From: Michael Brady <bradydesign-AT-earthlink.net>
Date: 07 Feb 2007 03:19:33 UTC   (10:19:33 PM in author's locale)
To: "The Graphics List" <graphics-AT-lists.graphicslist.org>

On Feb 6, 2007, at 7:46 PM, Dan Johnson wrote:

> Well Michael, if you don't know . . . then who? lol I'll be
> interested in the responses as I usually just refer to the Chicago
> Manual of Style and mimic it.

I tend to set the space tight, while other designers in my office and
on campus set the numbers in indented lists and such a good bit wider.
And of course, there is the de facto norm of MS Word's default 1/2 inch
spacing for all indents, tab stops, nested lists, etc.

My concerns are:

1. Not to set them too wide, so that the numbers detach themselves and
wander off to rub elbows with other paragraphs.
2. To avoid making distracting patterns of small dots or isolated
glyphs that might appear to perforate the page.
3. To set them sufficiently spaced away from the text--wider than word
spacing--so that they don't appear merely as numbers that begin the
text paragraph.
4. To harmonize the space in the hanging numeral with the
interparagraph space in such a way that the paragraphs are properly
oraganized with each other by their vertical spacing.

I have seen many examples of surprisingly successful wide space (1.5 to
2 ems) in a hanging indented list, with slight paragraph space, as in
endnotes in a scholarly book. (I think the O.S. figures had a lot to do
with the felicity of those notes.)

And on the other hand, I've see boring, unimaginative hanging lists
that look like the QXP or ID equivalent of MSW's default spacing. Now
that I think about it, those examples (vague in my mind) used lining
figures. Maybe the kind of numeral (O.S. v. lining) has an effect that
I didn't suspect?

| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |

Michael Brady
www.michaelbradydesign.com

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