- Law Seven, Set Printed Body Text at Nine to 11 Points.
When you're creating a document that's meant to be read,
you want to make sure that the text is legible,
and legible text is simply text
that is clear and easy to read.
An important aspect of legibility is type size,
so choosing the right type size
is an important part of document design.
First, let's talk about how type is measured,
and we'll go over a few important terms
that you may or may not be familiar with.
The x-Height of a typeface is the height
of a lowercase x in that typeface.
X-Heights are going to change from one typeface to another.
You may have one typeface that has a really large x-Height
and another typeface at the same size
that has a smaller x-Height.
The baseline is the imaginary line that letters sit on.
It's sort of like the lines on a ruled sheet of paper.
Ascenders are the parts of lowercase letters
that extend above the x-Height
as seen in the lowercase h or a lowercase b.
Descenders are the parts of lowercase letters
that extend below the baseline.
You can see some descenders here
in this lowercase g, in this lowercase y.
If you're dealing with print documents
and presentation software, type is measured in points,
and you'll hear designers talk about type
on a page or in a document, and you'll hear them talk
about 11-point type or 12-point type, 48-point type,
and there are 72 points in one inch,
so on a printed page, 36-point type
would be half an inch tall.
The way type is measured is it's measured from the top
of the ascenders to the bottom
of the descenders in a typeface.
Here we have some 36-point type,
and here we have 36-point type,
and you can see that one typeface
set at 36 points can look really different
from another typeface that's set at the same size,
and this is because of the different x-Heights
in these typefaces and also the different heights
of the ascenders and descenders.
If you're a web designer, type size
works a little differently.
Users can actually change the size of the text on a webpage
in their browser by changing their browser settings.
Online type's also measured a little differently,
and you can specify it in a few different ways.
You can specify type sizes in absolute terms like this
or you can use relative terms like this.
It's important to properly size the body text
in your documents because body text
makes up the bulk of multipage documents.
It's the text that you're going to want people
to be able to focus on and read.
If body text isn't legible,
then your document is not legible.
In a print document, you want to size your body text
at nine to 11 points for maximum legibility.
Body text that is smaller than nine points
can be difficult to read for long passages,
and body text larger than 11 points
often looks pretty large on the page,
and it appears heavy and clumsy.
If you're creating a document that's going to be printed,
it's really important that you print
that document to review the type sizes.
A lot of times text on the screen may look great,
but when it's printed, I often find
that it looks too big and needs to be made smaller.
For websites, body copy is usually
sized at 12 pixels to 16 pixels.
Any specific needs that your audience may have
would outweigh these conventions,
so, for example, older and younger audiences
usually benefit from larger-than-normal type sizes,
so keep that in mind if you're
designing for a specific audience.
Let's summarize.
To make your documents as legible as possible,
choosing the right type size is a really important decision.
Type that's too large can look
heavy on the page or on the screen,
and type that's too small can be
difficult and straining to read.
When you're choosing type sizes,
it's really important to review your documents
in the environment in which it's going to be finally used.
Print documents should be printed,
and presentations should be projected on a wall.
Websites should be coded up and reviewed in a web browser.
That's Law Seven,
Set Printed Body Text at Nine to 11 Points.