Chapter 4 Summary-Jacqueline Lin

The chapter starts off with saying that "legibility is achieved by controlling the qualities and attributes inherent in typography that make type readable." Legibility is important to typography because letterforms need to be clear and distinct within the alphabet. Legibility is dependent on contrast, simplicity, and proportion. Distinguishing the characteristics of letters makes the alphabet a readable language. Although there are different fonts of the alphabet, the basic structure of the letters are all the same. The book gives examples of different word recognition, showing that lowercase letters are more distinct. As the book continues to talk about capital and lowercase letters, it mentions that capital letters use a significantly greater amount of space. Lowercase letters are distinct because of their irregular word shape and internal pattern. The authors also point out that the two important factors of making the words legible is word shape and internal pattern. Interletter and interword spacing has a large impact on legibility as well because too much spacing can cause an ambiguous visual of the letters. To bring together a font in harmony; type size, line length, and interline spacing can change even the worst letterforms that are not legible. The weight of the strokes that are too light or two heavy can cause an off-balance to the typeface as well as the spacing in character width. Appropriate color between the background and type depends on the hue, value, and saturation to make the letters legible. Justified and unjustified typography of having flush left and ragged right promotes a greater legibility. Paragraph and indentations are important to distinguish the separation of what the typographer wants the viewer to read. The chapter ends with typographic details, meaning that every letter, word, and line of type is a subject of detail.