Have a good example of bad type? E-mail it to Peatah!

Also, send us your reasons why it’s a bad example, and its source.

Use optical margin alignment.

Within display type, punctuation

shouldn’t carry the same visual

weight of letters and numbers.

Here, the opening quotation

mark seems to make the

text appear indented. Rather, it should hang into the left margin

of this text block, allowing the

two Gs to visually align.

A second problem: the closing

quotation mark seems to add

more space between words.

This also due to it carrying

the same visual weight of

the letters.

Finally, the mechanically-

consistent leading on these

lines of text appears uneven.

This is an optical problem

caused by the ascenders, descenders, caps, and taller

vertical strokes—such as

lowercase “L”s. On larger copy, leading should be done optically.

Don’t set hatch marks

if you want apostrophes.

A very common mistake, along with incorrect quotation marks.

(We won’t even get into

the kerning troubles here,

the contrasting x-heights,

the missing word space, and

the visual weight of the ellipsis.)

Unacceptable Typography Examples.