Right Down the Middle
There is nothing inherently wrong with centered text. As with ragged right or fully-justified text alignment, what works for one design might be totally inappropriate for another layout. There are simply fewer situations where centered text is appropriate. Today’s lesson suggests when and when not to center your text.

Use Centered Text Sparingly
When in doubt, don’t center it.

Pages in this Lesson
1: Centered Text
2: Assignment

Tips, Trivia, Tidbits
Here Comes the Bride…
Formal wedding invitations are one instance where centered text is traditional and appropriate. Engraved wedding invites are traditional as well. But if you want to buck tradition (with or without the centered text), there’s a growing trend toward do-it-yourself invitations. Pick up tips and find materials for creating wedding invitations and related bridal and wedding materials with computer software and printing from the About Desktop Publishing site with these Wedding and Anniversary Projects

Previous 4 Lessons in this Class
Lesson 1: Space After Punctuation
Lesson 2: Space After Paragraphs
Lesson 3: Number of Fonts
Lesson 4: Text Alignment

Fix Those Jagged Edges
After banishing those extra spaces in your text and toning down the type, you now must decide the best way to line up your lines of text.

Text alignment (also known as justification) refers to how the ends of lines of text line up. Most text in books, magazines, and other reading material is lined up on the left side (in those countries where materials are primarily read from left to right). Some people also like to align the right side as well as the left. That’s called fully-justified text alignment. In desktop publishing we have rules to help you decide which alignment to use.

Use Left-Aligned or Fully-Justified Alignment Wisely
There will undoubtedly be well-meaning friends, business associates, clients, and others who will question your choices for text alignment. Be prepared to explain why you chose the alignment you did and be prepared to change it (and make necessary adjustments to keep it looking good) if the person with final approval still insists on something different.

Pages in this Lesson
1: Justified vs. Left-Aligned
2: Comparisons and Bottomline
3: Assignment

Tips, Trivia, Tidbits
Justify Your Alignment
As I mentioned in the introduction, justification is another term for text alignment. Here are some more alignment terms that mean the same thing:

Left-Aligned = Ragged-Right
Fully-Justified = Justified (aligned on both left and right)
Right-Aligned = Ragged-Left (less commonly used term)

In Fully-Justified text the last line of a paragraph may stop short of the right edge and not be fully-justified. Some programs have forced justification which forces that last short line to stretch from left to right. Be careful with that feature. It can cause three little words to space out to fill a space normally occupied by 15 or 20 words or more and make for very ugly text.

Previous 3 Lessons in This Class
Lesson 1: Space After Punctuation
Lesson 2: Space After Paragraphs
Lesson 3: Number of Fonts

You Look Fontabulous!
Fonts are such fun. One of the most popular sections on the About Desktop Publishing site are the free font downloads. But too many times novice designers (and even more experienced ones) go overboard when it comes to using fonts. Today’s discussion about how many fonts to use is somewhat subjective. It’s one of those situations where you cannot say absolutely that you should always limit font choices to just one or two. But hopefully you’ll have a better understanding about how using too many fonts is detrimental to what you are trying to communicate in desktop publishing. Don’t forget to check out the supporting graphics for this lesson.

Use Fewer Fonts
How many fonts are too many for one project and how do you know where to draw the line? A generally accepted practice is to limit the number of different typefaces to three or four. That doesn’t mean you can’t use more but be sure you have a good reason to do so.

Pages in this Lesson
1: Best Number of Fonts

2: Examples

3: Assignment

Tips, Trivia, Tidbits
The Many Faces of One Font
This bit of trivia is actually a design lesson in disguise. Some folks may think that using just one font for a brochure or ad would be boring. But when we talk about designing with a single typeface we’re also including typestyles such as the bold and italic versions of the font as well as various sizes, color changes, and using whole families of fonts that are the same, but not quite. See what I mean in The Single Typeface Document.

Previous Lessons in this Class
Lesson 1: Space After Punctuation

Lesson 2: Space After Paragraphs

Thank you for subscribing to the Rules of DTP. Please use the DTP Classroom forum to discuss this class and its lessons. Feel free to post your own opinion about each rule or related topics and to post good and bad examples, including ways to break the rules.

And don’t forget to visit the Desktop Publishing Blog (home page) for daily news and updates.

Return to Sender?
In our first lesson we banished one of the most common carryovers from typewriting that plague desktop-published documents. Today, we’ll tackle another spacing issue rooted in typewriter usage. This is a feature of page layout software that has also migrated, somewhat, to high-end word processing software.

Don’t Use Double Hard Returns After a Paragraph
With today’s word processors and page layout applications it is possible to precisely control the amount of space between paragraphs. There is no longer a need for the old typewriter style of putting double hard returns to separate paragraphs (in computer terms that would be the equivalent of using the enter key to add space between lines). Learn how and why to do it with paragraph formatting.

Pages in this Lesson
1: Hard Returns
2: Paragraph Formatting
3: Assignment

Tips, Trivia, Tidbits
Entering the Time Warp
If you aren’t old enough to have ever used a manual typewriter (the kind that didn’t plug in to an electrical outlet) you may not realize the origins of the word return or carriage return, often applied to the Enter key on a standard computer keyboard. Yes, it means to return to the other side of the page. But it’s because on manual typewriters the top part of the typewriter (the carriage that included the roll that held the paper) would physically move as you typed. There was a little lever you had to push when you got to the end of the line that would return the carriage to the starting postion and roll it up a little so you could start typing the next line. Pushing the return lever twice would cause the paper to roll up an extra line – to create space between paragraphs.

Previous Lessons in this Class
Lesson 1: Space After Punctuation

Welcome! You have subscribed to the 12 Rules of Desktop Publishing email class. After Rule #12 the daily emails will stop.

One Space or Two?
To kick off the class, what follows is a controversial topic. What? You didn’t think a subject like desktop publishing could have controversy? Try asking whether you have to have a Mac to do desktop publishing, or which software is best. Sometimes the discussions get very heated.

Today’s rule of desktop publishing is not about the hardware or the software. It doesn’t require buying a new computer or learning a new software program; however, for some of you it may require unlearning something you’ve done for years and years, perhaps without even thinking about it.

Use One Space Between Sentences, Not Two
Typewriter-trained or not, you may have always been told that it was proper to put two spaces after a period or other punctuation. Find out where that practice originated and why you may need to change your ways. Already doing it the right way? Get a little ammunition to help convince others. But don’t forget the bottomline – this rule applies to desktop publishing, not necessarily everything or everyone else.

Pages in this Lesson
1: One Space vs. Two
2: Comparisons and Bottomline
3: Assignment

Tips, Trivia, Tidbits
Typewriters, QWERTY, & Typing
Carlos Glidden and Samuel Soulé, invented the first practical typewriting machine in 1866. The QWERTY keyboard layout came about as a result of keys that kept jamming. By separating frequently used letter combinations the typist was slowed down and keys didn’t get all jammed up. Learn more about the history of typewriters from About Inventors.