
Typography for Lawyers - fixie
http://www.typographyforlawyers.com/
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sunchild
I like the spirit of this. Personally, I'd love to see lawyers move toward
plain text (to make it easy to process legal documents as raw data) rather
than toward more sophisticated presentation text, but that's just my bias.

Of course, the two aims are not mutually exclusive.

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pak
Kerning is not enabled by default in Word?

<http://www.typographyforlawyers.com/?p=766>

You have to activate it by checking a box in the Font dialog box... so
irrational it's painful to contemplate.

I can imagine they did this for backward compatibility's sake (kerning would
impact page layout), but consider the fact that 90% of the word processed
documents produced today have crappy kerning because it was hidden behind a
checkbox nobody will ever touch.

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panic
They could have just enabled it by default for new documents.

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iamwil
"The first problem is that it isn’t professional. Dressing properly is one way
we signal to clients, other attorneys, and judges that we take our work
seriously and we take court seriously."

Though I also think typography is important, you end up with a lot of non-
serious and bad lawyers simply looking serious with good typography because
that's what the serious and good lawyers do. Bad content is still bad content
no matter how you dress it up.

And when typography is used as a signal, as more bad lawyers adopt it, it
becomes a less and less effective signal--until it becomes standard fare, and
not useful at all for telling serious lawyers from non-serious ones.

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pak
You sort of described the cyclical nature of fashion, without intending to.

Things that are "in style" slowly erode in distinguishability as they become
mainstream and overused, and then the better elements from older looks are
remixed into something distinctive and those who have the motivation and
wherewithal to try them out (you could call them the fashion-conscious) bring
these new looks into vogue.

You can find this in everything: music, clothes, art, not just typography.
That's not to say it's a bad thing, it's just an evolution of human interest.

Out of those fields, typography remains the most closed discipline (I would
argue creating a professional typeface is on the level of carving a violin, it
is much more inaccessible than combining clothing accessories or beats in
audio production), and since the elite foundries are still moving into the
digital age kicking and screaming, there is much interesting progress to look
forward to. It will be a while before typography is starved for ideas and
recycles lazy, supercommercialized dreck the way (in my opinion) pop music has
gone for the YouTube/iTunes era.

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theli0nheart
Is there a "Typography for Programmers"? I could really use one of those...

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benhoyt
I just read these "rules", and it looks like just good typography -- whether
you're a lawyer, programmer, or something else. I like his explanations of
_why_ each "rule" is necessary, too.

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mikeklaas
Yes, but I could see how programmers would need a specific advice as well.
Monospace fonts for terminal/coding use, for instance.

Also, much of his advice doesn't apply to the web. Fonts designed for print
often don't fare well on the screen, especially at small font sizes

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hy3lxs
Thank you for telling people that it's one space after sentences and not two
in modern typography.

<http://www.typographyforlawyers.com/?p=12>

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turnersauce
I picked up the habit of putting two spaces between sentences in elementary
school, and have not been able to shake it since. Luckily, this problem is
automatically corrected in latex!

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pbiggar
In latex source, I write each sentence on a new line. This makes the diffs in
source control very clear. It also makes me conscious of very long sentences.

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paulgerhardt
The bit about Times Roman and Times New Roman is fascinating:

 _Think of Monotype vs. Linotype as the Depression-era Mac vs. Windows and
you’ve got it...(In fact, when it came time to license fonts for their
operating systems, Microsoft licensed Times New Roman from Monotype and Apple
licensed Times Roman from Linotype, perpetuating the schism.)_

<http://www.typographyforlawyers.com/?p=687>

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mhb
What does "SC" mean in the font descriptions? (e.g.,
[http://www.linotype.com/1436/sabon-
family.html?PHPSESSID=9df...](http://www.linotype.com/1436/sabon-
family.html?PHPSESSID=9dfbc37a2956eb010047fd0c8e5b4640))

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ugh
Small Caps. That one doesn’t come with lower-case letters, it comes with small
caps (look at the picture :).

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dzorz
I have just found out that Mac has a lot of typography options built in so you
can use it even in TextEdit.

For example: <http://tinypic.com/r/27y0uo3/5>

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roryokane
How to open the Typography panel in the picture:

    
    
      1. press Command-T or choose Format > Fonts > Show Fonts
      2. click the gear icon in the lower left
      3. choose Typography…

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javanix
_Convert straight quotes to curly quotes_

I agree with everything but the above.

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anigbrowl
I too am mystified. Could you explain?

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javanix
Curly-quotes (or at least the ones that do left-quote, right-quote anyway)
play hell with UTF-8 encoding in HTML - for simplicity's sake I'd rather not
deal with them, especially for documents that might (and should be) placed
online for everyone to view.

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ugh
Never had that problem.

One big problem about curly quotes is that many default Windows fonts have
their curly quotes all mixed up – Verdana is one of the offenders – as you can
“see here” on HN. I then just refuse to use such shoddy fonts. Not the curly
quote’s fault that the font is screwed up. (You can use incorrect UTF-8
characters to get the correct curly quotes when using something like Verdana,
but as soon as your text is copied and the font is changed you again end up
with the wrong curly quotes.)

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markbnine
His follow up should be _user interface for lawyers_. This site needs better
nav below the fold.

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sketerpot
As web sites go, this one is pretty decent. There are some navigation issues,
sure, but the design is simple and the text is a readable size, with a good
line width.

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DTrejo
It kinda bothers me how the bars at the top and bottom are not centered.

