{typography} is the art and technique of arranging type, type design, and modifying type glyphs.
250
votes
54answers
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Showcase of beautiful typography done in TeX & friends
If you were asked to show examples of beautifully typeset documents in TeX & friends, what would you suggest? Preferably documents available online (I'm aware I could go to a bookstore and find ...
308
votes
7answers
58k views
How do I make my document look like it was written by a Cthulhu-worshipping madman?
I want to type up some spells from the RPG Call of Cthulhu and give them to my players. I could just type them up in Word or LaTeX, but that seems too...neat. I'd like to make these things look like ...
66
votes
3answers
2k views
Consistent typography
When working with large documents, or even across multiple (smaller) documents, I often find that I forget which typographical consistencies I should stick to.
With TeX being inherently consistent in ...
77
votes
12answers
7k views
Contest: Show Off Your Skillz in TeX & Friends [TeX.sx birthday]
Submission Deadline and Voting are over, thank you for participating!
Results
Academic
Gonzalo Medina – 31
Andy – 19
cmhughes – 11
mbork – 6
Other
Yiannis Lazarides – 38
szantaii – 20
Ant – ...
58
votes
5answers
7k views
Dashes: - vs. – vs. —
This may or may not be a real TeX/LaTeX question but rather a general question on punctuation:
How are the different dashes - "-", -- "–" and --- "—" supposed to be used?
39
votes
3answers
5k views
What does 'double spacing' mean?
I think I know the meanings of \baselineskip, \lineskip and \lineskiplimit in TeX, I also know \baselineskip, \baselinestretch, \linespread and the second argument of \fontsize in LaTeX. However, I ...
59
votes
7answers
10k views
What's the proper way to typeset a differential operator?
I can't seem to find any consensus on the right way to typeset a differential operator, whether it is:
in a standalone context:
as part of a derivative:
as part of an integral:
In all of these ...
19
votes
2answers
665 views
Is there a way to automatically change kerning between commas/full stops and footnote marks?
This question led to a new package:
fnpct
Following up on my question on the kerning of footnote marks after punctuation marks, I'd like to know if there is a way to achieve the kerning of ...
65
votes
5answers
2k views
What are the finishing touches you put to a document?
I'm curious about the finishing touches that people put to LaTeX documents. Are there any canonical or special things that people do in finalizing a document?
What I do:
Careful proofreading of ...
33
votes
4answers
2k views
Grid System in LaTeX
I'd like to typeset documents using the 'Grid system' of page layout. Good examples are on pages 40-53 of this document. The textpos package is helpful for this, but two additional features would be ...
22
votes
3answers
4k views
Professional-looking tables with alternating row colors?
Both the Booktabs documentation and the Small Guide to Making Nice Tables provide some nice rules-of-thumb for making professional-looking tables (e.g., no double rules, no vertical rules, etc.)
Q: ...
33
votes
2answers
935 views
Can one (more or less) automatically suppress ligatures for certain words?
One of the major attractions -- for me at least -- of typesetting my papers in (La)TeX is its automated and fully transparent use of typographic ligatures. However, as Knuth pointed out in the ...
24
votes
3answers
3k views
Why not use vertical lines ('|') in a tabular?
My question is a follow-up to the answer to a follow-up question, to be found here. ;)
I'd like to know why one would advise against using vertical lines (via |) in a tabular (i.e. in ...
62
votes
2answers
2k views
Torn page effect
[See Torn paper: matching up the torn edges for more on this topic, as well as better illustrations of the final product.]
I have a document with a lot of short excerpts from another book scattered ...
25
votes
4answers
5k views
When one should use spacing line \quad or \,
In general, in most places, it is said that using TeX defaults is the best. However, TeX does provide things like \, and \quad etc. When one should use them? Both in general and in math mode in ...
37
votes
2answers
3k views
Is a period after an abbreviation the same as an end of sentence period?
Does latex do anything special with periods? If so, is there a way to differentiate end-of-sentence periods from periods indicating abbreviation?
28
votes
11answers
4k views
Double space between sentences.
