The Elements of Style A Book by William Strunk Jr. & E.B. White www.gutenberg.org Choose a suitable design and hold to itMake the paragraph the unit of compositionUse the active voicePut statements in positive formSpecific, definite, concrete+9 More The Elements of Typographic StyleThe Elements of Graphing DataThe Sense of StyleThe superficial aspects of what someone else is doing writingcommunication
Sentences and words do not exist by themselves Sentences and words do not exist by themselves, but have natural, inevitable, unavoidable interactions with their surrounding spaces, words, and other sentences. Sentences are not independent of their spatial context, and interactions can create meanings and harms. Sentences survive content-indifferent and content-hostile spacings, but surviving is not thriving. Text space should not be owned and governed by generic productions grids, which make for convenient production but inconvenient meaning. Space can and should be content-responsive, actively contributing to meaning – forever practices in poetry, maps, math, computer code, comics, theater/movie scrips, posters. Subtle visual spacing differentiates and clarifies sentences, and meaning becomes more consequential, memorable, retrievable. Edward Tufte, Seeing With Fresh Eyes Concrete poetrygridless.design typography