Set in Style

Take a look at a newsletter set by a professional typesetter, and you’ll find very consistent word spacing.

Take a look at the word spacing is this newsletter published by a law firm:

Notice the very loose spacing in the next to last line. For this to be set in style, that loose spacing needs to be tightened. But how?

One approach would be to add a few words to the next to last line, as shown below:

That’s an improvement, but the word spacing in that next to last line is still too loose.

Here’s what an editor might do: he might edit the copy for fit. The copy might wind up looking like this:

I can hear the gasps now. “Oh my goodness! The editor actually changed the wording of that paragraph. This is completely unacceptable.”

Most attorneys don’t want editors monkeying around with their copy. An editor could inadvertently change the meaning of some copy, and that has the potential to make the author look bad.

I dare say, it has just as much potential to make the author look good.

Let’s consider the changes. First, the title of this bulletin is “SEC Update,” and “SEC” appears in the title of this article. The audience for this article consists of people who understand such things as period-end reporting, safe harbors,and interpretive guidance. So, does it make sense to waste space explaining what SEC means? No; not at all.

This article appears in a bulletin the firm sends to its clients, but the author wrote it like a legal agreement. The editor made it look more like an article in a newsletter. In other words, the editor took steps to make the author look good.

What about (the “Release”) and (”IFCR”)? Did the editor err by deleting these? I say not. The phrase this Release serves the same purpose as (the “Release”), defining Section 404 as (”Section 404″) is absurd, and the abbreviation IFCR is better introduced closer to where it’s used.

What else did the editor do? Notice that the dependent clause and amendments to related rules has been changed to a complete sentence. This is for the convenience of the reader. Notice that the editor deleted of 2002 because he knows there’s only one Sarbannes-Oxley Act, so there’s no reason to specify which one is being discussed.

The result? The revised paragraph is shorter than the original, and this is good (because the reader doesn’t want to have to do more reading than necessary). The article reads more like an article and less like a legal agreement. And the word spacing is now much more consistent, so it looks much more professional.

In short, the editor did what he could to make the author look good.

This entry was posted 13 February 2007 at 12:12 and is filed under Production, Typography. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.