Nice list.

First rule: If it's a good font, trust the type designer and don't mess with spacing. How to know if it's a good font? Ask.

Also: A font is ideal within a pretty tight size range; there is no easy compensation for going outside this range.

If you are not sure, go with tighter spacing

This is the only thing in your list that strikes me as wrong. Overly loose wordspacing can be ugly and wasteful (and slightly slow down reading) but overly tight wordspacing can totally ruin reading.

hhp

http://readthetype.com/literature/

There are books and peer-reviewed studies there. Be wary of anecdotal wisdom that claims to be correct solely due to convention.

But nothing is worse than a scientist who thinks he's qualified to design experiments and interpret data even though he doesn't know the first thing about type.

hhp

Agree. From what I have read, there is a huge gap between the two fields. On one extreme there are pseudo-scientific studies conducted by typographers with little background in the sciences, and reading studies by scientists who don’t know what an x-height is. Truly stunning.

And the only way forward is for scientists to design experiments that try to [dis]prove anecdotal wisdom. Because they have no wisdom of their own.

Most of all, we can't go on pretending that this

can lead to reliable test results.

hhp

Scientists have no wisdom of their own? Next.

And as far as technology being unable to lead to lead to reliable results, perhaps you can suggest an alternative?

(Nice find on that picture I took btw. I was just asked for it last week for use in an upcoming presentation and was having difficulty locating it. Thanks ;)

Word space: start with width of lc i or inner space of lc n. (A quarter of body size is too general and allows for too much variation.)
Never cheat by adjusted letter spacing. (Changes ‘color’ and is thus unforgivable.)
Limit horizontal scaling of glyphs to no more than 2% either way (if too noticeable avoid!).

General rule: aim for even ‘color’ (eg, squint through eyelashes and note even/uneven structure — correct if necessary).

Extra rule: correct ‘rivers’. If there are too many of those, something is wrong with the general settings — start over.

@hrant: As I was waking up this morning a thought occurred to me. With my statement “Be wary of anecdotal wisdom that claims to be correct solely due to convention.” you may have thought I was referring to you, hence your rather short remark which was clearly directed at me given you used one of my own photographs in it. I was, in fact, referring to my literature list. Not you. Sorry if you took any offence.

I didn't think you were directing it at me. On the other hand I do take a bit of offense when labcoats think typographic wisdom -which is what I meant they lack- can be subsumed with data.

hhp

I’m still curious as to how you came across that picture. Have I buried it somewhere on Tyophile, Readthetype, FB, twitter…?

Sorry, I don't remember.

hhp

Thanks guys! Keep it coming!

@Bert: I'm afraid I don't understand when you say "start with width of lc i or inner space of lc n".
Could you please clarify?

@hrant: When you say "How to know if it's a good font? Ask." What part of the forums is considered appropriate for posing that sort of question. I'm slowly beginning to build a library and would love to get some advice to make sure the fonts I buy are good quality.

I guess just General Discussion.

hhp

The lowercase ‘i’ and ‘n’: use either the width of the i (especially if it is a serif), or the space between the two stems of the n as starting points to define your standard word space.

A shortcut for using the i as a starting point: start with a few lines of text from your publication. Copy paste to a second paragraph. In the first copy of the text substitute i’s for the space, like this:

I'mislowlyibeginningitoibuildiailibraryiandiwouldiloveitoigetisomeiadviceitoimakeisureitheifontsiIibuyiareigoodiquality.
I'm slowly beginning to build a library and would love to get some advice to make sure the fonts I buy are good quality.

Now play with the wordspace settings in the other bit of text to approximate that to the way the first bit looks.

As you may notice, if you are seeing Georgia (which is a Typophile default), that font has word spaces that are equal to the width of the i.

Working with the inner space of n is a bit more complicated, but with a large zoom percentage you’ll get there eventually.

@Bert: That's a great tip! And so simple to put into practice. Thank you so much! I'm going to test this on some of the work I'm doing right now.