Not totally sure if this is what you mean but —> if the lines don’t line up it probably means you aren’t locking the text to baseline so that’s the first thing to do. To resolve widows and orphans I will normally tighten tracking to indesign at the most +20 or -20 (sometimes -25 but that’s just between you and me) sometimes this might require going back or forward a few pages until you get rid of the problem on your page. If it is ragged right you can manually alter the right hand rag with disc. hyphens or soft returns. Sorry I haven’t gone into technical detail but this stuff seems a bit elementary so I’m worried that it’s not what you mean, I will happily explain terms and stuff if you want to know this stuff.

Running heads are good for complex works but for simple stuff, yeah maybe it’s overkill but if that’s a common style I say go for it — seems like you can go either way
cheers

—N

bringhurst mentions that running heads are often pointless with a strong authorial voice or unified subject. every novel in my collection seems to incorporate running heads and i think i want to include it, but do you think is acceptable to have it read “Author Name and Author Name”?

I’ve read that too, and for a book project, I actually went ahead and removed the running head. It’s unconventional, but it didn’t interrupt reading, and that’s the point of removing it. Give both a try, and see which one you like better.

i shoulda probably included an example.

i try to stick to the rule that leaves two lines of text at the end or beginning of a paragraph, and this is where i have problems with pages not being balanced (as you can see on the right page). i don’t really mind this so much, but again, every novel that i have ever looked at has balanced pages with the top and bottom lines aligning equally to the margins. i’d like to be able to do this too.

nicholas, i’m not sure i do know what you mean by locking the text to the baseline. you don’t mean aligning to the baseline do you?

Yeah that’s what I mean, but It looks like your baselines are aligned. So with this page you need two extra lines on the RH page so I would open the tracking in para 1 RH page starting: “At twenty five” to +10 or +20 then do the same for perhaps the para starting with: “Okay man you just do that”. Is it the end of the chapter on the RH page or the end of a section? I’m just wondering why it is two lines short instead of one... because if this isn’t the case you can bring one line from the next page (20) and tighten up the para ending with schemes this would have a similar effect.
—N

ahh i see! i don’t know why i didn’t think that it was acceptable to selectively expand the tracking like that.

as far as the reason why the RH page is short, it is because the next paragraph (on pg 20) only has 3 lines. if i left it on page 19, this results in the last line being widowed on pg 20.

You need to be careful that the lines don’t get too closekindoflikethiswherethereisminmalspacebetweenthem, also if I’ve opened/closed the tracking right up to the limit at 20/-20 sometimes the paragraph looks different to the others on a page (like gappy or too tight) so I might apply the same or similar tracking to other paragraphs that are close by to soften the effect. Of course then you need to make sure that applying tracking to other paragraphs doesn’t give you more widows or orphans!

I reckon 1 whole page with three lines will look a bit strange, so I would try and tighten up the tracking on pages 18/19 to bring back the entire paragraph to page 19 although this would necessitate deleting a page.

I avoid tracking text to contract a paragraph when trying to avoid widows and orphans, except as a very last resort, and then only a maximum of -10 in InDesign. I normally have my minimum word spacing set at 85% for justified text. For a paragraph I want to contract to see if I can shorten it by a line, I’ll apply a minimum word space of 80% for that. Of course pick paragraphs with a short last line. If the author or editor doesn’t mind, I’ll make minor text edits to help with copy fitting too.

Another way of fixing widows/orphans is to let both pages of a spread run one line short at the bottom. You’ll see this done often.

I avoid having a last line of a paragraph at the top of a page unless it fills the entire measure, but I consider it fine to have one line at the beginning of a paragraph at the bottom of a page. The process of balancing is easier if you only have to worry about those top guys.

Sometimes a chapter can drive me batty trying to get everything balanced and no paragraph ends hanging at the top. Often it takes several techiques to get a chapter right: tightenng paragraphs (or expanding them), taking off the bottom line on a spread, editing, and tracking.

