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E-mail Typography is reprinted from the book “Digital Type Design Guide” by Sean Cavanaugh (Hayden Books). |
What’s this, you ask, an article devoted to e-mail typography? Isn’t the online world of the Internet, CompuServe, AOL, etc. free from such aesthetic issues as typography and design? The clock is ticking… Much of the culture of the net arose out of concerns for speed. It costs money to be online after all, so communication tends to be brief, spelling tends to be, well, not a priority, grammar not much higher, and acronyms flourish. Rhetorical niceties and segues such as “by the way,” “on the other hand,” “as far as I’m concerned,” are reduced to BTW, OTOH, AFAIC. It used to be that a user would have to read his mail and respond to it online while he was connected live to an online service, with the clock ticking (and for the service provider as well as the subscriber, nothing is more true than “time is money”). But today most correspondence and forum messaging is conducted off-line. The user logs onto a service, retrieves his mail, then logs off and reads it off-line, composes his responses, then goes online again and sends them. 1. Don’t write in ALL CAPS unless you want to give the impression of shouting. For some reason, newcomers to the net tend to write messages and e-mail in all uppercase letters. No one knows why this is so—after all, these same people don’t create documents in their word processors or desktop publishing programs in all caps—but everyone enjoys chiding them for doing it. The surest way to get lots of attention in a public forum is to post a message in all caps. If there are one hundred forum members, for example, at least ten of them will take the time to tell you not to write messages in all caps (of which maybe one of those will also take the time to respond to whatever it was you were actually trying to communicate in the first place); the remaining ninety will dismiss you as a newbie, and won’t read your message past the first line. I’ve heard people describe this public chastisement as the quintessential Jan Brady experience: embarrassment mixed with an acute feeling of rejection. So, only use all-uppercase text for strong emphasis, and use it sparingly, i.e., try to avoid typing more than a few consecutive words in all caps. |
It’s true that many of the traditions and standards of typography are moot when it comes to e-mail—it’s generally not possible to make font choices, for example, or choose different point sizes, or even to italicize, bold or underline text in most e-mail clients—but it’s still important to design what you write, and there are still design issues to consider when you compose forum messages and electronic mail.
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All uppercase text is the cyber equivalent of shouting. |
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2. Insert a blank line (carriage return) between all paragraphs. (A must.) For printed text, it is quite readable and attractive to eliminate blank lines between paragraphs, relying instead on indented first lines to distinguish one paragraph from the next. But this should be avoided online, where resolution is considerably less, and text is more difficult to read. 3. Indent the first line of each paragraph with at least two spaces. (A suggestion.) For the same reasons you should add blank lines between paragraphs, you should also indent the first lines: it simply makes it easier to distinguish one paragraph from the next. However, don’t use the Tab key for this—tabs are interpreted differently by different networks, off-line readers and e-mail clients, and sometimes ignored completely—use the Space bar instead. I recommend using at least two, but generally no more than three spaces to indent paragraphs. 4. Consider adding a double-space between sentences What?!? I know, you’re not supposed to double space anymore, and you’ve just taken the time to unlearn this habit drilled into you by high school typing teachers. Well, the fact is, you shouldn’t double space for printed text, but most e-mail messages are displayed on screen using system fonts that quite often look better and are easier to read with two spaces after the period. This is purely a personal choice, not a rule, but all in all, I think two spaces look better online. |
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Note how the message looks good and reads well, despite the fact that it is using a monospaced font. Paragraphs are clearly indicated, and sentences are easy to distinguish. |
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5. Use asterisks, hyphens or underscores to emphasize text. When I want to place special emphasis on a word or phrase, but stopping somewhere short of the strong emphasis typing in all caps provides, I type an asterisk immediately before and after it. If you want especially strong emphasis, use all caps and asterisks. Some people substitute the hyphen or the underscore for the asterisk, and this works pretty well too. I usually reserve the underscores to offset book and magazine titles (just like underlining on a typewriter), and hyphens to place special emphasis on personal pronouns:
-I- said that? I’m interested in -your- opinion. It’s only a problem if someone *else* is doing it. Well, um, that was the POINT after all. Rather, that *was* the point. Kenneth Grahame was the author of _The Wind in the Willows_. 6. Use angle brackets (>) to indicate that you are quoting someone’s message verbatim. When responding to an e-mail or forum message, it’s common practice to copy and paste the text you are responding to, such as a specific question for example, into your response. This is a particularly good idea if you are responding to a message after a couple of days. The quoted text will refresh the sender’s memory and clearly indicate what you are talking about or responding to. Of course, you don’t need to quote the entire message. In fact, I absolutely hate it when people do this. They’re either lazy, inconsiderate, or both. Quoting just a key sentence or two should be sufficient. If you find the quote takes up more than about five lines, consider paring it down. |
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Note how the sender quoted portions from the message he is responding to. |
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7. If you are quoting a previous exchange (your previous comments as well as someone’s response to it) type two angle brackets (>>) to indicate the oldest quote and a single angle bracket (>) to indicate the response. If you are quoting the previous exchange, plus the comment before that, well, do everyone a favor and don’t do this. Quoting from two messages back is more than enough. Quoting from three messages back is needless. |
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Here the sender is not only quoting from the sender’s message she is responding to, but she is also including part of her previous response, indicated by the double-angle brackets. Using this method, the single-angle bracket will always refer to the last message being quoted. |
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8. Create bulleted lists using the colon and bracket characters. Since no real bullet characters are available in 7-bit ASCII text, you have to get creative with standard keyboard characters. Typing two colons or bracket characters makes for a nice bullet character.
We need to be aware of the following: :: Lions — large and heavily-built social cats of open or rocky areas chiefly of sub-Saharan Africa. :: Tigers — large Asian carnivorous mammals of the cat family having a tawny coat transversely striped with black. :: Bears — large, heavy mammals of America and Eurasia that have long shaggy hair, rudimentary tails, and feed largely on fruit and insects as well as on flesh. We need to be aware of the following: [] Lions — large and heavily-built social cats of open or rocky areas chiefly of sub-Saharan Africa. [] Tigers — large Asian carnivorous mammals of the cat family having a tawny coat transversely striped with black. [] Bears — large, heavy mammals of America and Eurasia that have long shaggy hair, rudimentary tails, and feed largely on fruit and insects as well as on flesh. Oh my! 9. Avoid signing your messages with boilerplate remarks, lengthy quotes, or nifty graphics drawn with ASCII characters. It’s not uncommon to see entire messages on CompuServe or mail lists, for instance, that contain less characters than the sender’s signature! In the following example, the sender was kind enough to use acronyms for “Pardon me for jutting in” (PMFJI) and “In my humble opinion” (IMHO), but nevertheless inundated us with his personal epithet and all of his e-mail addresses. |
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This is just cyber litter. Give a hoot, don’t pollute. Simply signing off with your name is plenty. Maybe add a hyphen or two before it, but beyond that you’re wasting pixels. |
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10. Use emoticons sparingly. Commonly referred to as “emoticons,” I call these typographic creations smiloglyphs. They’re created by typing various characters for the eyes, nose and mouth, and if you tilt your head to the left, they resemble faces. Of course, there are about as many variations on these as there are people with e-mail accounts. Thousands of years from now, when archaeologists dig through the remains of our culture, they’ll no doubt need clues as to what these symbols mean. So here’s a rosetta stone for them: < This end up < 11. Don’t go overboard with acronyms. The use of acronyms in e-mail originated as a way to save time while people composed their on-line missives, live, connected to a service provider. But it’s since become much more than that. The use of acronyms conveys a casual attitude, a sort of schoolyard lingo for the cyber set. But they’re easy to overdo. An e-mail message with too many of them looks awkward, as if you’re trying too hard to make it look as if you’re not trying very hard. Here are some of the more common acronyms:
12. Always sign off. Don’t simply end a message abruptly, but take the time to say buh-bye and sign your name (or initials, or whatever). Tschuess, |