I've been reading a question on spaces between sentences on a sister site. The answers there seem to imply that the days of double spacing between sentences are over, and that this was a relic of the ...
29
votes
3answers
1k views
Beyond Bringhurst: mathematical typesetting
I've been reading The Elements of Typographic Style and I was wondering whether there was a similar resource for specifically mathematical typesetting.
Is there a book or other document that sets ...
47
votes
7answers
3k views
How to add some visual style and pizzazz to course notes?
LaTeX is wonderful for writing mathematical papers, but while the output is perfectly typeset it is not visually very exciting. And although it may just be "familiarity breeds contempt", I am ...
33
votes
4answers
2k views
Are there any good general typesetting books / references?
I would like to learn more about typesetting, the accepted best practices, rules and tricks used in books, letters, resumes etc. For example, what are the usual left and right margins? Line spacing? ...
39
votes
10answers
30k views
Make MS Word document look like it has been typeset in LaTeX
A few years back, I used to use LaTeX for writing reports and such, and I really liked the look of them.
However, nowadays I am forced to use MS Word to write my reports, but that does not hinder me ...
47
votes
5answers
2k views
What is best way to mention that a document has been typeset with TeX?
Is there any common way to mention that a document has been typeset by TeX? So non-TeXnicians (TeXperts) may become a little familiar with the TeX world.
Update: It would be nice if one hero make a ...
20
votes
3answers
475 views
Should I include punctuation marks in \emph, or should I place those marks after the command?
I wonder if I should place punctuation marks directly after the \emph{} command, or should I include those marks within the curly brackets? Thus:
The languages only differ in their \emph{grammar}, ...
17
votes
3answers
2k views
Illogical twoside margins
Shouldn't the twoside option produce a wider margin at the binding/spine edge, rather than the other way around?
I'm using \documentclass[twoside]{report}.
11
votes
4answers
2k views
Text upside-down, characters rotated along baseline?
I'd like to achieve something like in the picture below:
Another example:
Note that the text is not simply rotated! I know it could be achieved by boxing each character separately, measuring the ...
40
votes
9answers
7k views
What best combination of fonts for Serif, Sans, and Mono do you recommend?
Now that Xe(La)TeX is being increasingly used to deliver nifty documents, I am wondering if any recommendations have been published or discussed about the best combination of font families for mixing ...
46
votes
2answers
936 views
Torn paper: matching up the torn edges
I recently asked a question on creating a torn paper effect. JLdiaz provided an absolutely beautiful answer, which I have used (with a very minor modification) to indicate the way in which a document ...
33
votes
2answers
792 views
Text spirals with TikZ
I just ran across this, and I'm curious about whether it can be replicated in TeX...
Ideally one would have the spiral getting tighter and tighter as one got to the centre, as in
I know TikZ has ...
37
votes
2answers
1k views
The effect of the anonymous letter
I'm trying to create an effect as if the text is made up of letters cut from magazines and newspapers and even the same words had different style. It is necessary that each letter in the word had a ...
16
votes
3answers
2k views
Best ratios of number of letters per line and of number of lines per page
I am actually writing a master thesis in LaTeX but I didn't really like the default page style of the document style book. Therefore I tried to make my own page style and I resized manually the ...
24
votes
2answers
492 views
Ensure minimal length of last line
This question led to a new feature in a package:
impnattypo
One rule in French typography is that the last line of a paragraph should not be shorter than the double of the indentation of the ...
23
votes
4answers
407 views
Any suggestions/requests for features for a new package that allows disabling ligatures for (pre)selected words?
I'm starting to put together a LaTeX package, which I hope to distribute broadly, that
provides lualatex code to disable ligation of character pairs and triplets for selected words (globally within ...
7
votes
2answers
684 views
LaTeX produces bad, widowed line
I just found a widowed line in my PDF document, created by LaTeX. It looks something like this, see "sion" on the second page:
| blah blah expres- |
| 8 |
---------------------
...
