Web Style Guide: TYPOGRAPHY - Sandhills Community College

Web Style Guide: TYPOGRAPHY
We recommend downstyle typing (capitalize only the first word and any proper nouns) for your
headlines, subheads, and text. Downstyle is more legible because as we read we primarily scan the tops
of words:
Notice how much harder it is to read the bottom half of the same sentence:
If you use initial capital letters in your headlines, you disrupt the reader's scanning of the word forms:
Emphasis
A Web page of solid body text is hard to scan for content structure and will not engage the eye. Adding
display type to a document will provide landmarks to direct the reader through your content. Display
type establishes an information structure and adds visual variety to draw the reader into your material.
The key to effective display type is the careful and economic use of typographic emphasis.
There are time-honored typographical devices for adding emphasis to a block of text, but be sure to use
them sparingly. If you make everything bold, then nothing will stand out and it will seem as if you are
shouting at your readers. A good rule of thumb when working with type is to add emphasis using one
parameter at a time. If you want to draw attention to the section heads in your document, don't set them
large, bold, and all caps. If you want them to be larger, increase their size by one measure. If you prefer
bold, leave the heads the same size as your body text and make them bold. You will soon discover that
only a small variation is required to establish visual contrast.
Italics
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