

The Masochism of Implementing CSS Baseline - pid666
http://8gramgorilla.com/the-masochism-of-implementing-css-baseline/

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paulmckeever
I love that you take the time to put in so much attention to detail. But this
is really about vertical rhythm. Robert Bringhurst neatly covers this in The
Elements of Typographic Style when he says that the text should return to its
rhythm after interruptions (for example, subheadings, blockquotes, images
etc).

I also find pretty hard to come up with a scale that is neatly divisible by
the baseline and that it's a lot easier to use margins to bring things back
into line.

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friggeri

      Finally, if you’re wondering what’s the best baseline to use, after much dicking about, we’ve discovered that going for something lower (like 11px or 12px) is the best tactic. Whilst this means that most of your elements will be on a double baseline (i.e. normal paragraph body copy might be 16px in font size on a line height of 22px using a baseline of 11px), it gives you more flexibility when determining the margin and spacing of items on your site so you don’t always have to have a large 22px or 24px gap between elements.
    

In that case, why not use a baseline of 1px for even more flexibility?

Seriously, using half-lines as a baseline must be against the initial idea..
As for the spacing between elements of different heights, you can always
adjust the margins (smaller top margin / larger bottom margin, or the other
way round) to compensate.

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digitalengineer
Or you could use this free service:
[http://beta.typecastapp.com/blog/4-simple-steps-to-
vertical-...](http://beta.typecastapp.com/blog/4-simple-steps-to-vertical-
rhythm/)

(disclaimer I'm a beta-tester)

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paulmckeever
Thanks. Glad to hear you're finding the baseline grid useful!

(disclaimer: I'm part of the team at Typecast)