Hey Gary I haven’t experimented much with word spacing but just out of interest what’s your maximum? Is there an easy way to understand what’s happening or do you just try different settngs and observe the results?
—N

Adjusting H&Js can be a better way than tracking to either pull up a widow or add a line to a paragraph. I usually have one H&J called tight, one called normal, and one called loose. I don’t like to mess around with tracking too much, it can make the type density look uneven.

Here are my formulas:
Tight: 70/85/100
Normal: 75/100/120
Loose: 85/105/125

I’m more accustomed to working with these in Quark than InDesign. I don’t know if InD lets you name and choose individual H&Js the way Quark does tho. In Quark you can do it quite easily in the paragraph palette.

I just read Gary’s comment, and realize he’s getting at the same thing.

I used to do books a lot, and always used the long-short system. This means that if there is a widow, you make the prior spread a line short (43 lines, if the norm is 44). If that doesn’t work, you go to line short on the prior set(s), if you can. If this fails, you try pages a line long (45 lines). But you never go from a short spread to a long spread in one step.

If the page has a lot of subheads, space around these can be pulled, you can sometimes save a line by knocking out a few points before and after each subhead. A problem at the start of the chapter (when you can’t go back for long/short pages) can often be corrected by stealing from or adding a line to the drop space at the top of the page. If there are illustrations, you can usually add an extra line of space around the illustration.

Only when those things fail would I start mess with H&J or tracking. Look for a long paragraph with only one word on the last line, and try to pull that back, or a long paragraph with a nearly full last line, and try to force a full word onto a new line.

In the book world, there are several methods used. One is to not balance pages; to let spreads misalign by one line. This is uncommon.

If you are going to align spreads, you have three basic tools. The first is to allow facing pages to run up to 1 line long or short of the “nominal” page. Sometimes a designer will specify “short but not long,” or “long but not short.”

A second method, which seems to be the basis of your question, is “to make a line” or “lose a line.” Usually it is easier to make a line; look for a paragraph that ends almost at the right margin, & try to bring down a word — bring down at least as much as the following paragraph indent.

The third method is to allow carding. I know that there is a convention that carding is never to be done, but is does work, and had a proponent in Richard Eckersley, a reasonably famous book designer who is even in Wikipedia.

Something else to consider is to banish widows, but not worry about orphans (short last lines on a page). This is pretty standard in the University Press world. You still have to adjust pages, but there are fewer “problems.”

As to running heads, their purpose is to be useful to a reader. Repeating the author name on every page is simply a graphic device, of no use. Using the author’s name is useful in an edited volume, which has multiple authors. Using the chapter title can also be useful. Using the subhead can be useful, but is a lot of trouble. Much depends on how the book will be read; if you anticipate a reader starting at the front & moving to the end a page at a time, running heads aren’t too useful. But if you think of a guide book, obviously, running head selection is quite important.

FWIW

Charles Ellertson

I think having just the first line of a paragraph at the bottom of the page is not unforgivable, especially if it’s the verso.

thanks very much to everyone.
this has been very helpful!

Yep. I agree with pattyfab, having the first line of a paragraph at the bottom is ok. If you start killing these, you will end up in a total editorial jungle - kerning too much back and forth etc.
Just make sure the hyphenation settings allow for a lot of hyphens in a row. Nowadays no-one gives a rat’s ass about hyphens in a row, bad kerning is a much more ugly and complex issue.

>Nowadays no-one gives a rat’s ass about hyphens in a row, bad kerning is a much more ugly and complex issue

The two are linked, what is the point of looking for even colour and balanced facing pages with a ladder up the right margin?

I don’t have a problem with unbalanced pages, I would rather that than a single line of a paragraph getting separated, after all, despite your best attempts, it is rare that a printer actually manages to print and bind the pages so accurately.

Tim

charles_e:

The third method is to allow carding.

