Design like a Pro – Part 1: Ditch those typewriter habits!

There are some habits that are still used today which hark back to the days of the manual typewriters. These habits can make the difference between great looking text and really nasty looking text.

The most common mistake is using double spaces after a full stop. There is no need for this (very common) practice and it just makes for ugly looking paragraphs.

Underlined text is a no-no … underlining was used on typewriters for emphasis, however we now have italic fonts to do this, which look far better.

Using the Caps Lock is another much used feature which is a nasty habit.

Always use special characters wherever possible and don’t try ‘approximate’ these by making things up with the standard keyboard characters, for example a copyright (c).

Don’t ignore the fact that accents do actually exist, even when typing in English.

Finally, mono spaced fonts should only be used when mono-spaced fonts are called for, they do not make a nice choice of font otherwise!

See the two paragraphs below … hopefully you’ll agree that the second one is more pleasing on the eye!

Next Time

In part 2 of “Design Like a Pro” we’ll look at font pairing dos and don’ts.