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Formatting Tips
Consistency is critical!
Client Logos
Pay close attention to client logos and corporate spellings. Clients will tell you, those are the most important elements on the job.
Headlines
- Kern those headlines! Poor kerning will make a job look amateurish.
- Headlines and subheads should have more space above than below – never the inverse, or the same amount.
Column Heads
Column heads should align on the baseline.
Line Endings
- Check line endings as the last step, before submitting the printed piece to the client or printer.
- Break lines to eliminate widows, orphans and rivers.
- Avoid end-of-line hyphenation in flush-left copy.
- Avoid deep ditches in the right margin.
- Avoid repeated end-of-line hyphens (i.e., don’t repeat hyphens on subsequent lines or
too many times in the same paragraph), especially when copy is justified.
- Avoid end-of-line hyphens in words already hyphenated;
e.g., old-(break)fashioned, not
old-fash-(break)ioned.
- Avoid splitting people’s names, place names and proper nouns; e.g.,
St. and Louis.
- Avoid splitting the month from the date; e.g., October and
19. (It is acceptable, but not preferred, to split the month and date from the
year; e.g.,
October 19, and 2010.)
- Avoid splitting dollar amounts; e.g., $2 and million.
Tips for Breaking Lines
- Often you can change the line ending one, two or even three lines above.
The new line endings in this example accomplish two things:
- Put 1.1 and million on the same line
- Eliminate a line-ending hyphen in flush-left copy
- Increase the line length just a bit; that bit may make the difference and will be barely detectable to the naked eye. Just be sure to keep line length consistent throughout the job; i.e., don’t increase the line length for just one paragraph.
- Tighten the letterspacing. Be careful with this, though. If you tighten letterspacing on only one line, you may accomplish your goal, but the typeface may look inconsistent – tighter on that line than anywhere else in the paragraph.
- Change to a narrow typeface; however, do this for all “like”
copy. In other words, don’t change the typeface to narrow on only one line.
- Kern a few letters, especially in copy that is all caps.
- Look for bad breaks involving words joined by a slash; they don’t break at the end of a line. Manually break the words after the slash, if that will help eliminate rivers or bad breaks; otherwise, try not to break slashed words.
- Avoid justified copy; it poses many problems, especially line-ending hyphens and rivers.
Paragraph Formatting
Paragraphs should be formatted in one of two ways, not both:
- First-line indents and no paragraph spaces
- Block paragraphs (no indents) with paragraph spaces
Sentence Formatting
Single-space between all sentences. Forget what we learned in typing class. We once had to double-space between sentences, because all keys on a typewriter were the same width, and the human eye needed help seeing where one sentence ended and the next started. But that’s no longer the case – letters on a computer are no longer of uniform width; they are letterspaced, so the eye can easily see the break between sentences.
In the days of yore, when secretaries typed the copy, and typesetters formatted it, secretaries would insert double spaces, and the
typesetters would have to take them out. The single-space rule has been in effect in typography since the dawn of print!
Bullets
When checking consistency in bullets, ask these questions:
- Are bullet symbols the same size/shape throughout?
- Is leading between the bulleted copy consistent?
- Do all bullets align uniformly?
- Does the copy following all bullets align the same (i.e., wrapped or not wrapped)?
- Is the leading from paragraphs to bullets and bullets back to paragraphs consistent throughout?
Hyphens and Dashes
Hyphens are not dashes; en dashes are not em dashes. Keep them consistent
throughout.
- A hyphen (-) doesn’t have spaces around it. Generally, it is used to connect two words that work together, and sometimes to connect
dates and times; e.g., June 1-July 31, 1960, 8 a.m.-1 p.m. each day.
- An en dash (–) (approximately the width of a lowercase “n”) is shorter than an em dash, and has spaces around it (except when it connects words that work
together; e.g., University of Missouri–St. Louis).
- An em dash (—) (approximately the width of a lowercase “m”) is longer than an en dash, and never has space around it. Magazines and newspapers often use em dashes.
Quotation Marks and Apostrophes
Quotation marks are not inch marks; apostrophes are not foot marks.
(Quotation marks and apostrophes are called “smart” characters.)
- Open and closed quotes “hook” to the center (“ ”); inch marks are straight, vertical marks (").
- An apostrophe hooks to the left, like a comma (’); a foot mark is a straight, vertical mark (').
- Use an apostrophe (’), not a single open quote (‘), to precede an abbreviated year (e.g., ’98) or any word missing a letter or letters (e.g., Get it ’n’ go).
Special Characters
- Be sure ellipses are spaced consistently throughout; when an ellipsis is within a sentence, space before and after the three
dots;
e.g., “Give me liberty … give me death,” he said.
- Pay attention to superscripts. Most often these are footnote
indicators (see below), trademarks, service marks and registered
marks.
(For more information, see Trademarks, Service Marks and Registered
Marks.)
- The symbols for a trademark (TM) and a service mark (SM) should be all
caps.
- Although TM, SM and ® are almost always superscripted (e.g.,
Honest SellingSM),
be sure to check the owning company's style rules – some
companies choose to put the mark on the baseline.
- A footnote indicator, or reference mark, always follows
the copy and precedes the footnote. The indicators never precede the copy.
- Keep fraction styles consistent. Try to use the superscript-subscript format (˝) and not full-size (1/2) characters. If you can’t use the
superscript-subscript style for all fractions, do them all full size – don’t mix.
- Time notations (a.m. and p.m.) should always be lowercase with periods.
Avoid using :00, unless you're trying to align entries in a
chart or table.
- In an outline, use either a period or a parenthesis – not both – after the outline letter
or number; e.g., 1. or 1) not 1.).
Special Alignments
- In outlines, align Roman numerals, outline letters and numbers flush
right.
- In columns of numbers, keep dollar signs aligned flush left and decimals (the “ones” column) aligned flush right. This will most likely require adding spaces between the two.
You can either repeat the dollar sign before every number, or use it
only before the first number and the total.
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