Typography

It’s not just the words, but the shape, size of headline and letters can attract readers. Typography important enough to warrant own journaljournal

Type is classified into a few large groups called races. Races are divided into families, then typefaces and finally, fonts.

Serif has finishing flourishes on the ends of some letters and fat and skinny strokes (usually text) Sans Serif has no flourishes and most of the strokes are the same thickness (usually headlines, cutlines, indexes, info boxes, etc.) Newspapers usually buy specialty fonts from sitessites or Fonts.comFonts.com

Body type Display type (headlines) Supplement, secondary or accent (boxes, pull-outs, etc.)

Most papers provide copy editors with a guide that spells out which faces are to be used for what.

Measuring type Copy editors use a system of units called picas and points for measurement. 6 picas in an inch, 12 points in a pica, so 72 points in an inch A 24-point headline is a headline that measures 24 points from descender (like g or y) to top of ascender (like h or l or capital letter)

Points are used to measure the space between lines (called leading) x-height: the size of letters before the ascenders and descenders. Measuring column width: 12p3 means 12 picas, 3 points. This is standard column size. Gutters are usually 1 pica wide.