In 1947, Penguin books appointed revolutionary typographer Jan Tschichold to revamp and refine the typographical practices of the English typesetters. He found the general standard of work to be far lower than he was used to working with in Switzerland, and as a result produced an extensive document to guide the Penguin staff as they set their type.
Nearly sixty years on, the document is as relevant, interesting, and useful as it ever was. However, given that Herr Tschichold – despite being the visionary that he was – couldn’t have been expected to anticipate the needs of digital screen typography (and given that I’m a presumptuous little upstart), I decided it might be useful to rewrite his Penguin typography rules, but with the web in mind.
So far 3 people have argued with us about ‘Jan Tschichold’s Penguin Composition Rules’. Read what they've said and then add to our woes using the form below.
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I like your web version of the Penguin Composition Rules: practical and it looks good, too. Thank you! But could you at least make it follow its own rules concerning dashes? You’ve got the em-dash throughout, where Tschichold explicitly calls for an en-dash with spaces either side. That is of course how printed copies of the Rules were set in the 1940s.
Also, in the blog posting, you’ve spelled his name wrong in one place (“Tshichold”).
I often go shopping with my
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Nice work :) – but you might want to spell-check.
I stumbled over a “captials” instead of “capitals” in one of the very first paragraphs, which immediately made me lose some trust in these rewritten composition rules, as the most fundamental rule of typesetting still is: “put the letters in the right order”. ;)