What’s carding - aside from the definition I just found on Wikipedia: “a method of torture using metal wool-combs”?

Carding is where you vary the leading (the same amount on each line of a page), so that one page may have 38 lines and the next 37, but the first and last lines of a page always adhere to the grid.

For example, if your page depth is 40 picas (baseline, first text line to baseline, last text line) and your leading (linefeed) is 13 points, you will get 38 lines per page. To set to the same depth with 37 lines, you need a leading of 13.36 points. The same depth with 39 lines would use a leading of about 12.66 points.

The idea is that a difference of .35 points in leading is not noticeable, even on facing pages. Having set a number of books this way, I’d allow that the difference in spacing is not really noticeable, but that the difference in color is.

Richard Eckersley tended to use a leading of around 13.5 points, with a fairly small type size — 9.5 (Galliard) to 10 point (with a slightly condensed version of Minion from Multiple Masters), and fairly narrow measure. Under these conditions, the difference is space between the lines wasn’t really noticeable — but as I said, the difference in color was.

But one thing to remember about “color” is that a difference in word spacing also affects color. A paragraph with looser word spaces, as you would get if you have to “make a line” will appear lighter than a paragraph with the words tightly set. That being the case, much of the argument against carding seems wrong.

On balance, carding does work if you pay attention to its effects when you design the page.

Nowadays no-one gives a rat’s ass about hyphens in a row, bad kerning is a much more ugly and complex issue.

Oh no, I totally disagree. No more than 2 or 3.

I don’t have a problem with unbalanced pages, I would rather that than a single line of a paragraph getting separated, after all, despite your best attempts, it is rare that a printer actually manages to print and bind the pages so accurately.

This is what I love about this god forbid you ever get a consensus. I don’t agree with this either. I’m also a stickler for consistent spacing around heads and would rather (in an art book, not a novel) rag the bottom then cheat the spacing around heads to justify the page. But I know other designers to whom aligning the bottom of the type is more important.

Your sample is definitely tricky because of all the short paragraphs. As important as design is, if it’s a reading book then readability should trump design. Splitting up a short paragraph should probably be avoided.

I wonder if carding is allowed by the Geneva Conventions...

> Carding is where you vary the leading

This was referred to as feathering where I worked (University of Toronto Press).

Ooh, that is such a big no no in my book. I’m all about lock to baseline grid.

One of the complaints about carding is that the text lines don’t “back.” Unless the text stock is quite heavy, there is always some show-through. If you “lock” lines to the baseline, the lines overleaf are on the same position on the “grid” regardless of how the printer mistrims pages.

Of course, in the old days of Photocomp when you supplied repro the printer shot & then stripped up on flats, any carelessness in stripping also gave lines that didn’t back up.

Moreover, unless you always specify elements such that you return to the “grid” quite quickly (i.e., extra lead above & below the subhead always totals to some integer of the basic leading, the extracts are set on the same leading as the text, etc. etc.), lines don’t back anyway.

Other complaints on carding come from the days of metal, when adding .35 points of space was virtually impossible. There is a lot of the 1920-1950 British Typography Aesthetic remaining in the English-speaking world — though Eckersley, one of the proponents of carding, was a Royal Designer to Industry.

As to what is best, much depends on your theory of the page. If equal depth pages are important to you, carding (feathering, vertical justification) is your best tool.

Having said that, I don’t use it in the few books I design; my views on the page don’t have constant dept as high on the compromise list.

FWIW

Agreed Patty. I didn’t mention that at UTP feathering was not looked at nicely.

I am *so* going to quote this thread!

For a project I was working on a couple of years ago, I was told to add the letter ’g’ to the last line of a page and align the tail to a guideline so that we could feather the leading and still arrive at that holiest-of-holy places, the same last line position. This technique unfortunately resulted in a couple of left-over g’s and some funny typos, and the biggest editorial sin: errors of commission.

