Top all-time · #1303
Butterick’s Practical Typography
Personal blog · typographyforlawyers.comdesignwriting
Butterick’s Practical Typography is a personal blog at typographyforlawyers.com about design and writing. Since 2009, 57 different Hacker News readers have linked it 63 times, most often “Typography for Lawyers, 2nd Edition (2018)”. The last post was in 2018, but the archive is still widely read.
Typography for Lawyers
Most-linked posts?
- Typography for Lawyers, 2nd Edition (2018)9 people · 9 mentions · first linked 2018-04-24
- Typography for Lawyers8 people · 10 mentions · first linked 2010-04-09
- A Brief History of Times New Roman3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2014-03-14
- Seven essential qualities of open source2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2012-01-12
- Typography for Lawyers (and anybody)2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2011-04-09
- The Typography of Legal Opinions2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2022-06-25
- /all-caps.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2014-07-30
- /about.html2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-07-24
- /2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2026-03-27
- Why Google Web Fonts aren’t really open source2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2013-07-24
What Hacker News says?
Mark Boulton's posts really are some of the best typography eye-openers. Especially his "Five Steps" posts[1][2] were what got me into design and made me "get" it. And it didn't take a lot of time to read through them. I recommend that people skip his book and read these two pieces instead. Bear in mind that the grid guide is more of an intro piece; you probably won't be able to create grid-based websites after read…
Comment linking /?page_id=1876
on “Crash Course: Design for Startups”Submitted A brief history of Times New Roman as a story · 124 points
HN discussionMatthew Butterick is a pretty interesting guy, with an interesting background: http://typographyforlawyers.com/about.html This looks great, I'm anxious to give it a thorough going-through in the next couple days. There are some good tips outside of just type as well, including this bit from the resume sample: "Avoid dense text by using a second page. [...] Students, this advice doesn’t apply to you. You’ve only…
Comment linking /about.html
on “Practical Typography”Submitted The Typography of Legal Opinions as a story · 107 points
HN discussionOther fantastic projects by the same author: “Typography for Lawyers” https://typographyforlawyers.com/ “The Book is a Program” https://docs.racket-lang.org/pollen/
Comment linking /
on “Beautiful Racket”Submitted Typography for Lawyers, 2nd Edition (2018) as a story · 98 points
HN discussionOMG, that’s him! No wonder this site looks simply beautiful. Also, he wrote a book on typography for lawyers: https://typographyforlawyers.com/
Comment linking /
on “Justice Stevens reads the fine print”Submitted Typography for Lawyers as a story · 84 points
HN discussionIt's a nice article that has some good data and makes thoughtful points, but oh my god the readability! That is the most gentle-on-my-eyes reading I think I have ever done on the web. As someone who has spent a lot of time finding ways to make web pages more readable https://github.com/chrisbroski/simple-css I am impressed. After a little revers-engineering to figure out what he did that makes his so much better tha…
Comment linking /equity.html
on “The economics of a web-based book”Submitted A Brief History of Times New Roman as a story · 16 points
HN discussionAnother good typography resource: http://www.typographyforlawyers.com/
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: How can I get better at design?”Submitted Typography for Lawyers as a story · 6 points
HN discussionPractice, experiment, and get feedback Especially if it doesn't come naturally to you, getting good at design takes a ton of practice. But if you do practice, you can definitely improve your design sensitivities and skills. Make sure you're getting feedback--and not feedback that says "I like that" or "I don't like that". Specific feedback is really really essential to improving what you're doing. Purpose and focus…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: How can I get better at design?”Submitted Seven essential qualities of open source as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI first came across that author via his other book/site https://typographyforlawyers.com/
Comment linking /
on “The Elements of Typographic Style Applied to the Web (2005)”Submitted Seven essential qualities of open source as a story · 3 points
HN discussion> It's really hard to follow this. I realize they are trying to make it an explanation that normal (but interested) people can read. But it's not working. The EFF often has this problem, IMHO, and I suspect it limits their ability to build support and awareness. I support the EFF; I'm an interested, knowledgable, well-educated person who is accustomed to reading sophisticated prose -- i.e., I'm their ideal audience…
Comment linking /who-is-typography-for.html
on “Leaked TPP Investment Chapter Reveals Serious Threat to User Safeguards”Submitted Why Google Web Fonts aren’t really open source as a story · 2 points
HN discussionI sure do like the way the Supreme Court sets its type [0]. I’d always imagined it must be laid out in the way you describe, with a LaTeX transform or something—it sounds like it’s really a manual kind of affair? Of course the first comment I find upon searching is another of Matthew Butterick’s [1], in which he agrees that it’s Real Nice, and points out that the Supreme Court does not allow documents using Times Ne…
Comment linking /court-opinions.html
on “A brief history of Times New Roman”Submitted Why Google Web Fonts aren’t really open source as a story · 2 points
HN discussionDespite the name which makes it sound like it's only for lawyers, I learned a lot from this website: http://www.typographyforlawyers.com/ .
Comment linking /
on “Typography on the iPad”Submitted ©2013 or © 2013? An answer. as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSorry, I should have linked a better resource than just the homepage. Here's the about page: http://practicaltypography.com/end-credits.html#bio . He also wrote Typography for Lawyers: http://typographyforlawyers.com/about.html .
Comment linking /about.html
on “Ligatures in programming fonts”Submitted Typography for Lawyers (and anybody) as a story · 2 points
HN discussionWeb design is a really broad field. You need to understand HTML and CSS, you need to understand the limitations of web browsers as a medium, you need to understand how users interact with webpages, and you need to have a decent handle on typography/visual design. I don't have good tutorials/articles for all of these areas, unfortunately: they're things I've learned over a pretty long period of time by reading a lot…
Comment linking /
on “Ask HN: Learning Web Design”Submitted Typography for Lawyers as a story · 2 points
HN discussionGarner has an epic grammar/usage book that I used years ago when I was a copy editor. Anyone who's in the uphill crusade to rid legal text of all-caps is a hero to me [1]. This is an awesome find -- thank you for sharing. [1] https://typographyforlawyers.com/all-caps.html
Comment linking /all-caps.html
on “Typography for Lawyers, 2nd Edition (2018)”Submitted Typography for lawyers as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSome of this is quite controversial. On some controversial points I think he's wrong, e.g. font size. https://typographyforlawyers.com/point-size.html . The federal appellate courts require at least 14 points, and the Supreme Court requires at least 13 points. Magazines may use smaller fonts, but (1) printing costs matter a lot more in that industry; and (2) the average age of the federal judiciary is a lot older th…
Comment linking /one-space-between-sentences.html
on “Typography for Lawyers, 2nd Edition (2018)”Submitted Typography for Lawyers as a story · 1 points
HN discussion