13
votes
2answers
850 views
Typesetting algorithms in LaTeX like Knuth
Is there any LaTeX package for typesetting algorithms in the style Donald Knuth uses in The Art of Computer Programming?
I know about the algorithm2e package, but I am looking for something that ...
13
votes
1answer
527 views
Set font expansion so that distortion is not noticeable
In a comment to The kerning option of microtype Karl Karlsson writes:
Most of the typographers agree, that Font expansion distorts the font.
Personally, I see it, and I agree - the distortion is ...
3
votes
2answers
341 views
What is the best way of arranging multiple minipages on a page?
I have been trying to use mini-pages to produce the equivalent of Office text-boxes. The idea is to have panels of different sizes on a page such as 4 equal sized or one wide followed by two long ...
47
votes
4answers
4k views
Modern book design, margins and typed area
The golden fleece of book design has been the typesetting of the typed area in relation to the paper and the spread. Famous typographers such as Jan_Tschichold and Rosarivo devised canon's of page ...
28
votes
5answers
2k views
Showcase of beautiful title page done in TeX
The book is mostly meets by the Title Page. Default TeX \maketitle are simple and minimalistic.
I'm looking for examples of Title Pages:
complex - have different formatting;
beautiful and awesome;
...
108
votes
5answers
3k views
How to define the badness of a river?
I've written an algorithm to try and detect rivers in paragraphs and it actually detects quite a lot when I run it. Some of them are clearly false positives, but there are others that are indeed ...
39
votes
3answers
4k views
When to use bold, italics, small caps, typewriter etc.?
I'm a little confused on the purposes of each kind of text in LaTeX. I know the function of some of them, but sometimes people use each for different reasons. For example:
\texttt is for code (no ...
25
votes
5answers
2k views
Which packages can you use to improve the typographic quality?
List here which packages can be used to make text easier to read and nicer to look at. After all, the superior typographic quality is one of the main reasons to prefer LaTeX to, for example, MS Word.
27
votes
4answers
5k views
When should I use non-breaking space?
DEK gained a reputation of painting red the draft dissertations of his students, taking particular note of incidents when they omitted a non-breaking space that should have been included.
I have this ...
34
votes
2answers
648 views
Improved kerning in fractions?
Question
How can I apply selective kerning within the numerator and denominator of an inline fraction? Specifically, I'd like to:
Tighten kerning after the numerator if it ends in 7
Loosen kerning ...
24
votes
4answers
2k views
Should subscripts in math mode be upright?
In one-letter subscripts, like $x_i$, the subscript is usually typeset italic.
Is this the typographically right thing to do?
Consider this case:
The Boltzmann constant is often written as $k_B$, ...
32
votes
4answers
2k views
one-letter word at the end of line
This question led to a new feature in a package:
impnattypo
I come from Poland and I'm writing some text in my native language. One of our typography standards is that we do not leave ...
29
votes
3answers
10k views
No indent in the first paragraph in a section?
I am just curious that the following format looks good to you or not? The preamble I used is just
\documentclass[12pt,a4paper]{article}
\usepackage{amsmath}
\usepackage{amsthm}
\usepackage{amssymb}
...
9
votes
5answers
3k views
beautiful listing for CSharp
Does anyone have a nice typesetting style for the C# language using listings? I configure it in this way:
\lstset{language=[Sharp]C,,basicstyle=\footnotesize,
...
14
votes
1answer
752 views
Using text figures in technical and scientific documents
Many sources, such as Bringhurst and other style guides, recommend using text figures everywhere except all-caps text. This would seem reasonable for documents containing a lot of regular text, such ...
24
votes
2answers
539 views
How to visualize the underfull box in final output PDF files
I am finalizing a document. There are a few underfull vbox I just cannot figure out where they are. Sometimes it is easy to figure out which page is underfull vbox from the log file, but sometimes it ...
36
votes
5answers
1k views
Upright parentheses in italic text
This question led to a new package:
embrac
Bringhurst, in Elements of Typographic Style, recommends to use upright parentheses in italic text (i.e., write 'a (simple) example' as opposed to 'a ...