Also, I was not allowed to modify the white space between paragraphs or sections. It had to remain the same, which meant my only resource was tweaking the leading and eyeballing those ’g’ tails until I got it just right (which varied a lot depending on the zoom and the way my screen was feeling that day).

I just can’t do it, and I requested not to be put back on the project unless I’m permitted to align to the baseline grid. What an utterly frustrating process. It’s a 600+ page book!

When I suggested running a line long/short or using H&J to massage the page, I was snarfed* at. I was told that aligning to a baseline grid would add to the page count, it would be bad and wrong and a sacrilege, and who did I think I was?

Thank you for providing, entirely unprompted, more evidence that there *are* other ways of doing things.

K.

*That’s not a word, but the sound is perfect. Try it yourself: “snarf”.

This may be an obvious question (and hopefully not too off topic, but this has been a very helpful thread).

I understand balancing pages, but does that primarily apply to novels where the vast majority of content is body copy? In laying out, say, a writing manual, it’s not uncommon to have A heads, B heads, etc... often with different degrees of space before or after them. It seems difficult if not impossible to get your text to always end at the same point.

Or have I just revealed too much about my own lack of finesse? :D

C

Kristina,

I could see, maybe, a professor (those who don’t do, teach) asking you to align the tail of a “g” to a reference position for one page, but not for a 60-page book, let along a 600-page book. Tell him/her you can only it with metal type. Nonsense like this can give any composition technique a bad name.

And for example, I’d bet that Don McCahill never actually tried carding (feathering) while at Toronto University Press; its evilness was revealed — as are religious truths — by a Press Style or Art Director. I could be wrong about this of course, and I don’t mean to belittle either him or the dicta against carding pages. Carding has an effect, and unless you’ve tried it, looked at the pluses and minuses, decrying it is just to report a current fashion.

Take a look at Margaret Olin’s The Nation without Art: Examining Modern Discourses on Jewish Art. (University of Nebraska Press, 2001). Can you really tell that carding was used? Don’t you appreciate that all the pages go to the same depth (except for mis-folding, of course)?

The point is always to look at what you are trying to achieve. Describe what is important about the page, what you are willing to give up, and in what order as the situation gets more complicated. All composition (including page makeup) involves compromise, so rules are useful only when you have some sense of these things. Even here, any hierarchy of rules must sometimes be broken, but at least if you know what end you’re trying to achieve, it is done with that in mind.

What’s carding - aside from the definition I just found on Wikipedia: “a method of torture using metal wool-combs”?

It’s only torture if you are a fleece. :-) Carding is what you do to prepare fibre for spinning, and can be done by hand or machine.

I’ve got an old manual Patrick Green carder, a set of hand carders (how to use ’em here), and a flick carder down the page on the left.

What they all have in common is carding cloth, a fabric with little metal teeth to loosen the fibre, remove short bits and junk: the resulting product is usually used to spin a woolen yarn, unless it’s been processed by a full-fledged roving carder (pictures on the Patrick Green site).

Wool combs are used for combing, and with a diz, produce fibre to be spun worsted.

(Yeah, I know, TMI....)

Cabbage -

There are many schools of thought on this - I do art books and cookbooks which have a large variety of heads and types of text. I’m not a stickler for aligning text on the bottom unless it really looks bad not to, but I do try to align the body copy to the baseline grid. My MO is to keep the spacing as consistent as possible (as I said in my earlier post) and do my best to create a balanced spread. You can design your heads not to disrupt grid alignment by building in the right amount of space above and below them (and often creating separate style sheets for one-line heads and two-line heads). You also obviously never want to run a head at the bottom of a page with fewer than 3 or 4 lines below it.

When it comes to straight running text though, it looks best to align it. You don’t want to distract the reader, and anything that breaks the flow - anything at all - will take his/her mind from the content. But whether you accomplish this delicate balance through H&Js, tracking, carding (horrors!) or letting a paragraph start on the last line, that’s going to be a matter of personal preference and I don’t think there are any absolutes - if this thread is any indication.

