Journal
Notes from inside the press: how a book gets written, edited, designed and published.
32 items, page 1 of 2
Design
How the chapters of Dreamscape Code open
A hairline numeral, a light title across its foot, and an initial that drops exactly three lines.
Design
Forty-eight signs
Scene breaks in Dreamscape Code aren't blank lines. They are the Code: a set of signs drawn for the book.
Design
The Director's eye
A small red mark on the cover of Dreamscape Code, and the first thing you see when you open it.
Design
The cover for Dreamscape Code
Type large enough to read as a thumbnail, one red word, and a stain that works as ink and as blood.
Design
Choosing a text face for a novel
A text face has to survive three hundred pages without being noticed. Here is what to look at before you fall for a specimen.
Design
Hyphenation settings that don’t draw attention to themselves
Hyphenation makes justified text work, but only when it is quiet. The settings that keep it that way, and the breaks to avoid.
Design
Running heads and folios
Page numbers and running heads are the book’s navigation system. Where they go, what they say, and when to leave them off.
Design
The order of front matter
Half title, title page, copyright page, dedication, contents. The order of the opening pages is conventional, and the conventions have reasons.
Design
Hyphens, en dashes and em dashes
Three horizontal lines of different lengths, each with its own job. How hyphens and dashes are used in British books, and where they go wrong.
Design
Margins, and why the inner one matters most
Margins frame the text, give thumbs somewhere to go and, at the spine, decide whether a reader can see the words at all.
Design
Old-style and lining figures
Numbers come in more than one shape. Choosing between old-style and lining figures, and why they behave differently on the page.
Design
Rivers in justified text
Rivers are channels of white space that run down through justified text. Why they form, how to spot them, and how to get rid of them.
Design
Genre signals on covers, and when to break them
Readers decode a cover in seconds, mostly by genre. Knowing the signals is the first step; knowing when to ignore them is the harder one.
Design
Scene breaks: blank lines, ornaments and page turns
A blank line is the simplest scene break, and the easiest to lose. How to mark a shift in time or place so the reader never misses it.
Design
Font licences for print and ebooks, in principle
Buying a font is really buying permission to use it in certain ways. Why print, ebook and web use are often licensed separately.
Design
What goes on a copyright page
The copyright page is small print, but it does real work: legal notices, bibliographic data and the details that booksellers and libraries rely on.
Design
Designing a cover for a thumbnail
Most readers first meet a cover at the size of a postage stamp. Design for that size, and the full-size version tends to look after itself.
Design
Widows and orphans
A stranded line at the top or bottom of a page is small, but readers feel it. What widows and orphans are, and how typesetters remove them.
Design
Drop caps and raised initials
A large initial letter can open a chapter with real presence, or look like an afterthought. How drop caps and raised initials are set well.
Design
When the title is the image
Some of the strongest covers carry no picture at all. Here is what it takes for type alone to hold a cover.