Typography for Lawyers

[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.

[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.

[panic]

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

[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.

[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.

[flipper]

I've seen a few bad lawyers and there are a million and one things they'd rather do before worrying about their typography. It'll be a long while before the bad lawyers' typography is as good as the good lawyers' typography.

[theli0nheart]

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

[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.

[pmiller2]

Try this: http://www.tex.ac.uk/tex-archive/macros/latex/contrib/memoir... . It's the manual to the memoir documentclass for LaTeX. I learned a lot reading it, myself.

[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

[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!

[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

[mhb]

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

[ugh]

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

[wizard_2]

I'm flabbergasted that they include the php session id in the url after all this time. I don't believe its even an option since php 5 and has been disabled by default for many years.

[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

[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…

[javanix]

Convert straight quotes to curly quotes

I agree with everything but the above.

[ugh]

Why? Straight quotes are ugly. Someone put much work into designing those curly quotes. Use them.

[anigbrowl]

I too am mystified. Could you explain?

[markbnine]

His follow up should be user interface for lawyers. This site needs better nav below the fold.

[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.