I wonder how much needless strain has been caused by the bonkers typographic requirements for academic dissertations?
(in the US, usually a single column text block on 8.5"x11" with 1" margins—and double spaced! my eyes just slip right off these lines…)
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Typical solutions include:
- use two columns (this is what most journals do)
- use one column and a wide margin for biblio, etc
- print on 6-7" pages, more like a typical book
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Built for red pens?
Makes me wonder what the best typography is for word processor comments.
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Oh of course I forgot about type writers… room for white out and the correction without retyping the whole page.
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Why I did the final-final draft of my PhD in InDesign. Coming up with a readable version that still followed the conventions was a fun design constraint to work with though.
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In recent years would encourage grad students to bend the rules RE formatting theses and dissertations.
Eg designed hers as a coffee table book: dspace.mit.edu/handle/1721.1/
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It comes from the traditional typewriter. One couldn’t choose space between lines, so double-spaces were the only option to have room for annotations. As for width, every typed line sums up between 68 and 72 letters, the optimal reading length for a line of text. #typography
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You're right that the chunky typewriter font makes for reasonable line lengths! The contemporary LaTeX'd equivalents, alas, are 90-100.
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