(It should be noted that diagonal hyphens not only fill space better than horizontal ones, but that they take up less space laterally.)įig. In the Hypnerotomachia Poliphili printed by Aldus Manutius there is at least one page with five hyphens in succession: two diagonal, two horizontal, and one diagonal. Four in a row can be found not only in the Gutenberg Bible, but in such other celebrated books as the Nuremberg Chronicle (1492) printed by Anton Koberger, the polyglot Bible (1569–1572) of Christopher Plantin, and the Médailles sur les Principaux Evenements du Règne de Louis le Grand (1702) set in the Romain du Roi. No one seemed to be overly concerned with the number of hyphenated lines in a row. Jenson, Ratdolt and Aldus used angled but single hyphens, while the latter also introduced the horizontal hyphen we know today. Yet, hyphens continued to be essential for line breaks, though hanging hyphens disappeared because they made composing metal type more complicated. They realized that, unlike scribes, they could achieve justification by distributing space within a line. While Gutenberg used an enormous character set to achieve a consistent texture, subsequent printers dispensed with most of the ligatures, abbreviations and alternate forms as unnecessary. Note how the hyphens hung in the margins as well as the use of ligatures (e.g., colatis in line 1) and abbreviations (e.g., Regnate in line 7) to achieve justification with even word spacing. įig.1: Detail of page from the B42 Bible of Johannes Gutenberg (1455). In the design and use of his hyphens Gutenberg had solved some of the problems that confront modern typographers. Consequently, the pages of the Gutenberg Bible are beautiful. His hyphens are angled double lines and, remarkably, they are hung in the margin. And, like the scribes, Gutenberg employed hyphens to link words across lines. This meant that his character set included numerous ligatures, abbreviations, and alternate narrow letters that enabled his columns of text to be justified and yet have close and consistent word spacing. In producing his Bible, Johann Gutenberg copied medieval scribal practices as well as the textura of local German manuscripts. From the 8th century onward the hyphen was used as a consistent sign to correct an inappropriately placed space in separated writing, including words broken across a line. According to Paul Saenger, author of Space between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading (1997), it was introduced, along with other diacritical signs and marks of punctuation, into Latin writing in the late 2nd century or the 3rd century when the Romans adopted the Greek style of scriptura continua. The hyphen was originally invented by the Greeks to aid the reader to overcome ambiguity in scriptura continua (writing without word spaces). They try to minimize the number of hyphens in a row at the end of lines in justified text setting. They turn off hyphenation when setting text flush left, rag right. Yet, it elicits loathing among many contemporary graphic designers. The hyphen is an unprepossessing character. Most of those larger issues will be ignored in order to keep this essay from becoming a novel. Thus, as with anything involving typography, it turns out that even something as humble as the hyphen is inextricably linked to larger issues. In turn, that investigation threatened to lead to others as it became clear that language, typeface choice, point size, line length and paragraphing styles influenced the quality of these two text formatting approaches. This essay began as an inquiry into contemporary hyphenation practices in books and magazines, but quickly spread to include an investigation of the history of justified and flush left, rag right settings. Plus, he addresses the modern-day aversion to hyphens in the design world. Paul Shaw investigates the history of justified, flush left, and rag right settings, and takes a look at contemporary hyphenation practices. Register today for the free course “ 5 Skills Every Design Needs to Know.
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