Page:The practice of typography; correct composition; a treatise on spelling, abbreviations, the compounding and division of words, the proper use of figures and nummerals by De Vinne, Theodore Low, 1828-1914.djvu/221

tions follow one another, as in N.Y. or S.C., there need be no space between these letters.

Lower-case characters, always of irregular shape, filling from one fourth to three fourths of the type body, are made more irregular or more sprawling by putting spaces between the letters. The effect first produced by the spacing of lower-case letters is that of incoherence; the next is that of a too apparent striving after quaintness or eccentricity,

which should be unpleasing to any reader. When the type selected is not large enough to occupy the measure, use type of a larger size. If this cannot be done, leave the letters unspaced.^[1]

1. These suggestions are flatly contradicted by the teaching and the practice of a new school of typography, which directs that all lines must fill the measure. The order must be enforced for the shortest word in the broadest measure. The space to be put between letters may be an en quadrat or a three-em quadrat. I have seen the date of 1900 at the foot of a title-page so widely spaced, with six or more em quadrats separating the digits, that