When to use ’em, and how to make ’em go the right way. Sadly, most word processors don‘t know their it’s from a hole in the ground. Even expensive publishing software messes up. Why? Because they are not human. Being the human is your job. An apostrophe is used to...
You finished writing your book, and it's designed to perfection. (It isn't? Then let us help design your book.) You'd think uploading the interior PDF and the cover to Amazon's KDP service would be the easy part. It might be. But a lot of the questions they ask can be...
See that? I haven't written a thing besides the title, and already it looks like I goofed. The marketing geniuses for the new movie Emma. decided to put a period in the title. So it's Emma., not Emma. Emma.. See that? It's nearly impossible even to write about. Still...
Before we went to the Moon, we went to Venus. Sort of, anyway. We sent an unmanned probe there in 1962 to have a look around. Venus welcomed Mariner 2 on December 14, 1962, with a brisk 760 degree day. But that's nothing compared to the heat generated when its...
National Public Radio shared an interesting story about the redesigning of Helvetica. By far, Helvetica is used more often than any other face, so why redesign? Technical reasons, mostly to do with changing times. It's a great story, but not for here. Whew, what a...
I got an email from my beloved Alamo Drafthouse movie theater. A new location was about to open, right in my neighborhood. Hooray! Right after that email, I received this emergency follow-up: Just as an update, the $5 tickets was a miscommunication and we will be...
Renaissance type designer Aldus Minutius You know what an italic font is. Bold type is simple enough to understand. Bold italic? Easy-peasy. But what if a font isn't any of those? If it's just straight-up normal, like the text you're reading right now? We book...
When you want to say something big — no, big — no, REALLY BIG, BIGGER THAN BIG, THE BIGGEST OF THE BIGS — should you choose italics, ALL CAPS, or underlined text? First, consider none of those. Try letting the text speak for itself, rather than using formatting to...
This problem came up in a book I was working on recently. The author italicized a lot of words, but didn't include any of his punctuation in the italicization. Put another way, his words were italic, but his punctuation was roman. It left a lot of visual crashes. As a...
Before I start this post, let me be clear: no, I do not want to go out back and fight you. If you invite three book designers to a party, one will disagree with the other two about what widows, orphans, and runts are, voices will be raised, drinks will be thrown, and...
"Mick" is Michael Campbell, a book designer, graphic artist and writer. His humor column, The Dumpster, closes every issue of Food & Spirits Magazine. Author of Are You Going To Eat That?, and the new 2017 book of seventy hilarious all new essays, Of Mice and Me.