Why a Text Designer is Needed
by Michele DeFilippo, 1106 Design
[Michele wrote this as a post to the Yahoo Self-Publishing Group. I liked it so much I asked her for permission to re-post it here.]
Here's how professional book designers work: The first step in designing the interior is to create a sample chapter, where we show you our idea of how the book should be designed. There are subtleties
in the use of font styles and sizes that make a book look like a real
book, and not a word-processed document. We'll work back and forth
with you on this sample until you are completely satisfied. Then, we
typeset the rest of the book to match the sample, applying our
formatting to your text.
We don't just "click a button" that makes the text automatically snap into final form...we work line by line, word by word, and sometimes letter by letter to create optimal spacing between words and letters and adjust as needed.
We make sure facing pages end on the same baseline without the first line of a paragraph landing on the bottom of a page, or the last line of a paragraph landing on the top of a page. The text doesn't often cooperate, so in those cases we go back and adjust other paragraphs as needed to make this happen.
We make sure that no paragraphs end in very short words or word fragments.
We make sure that there are not too many hyphens in a row and that the system hasn't hyphenated a compound word, which is like placing a big STOP sign in front of the reader.
We make sure there are no word "stacks" in any paragraph -- that unfortunate occurrence when the same word appears on several lines of text and they happen to land one above the other so that the reader is distracted.
We make sure there are no overly tight or loose lines to distract the reader.
We make sure that words don't hyphenate at the bottom of a right-hand page so that the reader has to think about what the ending may be as they turn the page.
We make sure that the last page of a chapter has at least 4 lines on it.
These items are only the beginning. Software out of the box only goes so far...it's the human intervention that turns ordinary text into"typography" and art, and this is where we spend the time.
When all of the above has been completed, we're only half finished. Our proofreaders then begin their job...finding all the little things that everyone else missed along the way. They'll confirm the consistency of formatting, check punctuation, verb tense, consistency between table of contents and chapter titles, and consistency between footnotes in the text and the sources cited, as well as proper formatting of bibliography entries and finding the typos that almost got away.
I've corrected the files of many so-called "desktop publishers" who are blissfully unaware of all of the above. Designers who do all of the above have to charge more for the extra time involved, but this is the right way to do the job and following these standards will deliver a better book to the marketplace.
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The information above is presented to complement our services. If you have further questions or need more detail, please contact us.
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