I like the spirit of this. Personally, I'd love to see lawyers move toward plain text (to make it easy to process legal documents as raw data) rather than toward more sophisticated presentation text, but that's just my bias.
Of course, the two aims are not mutually exclusive.
Curly-quotes (or at least the ones that do left-quote, right-quote anyway) play hell with UTF-8 encoding in HTML - for simplicity's sake I'd rather not deal with them, especially for documents that might (and should be) placed online for everyone to view.
One big problem about curly quotes is that many default Windows fonts have their curly quotes all mixed up – Verdana is one of the offenders – as you can “see here” on HN. I then just refuse to use such shoddy fonts. Not the curly quote’s fault that the font is screwed up. (You can use incorrect UTF-8 characters to get the correct curly quotes when using something like Verdana, but as soon as your text is copied and the font is changed you again end up with the wrong curly quotes.)
I just read these "rules", and it looks like just good typography -- whether you're a lawyer, programmer, or something else. I like his explanations of why each "rule" is necessary, too.
As web sites go, this one is pretty decent. There are some navigation issues, sure, but the design is simple and the text is a readable size, with a good line width.
I'm flabbergasted that they include the php session id in the url after all this time. I don't believe its even an option since php 5 and has been disabled by default for many years.
The bit about Times Roman and Times New Roman is fascinating:
Think of Monotype vs. Linotype as the Depression-era Mac vs. Windows and you’ve got it...(In fact, when it came time to license fonts for their operating systems, Microsoft licensed Times New Roman from Monotype and Apple licensed Times Roman from Linotype, perpetuating the schism.)
"The first problem is that it isn’t professional. Dressing properly is one way we signal to clients, other attorneys, and judges that we take our work seriously and we take court seriously."
Though I also think typography is important, you end up with a lot of non-serious and bad lawyers simply looking serious with good typography because that's what the serious and good lawyers do. Bad content is still bad content no matter how you dress it up.
And when typography is used as a signal, as more bad lawyers adopt it, it becomes a less and less effective signal--until it becomes standard fare, and not useful at all for telling serious lawyers from non-serious ones.
You sort of described the cyclical nature of fashion, without intending to.
Things that are "in style" slowly erode in distinguishability as they become mainstream and overused, and then the better elements from older looks are remixed into something distinctive and those who have the motivation and wherewithal to try them out (you could call them the fashion-conscious) bring these new looks into vogue.
You can find this in everything: music, clothes, art, not just typography. That's not to say it's a bad thing, it's just an evolution of human interest.
Out of those fields, typography remains the most closed discipline (I would argue creating a professional typeface is on the level of carving a violin, it is much more inaccessible than combining clothing accessories or beats in audio production), and since the elite foundries are still moving into the digital age kicking and screaming, there is much interesting progress to look forward to. It will be a while before typography is starved for ideas and recycles lazy, supercommercialized dreck the way (in my opinion) pop music has gone for the YouTube/iTunes era.
I've seen a few bad lawyers and there are a million and one things they'd rather do before worrying about their typography. It'll be a long while before the bad lawyers' typography is as good as the good lawyers' typography.
I picked up the habit of putting two spaces between sentences in elementary school, and have not been able to shake it since. Luckily, this problem is automatically corrected in latex!
In latex source, I write each sentence on a new line. This makes the diffs in source control very clear. It also makes me conscious of very long sentences.
You have to activate it by checking a box in the Font dialog box... so irrational it's painful to contemplate.
I can imagine they did this for backward compatibility's sake (kerning would impact page layout), but consider the fact that 90% of the word processed documents produced today have crappy kerning because it was hidden behind a checkbox nobody will ever touch.
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[ 4.9 ms ] story [ 68.1 ms ] threadOf course, the two aims are not mutually exclusive.
I agree with everything but the above.
One big problem about curly quotes is that many default Windows fonts have their curly quotes all mixed up – Verdana is one of the offenders – as you can “see here” on HN. I then just refuse to use such shoddy fonts. Not the curly quote’s fault that the font is screwed up. (You can use incorrect UTF-8 characters to get the correct curly quotes when using something like Verdana, but as soon as your text is copied and the font is changed you again end up with the wrong curly quotes.)
Also, much of his advice doesn't apply to the web. Fonts designed for print often don't fare well on the screen, especially at small font sizes
Think of Monotype vs. Linotype as the Depression-era Mac vs. Windows and you’ve got it...(In fact, when it came time to license fonts for their operating systems, Microsoft licensed Times New Roman from Monotype and Apple licensed Times Roman from Linotype, perpetuating the schism.)
http://www.typographyforlawyers.com/?p=687
For example: http://tinypic.com/r/27y0uo3/5
Though I also think typography is important, you end up with a lot of non-serious and bad lawyers simply looking serious with good typography because that's what the serious and good lawyers do. Bad content is still bad content no matter how you dress it up.
And when typography is used as a signal, as more bad lawyers adopt it, it becomes a less and less effective signal--until it becomes standard fare, and not useful at all for telling serious lawyers from non-serious ones.
Things that are "in style" slowly erode in distinguishability as they become mainstream and overused, and then the better elements from older looks are remixed into something distinctive and those who have the motivation and wherewithal to try them out (you could call them the fashion-conscious) bring these new looks into vogue.
You can find this in everything: music, clothes, art, not just typography. That's not to say it's a bad thing, it's just an evolution of human interest.
Out of those fields, typography remains the most closed discipline (I would argue creating a professional typeface is on the level of carving a violin, it is much more inaccessible than combining clothing accessories or beats in audio production), and since the elite foundries are still moving into the digital age kicking and screaming, there is much interesting progress to look forward to. It will be a while before typography is starved for ideas and recycles lazy, supercommercialized dreck the way (in my opinion) pop music has gone for the YouTube/iTunes era.
http://www.typographyforlawyers.com/?p=12
http://www.typographyforlawyers.com/?p=766
You have to activate it by checking a box in the Font dialog box... so irrational it's painful to contemplate.
I can imagine they did this for backward compatibility's sake (kerning would impact page layout), but consider the fact that 90% of the word processed documents produced today have crappy kerning because it was hidden behind a checkbox nobody will ever touch.