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Originally Posted by ahi
THIS is what typography IS. Thank you, EowynCarter!
A book that has been professionally prepared, feels nice to read. A book that hasn't, doesn't...
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I beg to differ.
I read ebooks for over two years on a Sony Clie, for which I paid $40 used. I read in PalmDOC and eReader formats--no kerning, no serifs, no hyphenation, screen that holds 35-40 characters, not justified, with a backlight.
I was ecstatic with it. I read it
constantly--on the train, in the elevator, waiting in line for lunch, on hold on banking phone calls. I upgraded because I was very tired of running out of battery in mid-book, because the device just won't allow 5 hours/day of reading time.
I love good typography... but it's not crucially important for me to enjoy a book. "Not-atrocious typography" is; I don't read blogs that are pink-text-on-grey-backgrounds, with scripty font headers and tables that force the text to almost the full screen width. I don't read blogs with serif fonts. I don't read books with type that's too small and cramped, or that's so wide-spaced I feel like I'm floating when I look at it.
But I, like most people, have a wide range of acceptable typography. There's a reason that there's not one typographical standard for all printed materials, that newspapers are multi-column but even hardcover novels are single-column, that journals are 6x9 while paperbacks are 4.25x7. The layout is shifted to fit the content and printing requirements, and the readers will accept different layouts.
Newspapers are carefully formatted with design software, because the narrow columns have huge spaces between longer words otherwise. News websites aren't built with this setup--because HTML sucks at columns, and because it's not necessary; the "space" available on a screen is very different from the space available on a cheaply printed large page.
A growing number of commercial PDF ebooks are produced straight from word processing software, with none of the precise formatting abilities activated.
PDF *can* show excellent typography. It can do so in a way that's not likely to be matched by any other format. (I suspect it's possible to do so with ePub, but would be much more difficult.) However, current commercial PDFs are *not* built to that level of precision... and we've seen nothing from publishers that says they're likely to be in the future.
The best layout for e-ink screens hasn't yet been discovered. We don't know if it, or close enough to it for most people, is create-able with ePub, a good eReader renderer, or Mobi, in addition to PDF.
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legions proudly declaring that they can't tell the difference between a well-made book and a poorly-made one.
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I can tell. I mostly don't care.
I can tell the difference between an excellent meal, with carefully blended spices and beautiful arrangement on the plate, with just the right balance between tangy and smooth flavors, the right balance between crisp vegetables and soft breads and rich meats. And I can enjoy that.
And I *still* can enjoy a cheap burger in a paper wrapper, eaten in a walking crowd on a busy street. I can tell myself, "this is overcooked, and there's not enough mayo, and the lettuce is wilted"--and eat there again tomorrow.
Everyone notices *bad* typography. Not everyone cares about mediocre typography.