Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Absolute Measurements-the measurements of fixed values. Absolute measurements give points and picas which are the basic typographic measurements, a fixed value. All absolute measurements are expressed in finite terms that are not able to be altered. 
Relative Measurements-these measurements define things like character spacing, which is linked to type size. This means that their relationships are defined by a series of relative measuements. Ems and ens are are good examples of relative measurements because their size is relative to the size of type that is being set. Leading is also an example of relative measurement.
Points/Picas-the point is the unit of measurement used to measure the type size of a font. The measurement refers to the height of the type block. A pica is a unit of measure equal to 12 points that is used for measuring lines of type. There are six picas (72 points) in an inch, which is equal to 25.4 millimeters.
x-height-it describes the height of the lowercase 'x'. It is the relative measurement that varies from typeface to typeface. It is used as a key reference point in the layout of a design.
the em, the en-the em is a relative measurement used in typesetting to define basic spacing functions, it is linked to the size of the type. It is a relative measurement because as the type size increases, then the em size does also. The em is equal to the size of a given type. The en is a unit of relative measurement equal to half of one em. For example, in 72 point type, an en would be 36 points.
Dashes-the em and en are used in punctuation to provide measurement for dashes. The dash is different from the hyphen. An en dash is half an em rule and is used to separate page numbers, dates and to replace the word 'to' in constructions implying movement. Em dashes are used to form lines and house nested clauses. A standard, joining em dash can cause spacing issues because it has no side-bearings and fills its bounding box so that is touches the surrounding characters. 
Alignments; Justification, flush left, flush right-justified text allows the appearance of rivers of white space to appear. It can cause plagues of hyphenation if words are allowed to split to prevent this. Flush left follows the principle of handwriting with text right and alligned to the left margin and ending ragged on the right. Flush right aligning is very uncommon because it is more difficult to read. It can be used for picture captions and other accompanying texts as it is clearly distinct from body copy. 
Letterspacing-it adds space between letter forms to open up text. The addition of too much space can make text look disjointed as the words start to dissemble. 
Kerning- the removal of space between characters. It originally referred to part of a character that extended outside its bounding block or printing block.
Tracking-it controls the amount of space between each character in a word. 
Word Spacing-adjusts the amount of space between words. 
Widow- a lone word at located at the end of a paragraph. Using text set range right can help to create fewer widows, but in order to remove them completely, text must be pulled back to previous lines or pushed forward to fill the line out.
Orphan- the final one or lines of a paragraph separated from the main paragraph to form a new column. It should be avoided at all costs. When removing orphans, more text is needed to alleviate the problem. 
Leading- controls the amount of space between letters, it allows the characters to breathe so that they can be read more easily. Since different fonts can be more difficult to read depending of their size and style, leading allows  you to adjust to each individual typeface. 
Indent, first line indent, hanging indent- indentation provides the reader with an obvious place to start reading. The length of the indent is related to the point size of the type. The indent can also be determined by the grid. First line indent is when the text in indented from the left margin in the first line of the second and subsequent paragraphs.  A hanging indent is when the the first line of the text is not indented, and the lines after that are indented from the left margin. 




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