Basically whatever position you stake out on typophile, someone is bound to come along and shoot a hole in it, and that’s why we keep coming back. Just witness the en-dash, em-dash debate that rages on.

This has been great, I have certainly learned a lot; apologies for my philistinian tracking suggestions — I will definitely have to build an H&J style quiver after Patty’s suggestion. Just for the record I lock to baseline so would feel queasy about carding and prefer to fudge subhead spacing then have the page bottoms out. This is on a static layout of course; I love a bit of page drama in multi column work with columns ending where they damn well please. Also I’ll try and be using snarf in regular conversation.
—N

> I’d bet that Don McCahill never actually tried carding (feathering) while at Toronto University Press; its evilness was revealed — as are religious truths — by a Press Style or Art Director.

Actually I did, so there.

Seriously, I was charged with installing DTP at UTP, and replacing the old photosetting system with laser output via L-300. I did propose feathering as a paging solution at one point (I can’t remember which program offered it).

It was the union tradesmen that shot down that idea. (The art direction was weak at that time.) The foreman, however, was pretty adament that feathering would not be used. I learned a great deal about type and typography from him and the other ITU members at that shop.

Great discussion, and thanks to everyone for being open with their methods.

Sometimes I don’t set my baseline to the lowest leading interval but set it at the main text leading interval. That means I might have a note or caption that is at a double or 3 to 4 leading interval. In this situation lock to baseline won’t work, so I zoom in an align visually. Is this foolish? Is there something I’m missing?

You should choose your baseline grid to align to your body copy, as you’ve done.

But there are ways to insure that the captions will align with the text without visual guesswork. One way to do this is to choose “Only Align First Line to Grid” or, if you want the cap to align with the last line of text, go to Object: Text Frame Options: Vertical Justification: Align: Bottom and place the caption box at the bottom of the page. Takes the visual guesswork out of it. Visual aligning is tricky; you need to zoom in pretty tight to make sure it’s truly aligned.

I should add - the above instructions are for InDesign. Quark doesn’t give you quite this many options.

An extra option: not only are orphans acceptable, but a widow can also be OK as long as you get it (her?) to end up against the margin, if necessary by massaging previous text, and/or using full justification.

I do some work for a publisher who not only insists that the pages balance but does not allow you to go a line short or long on a spread in order to achieve that balance. With everything tied to the baseline grid except for the heads it makes the job of balancing pages pretty tricky. So what I often do is set my type and then proceed to go back and absolutely destroy it in order to follow their silly rules. And what I end up with is either very loose or very tight lines in order to gain or lose lines and acheive the nirvana they call balance. I’ve tried to point out that their insistence on following these rules results in very amateurish looking type but to no avail. It’s very disheartening.

They recently went out and upgraded to Quark 7 instead of converting to InDesign (my advice) so that gives you an idea of where they’re at. :)

One thing you do have to watch when making the pages on a spread a line short (or long) in order to achieve balance throughout, is the visual interaction of this with any page number, footer, rule or other design element that appears at the bottom of the page. Works best I think when there’s nothing at the bottom, okay if a page number only. I’ve seen some books where they’ve moved the bottom elements to keep the same spacing between them and the bottom of the text.

Re: last line of paragraph at top of page okay if it can be run all the way to the right margin. I do this in a pinch, but I’m not really happy with the indent of the next paragraph having only one flush left line above it. Doesn’t look quite right.

I never run pages longer than the normal maximum number of lines, but go one short when necessary. In InDesign I do this by putting a rectangular box (set for text runaround) over the last line rather than adjusting the text box, which is usually a master page element I don’t want to tamper with. I just delete the added box if I decide that page doesn’t need to run short. This is probably a hack: anyone have more elegant ways of handling this?