course not done with the design or selection of a legible typeface. Readability is the broader term that also includes design aspects at paragraph and page level. Variables such as line length, line spacing (leading), justification, indentation, line breaks, margins, gutter, and white space in general all contribute for better or worse to the overall readability of the text. Here too, the brain relies on known patterns and past experiences to “manage the text.” If the designer strays too far from the well-trodden neural pathways, the brain is distracted, and perception is challenged.
When it comes to these last mentioned variables, factors such as genre conventions, technological limitations, and even local artefactual demands such as a certain trim size or a certain page count play a significant role, too.
PARATEXT
To belong to a genre, a document is effectively conforming to a set of rules or expectations. Certain typographic styles are associated with certain types of documents, and readers’ perceptions are influenced by how well those conventions are followed or transgressed, by how close this particular text–reader contract is mimicking the standard contract of the genre. The genre suggests an agenda of the text and triggers appropriate expectations. The design conventions suggest strategies for the use of the text related to the given genre.
As we alluded to earlier, most typographic genre conventions originate from a balancing of functional demands and technological or artefactual limitations. Let us take the two-column format of a traditional Bible as an example. The artefactual aspects – the format, printing process, extent, etc. – are a crucial influence on design decisions and development. For the vast amount of text in the Bible to be contained in a portable format, the entire page of a portable size has to be packed with text set in relatively small point size. To keep the text lines at a reasonable and readable length (that length varies from text setting to text setting but should not be more than 75 characters per line) the text simply has to be split up into two columns. If the Bible is versified (i.e., each verse is a new paragraph) there is another argument for the two-column layout as well: Longer lines would result in numerous instances of unsightly one-line paragraphs, sometimes even in succession.
“New practitioners are obliged to study old practice”
Developments and innovation in book publishing such as better printing, thinner paper, and more space-efficient typefaces might render some of the technological arguments that were once legitimate concerns obsolete, but because of their genre-defining character, they retain their function as expectation triggers.
Let us finish with a recent example of a couple of typographical conventions that, although the original functional imperatives have moved on, still stand as norms that today remain genre-defining albeit technologically and certainly aesthetically unnecessary.
In the early days of low-resolution screens, the rendering of details in letterforms made serif typefaces a poor choice, and naturally the more simple sans serif typefaces became the standard. Similarly, in the early days of html technology (actually all the way up until the introduction to html 4.0 and css in 1999), it was not possible to indent the first line of a body text paragraph. Without this traditional and widespread practice of typographically communicating a paragraph break to the reader, web designers had to come up with a new solution to this problem. Naturally, in an environment where vertical space is unlimited, the blank line became the standard that we have come to expect from digital text. While you would very unlikely find a printed newspaper with the body text set with a sans serif text face and blank lines between paragraphs, it is not uncommon that you will have to read that same article on the web precisely like that.
Thankfully (there is a reason why serif typefaces have always been preferred for long-form reading) the use of serif typefaces for digital body text has been rising together with the developments in screen technology. Sadly (there are both aesthetic and functional arguments to be made against blank lines) the return to the use of first-line indentation as a paragraph break signifier has not happened yet, even though the technological limitations were eliminated almost 20 years ago.
SUBTEXT
The history of printing is also the history of typography. This history is marked by repeating phases of gradual improvement in typographic quality interrupted by a sudden decline that is then followed by a slow improvement phase again. These shifts are naturally corresponding with technological “progress” (also known as labour-saving effectiveness and convenience). Every time new printing and publishing technologies are introduced, the typographic quality suffers due to the limitations of the still young technology, as the example of screen and web technology above clearly shows.
With new technologies comes new practitioners. Web designers cannot be expected to know any more about typography than typographers can be expected to know about web design. That is a problem as it has been a problem every time innovation has disrupted an established field of expertise. New practitioners are obliged to study old practice. As mit scholar Sherry Turkle once said: “We do not err as a society when we innovate, but when we ignore what we disrupt or diminish while innovating.”
We welcome innovation. But we welcome the old traditions as well. Not as nostalgia or conservatism. But in acknowledgement of the hard-earned expertise that 500 years of tested and tried typographic rules and conventions bring. The reading mind of a medieval monk basically works the same way as today’s reading minds. He surely would have been a little bit distracted by three successive text lines all ending with a hyphenated word or a new page beginning with the last word of a paragraph.