Many people think that typography is just using Helvetica in a large font size and making some of it bold. But there is more, much more. Typography is the art and technique of arranging type in order to make the text or message easily understood. Typography is all about the details.

Here are five simple ways to improve your typography skills.

1. Measure

The measure is the length of a line of type. To a reader, long lines can be tiring and distracting. A long measure causes the reader’s eye to work harder to find the next line of type. For optimum readability you want the measure to be between 40-80 characters, including spaces. For a single-column design 65 characters is considered ideal.

2. Widows and Orphans

A widow is a short line or single word at the end of a paragraph. An orphan is a word or short line at the beginning or end of a column that is separated from the rest of the paragraph. Widows and Orphans affect readability. They can be avoided by entering manual line breaks.

3. Not Justified

Most applications create justified text by hideously stretching and squishing words and spaces. Using left aligned text (ragged-right) gives it more harmony and makes it much easier to read.

4. A clean rag

Be sure to keep the rag (the uneven side of the text) balanced. A good rag has a “soft” unevenness, without any lines that are too long or too short. A bad rag can be unsettling to the eye and distract the reader.

5. A Capital mistake

Giving emphasis to a word without interrupting the reader is important. NEVER use CAPITAL letters to accentuate words in running copy. They STICK OUT far too much spoiling the LOOK of the column or page. Italic is widely considered to be the ideal form of emphasis. Combinations such as caps-bold-italic are DISRUPTIVE and look clumsy.

Source: Erik Spiekermann’s Typo Tips http://www.fontshop.com/education/pdf/typo_tips.pdf