Typographic Checklist – Typographic Preflight!

FlightCheck, the preflight solution from Markzware, can preflight documents for numerous font or typographic related issues. FlightCheck can handle font preflight to check for missing fonts, non-embedded fonts, minimum point size, font stylization, font types, font versions, etc., along with several other printing problems.

A typographic checklist is a handy supplement to any typographic preflight you may need to perform with FlightCheck on a digital page layout. FlightCheck can run a font preflight and more for such digital layout file types as Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress, Photoshop, PDF, Adobe Illustrator and more. Here is a basic typographic checklist:

Typographic Typos
Steer clear of these common type errors:

• Eliminate double word spaces between sentences
• Replace dumb quotes (including apostrophes)
• Check inch and foot marks (primes)
• Use hyphens, en- and em-dashes properly
• Avoid fake scaling, embolding and slanting
• Avoid computer-generated (fake) small caps
• Use all cap text sparingly
• Beware of all cap swash settings
• Size type appropriately (both text and display)

Spacing and alignment
Good visual balance and alignment contribute greatly to professionally set typography.

• Avoid poor justification
• Avoid tracked out lowercase
• Make sure kerning is even and tasteful
• Apply hung punctuation / optical margin alignment
• Check for proper vertical and horizontal alignment
• Use tracking appropriately, as necessary
• Check for appropriate word spacing and adjust as necessary
• Align initial letters properly

Refinements
The devil is in the details, so use these points as a guide to first-rate typography:

• Adjust bad rags
• Avoid too many hyphens in a row
• Avoid widows and orphans
• Use appropriate figure style and spacing
• Use diagonal fractions if possible, especially in OpenType
• Fine-tune size, position and spacing of bullets
• Fine-tune position and spacing of ®, ™ and © symbols
• Adjust glyph positioning as necessary

Source: http://www.fonts.com/content/learning/fyti/typefaces/typographic-checklist

Editor’s Note: Ilene Strizver, founder of The Type Studio, is a typographic consultant, designer and writer specializing in all aspects of typographic communication. She conducts Gourmet Typography workshops internationally. Read more about typography in her latest literary effort, Type Rules! The designer’s guide to professional typography, 3rd edition, published by Wiley & Sons, Inc.

Remember to take advantage of all that FlightCheck can do for font preflight or typographic preflight. Try the free FlightCheck demo and see how easy and thorough preflight can be.