Typographic Crimes
Errors that make typographers weep. Microsoft Word and its default settings have normalized disastrous practices that persist to this day.
Warning: The following examples may shock those sensitive to good typography.
The Microsoft Word Disaster
Catastrophic default settings
❌ Kerning disabled by default
Word default (no kerning)
TYPOGRAPHY
Uniform spacing that ignores letter shapes
With kerning enabled
TYPOGRAPHY
Spacing adjusted for visual harmony
❌ Ligatures disabled
Word default
Office official fluffy
Letters fi, fl, ff collide
Ligatures enabled
Office official fluffy
Letters merge elegantly
To enable in Word:
Format → Font → Advanced → ✓ Kerning ✓ Ligatures The most common crimes
Crime #1: Fake apostrophes
❌ Don't do this
Straight apostrophes (prime marks)
✅ Don't do this
Real curved apostrophes
Straight apostrophes are for measurements (5'10"), not for text!
Crime #2: Incorrect quotation marks
❌ "Quote"
Straight quotes
✅ "Quote"
Curly quotes
In English, use curly quotation marks instead of straight marks.
Crime #3: Double spaces
❌ Sentence. Another sentence.
✅ Sentence. Another sentence.
Double spacing after periods is a vestige of typewriters. In modern typography, a single space is sufficient.
Crime #4: Incorrect dashes
❌ Hyphen for everything: 2020-2024
✅ En dash for ranges: 2020–2024
❌ Parenthetical - like this - poorly done
✅ Parenthetical—like this—well done
- • Hyphen (-): compound words
- • En dash (–): ranges, intervals
- • Em dash (—): parenthetical remarks, dialogue
Crime #5: ALL CAPS
❌ THIS IS HARD TO READ AND SEEMS AGGRESSIVE
✅ This is more pleasant to read
Capital letters destroy word shapes and slow reading by 10-20%. Reserve them for short titles or acronyms.
Crime #6: Underlining
❌ Underlined text for emphasis
✅ Bold text or italic text
Underlining cuts through descenders and harms readability. On the web, it's reserved for links. Use bold or italic instead.
Crime #7: Comic Sans & Papyrus
❌ Professional report
✅ Professional report
Some fonts have their place (Comic Sans for children), but not in professional or serious contexts.
Crime #8: Font stretching
❌ Stretched text
✅ Normal text
Stretching or compressing a font destroys its carefully designed proportions. Choose a condensed or extended variant of the font instead.
The mortal sins
Forced justification
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Sed do eiusmod tempor incididunt ut labore et dolore magna aliqua nostrud exercitation ullamco.
Creates white "rivers" and irregular spacing
Too many fonts
Title in Georgia
Subtitle in Arial
Body in Times
Note in Courier
Maximum 2-3 fonts per document!
Orphans and widows
Paragraph that ends with an orphan
word.
Widow
New paragraph that starts alone at the top of a page.
How to avoid these crimes?
Education
- • Learn typography fundamentals
- • Study good examples
- • Read well-composed books
Proper tools
- • Use professional DTP software
- • Enable typographic features
- • Install quality fonts
Best practices
- • Single space after punctuation
- • Use real quotes and apostrophes
- • Respect visual hierarchy
Attention to detail
- • Check kerning and ligatures
- • Eliminate widows and orphans
- • Maintain consistency
The solution: LaTeX and open formats
LaTeX: Typographic excellence
Automatic ligatures
LaTeX automatically detects and applies ligatures (ff, fi, fl, ffi, ffl) supported by the font, without manual intervention.
Perfect kerning
Uses built-in kerning tables in fonts to precisely adjust spacing between letter pairs (AV, Ta, etc.).
Advanced microtypography
The microtype package offers character protrusion (punctuation in margins), font expansion, and fine-tuning of inter-word spacing.
Superior justification algorithm
LaTeX optimizes justification across entire paragraphs (Knuth-Plass algorithm), unlike Word which works line by line. Result: 50% fewer hyphenations, more even spacing.
Future-proof plain text format
.tex files are plain text readable in any editor, guaranteeing access to your documents in 10, 20 or 50 years.
Open source and free
No expensive licenses, no vendor lock-in. LaTeX is free and works on all operating systems.
The illusion of convenience
Microsoft Word seems simpler because "everyone uses it", but this apparent ease hides:
- • Proprietary .docx format unreadable without Word
- • Incompatibilities between versions
- • Expensive license (Office 365)
- • Mediocre typography by default
The smart investment
Learning LaTeX requires initial effort, but offers lasting benefits:
- • Professional documents automatically
- • Version control with Git
- • Efficient collaboration
- • Guaranteed future-proof archiving
Digital archiving philosophy
Important documents deserve a future-proof format. Plain text has existed since the dawn of computing and will remain readable as long as computers exist. Proprietary formats disappear with their publishers.
"I lost years of journals written in Microsoft Works because I no longer have the software and no modern program can open them. My LaTeX files from 1985 open perfectly."