Category: layout

How important is the layout and design in your history? Watch this short video to see my opinion. Thanks.

Chris Stevenson   cs@sgenealogy

What kind of look do you want for your book? The justification that you choose will determine the look of your book. For history books there are two different justifications that look good, full or left. Full justification with both the left and right edges aligning straight up and down the page (like a newspaper column). Full justification will give your pages a clean orderly look but the spacing between words can sometimes look a little funny. With full justification, your headings could be either left, right, or centered on the page. Left justification has the left side aligned up and down and the right side is ragged. This gives a more conservative look to the book and the spacing between the words is consistent. If you have a book of poems, center justification will look great. The important thing is to choose one justification and stick to it. If you aren’t sure which way you want, look at a few different books to give you the feel of each style then choose the one you like best.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com

Page layout is a term which refers to the way in which text and images are situated on a page. The layout of your manuscript should be adjusted to look exactly the way you want to see it in print. Look at previously bound books for ideas. Check out several family or personal histories to see how they are done. When you see one you like then take note of the headers and footers, where the page number is located, how wide the margins are on each side of the page, and what fonts were used for the titles, text and captions.
Then you can setup your page to the same settings and see if it looks good for your book. If not then make some small adjustments until it is just how you want. This will become the template of your book and make it easier to set up the rest of the book to match. Save this layout as a separate file named something like “Book Template” and as you start a new chapter in a new file then open up a copy of the template so each chapter will match.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com

If your book is done in columns or with a small page size, then it is usually better to hyphenate words. Your right hand margin will be more even and your page layout will look better. Most word processors will automatically hyphenate words for you, but you need to proofread your book carefully to be sure that the hyphen didn’t end up in an unfortunate place. There are a few words that when split in the wrong place make two separate words, like ‘the-rapist’ and ‘thin-king’. While these “howlers” could be funny to some people, they could be upsetting to others. It is better to be safe than sorry, so look for the hyphenation howlers before you approve that final proof copy.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com

In laying out your pages, avoid creating paragraphs which start on the last line of a page or which finish on the first of the next. These isolated lines of text are called ‘widows and orphans’. The solution to this problem is to set your word processor to control the number of lines on a page so as to push the text forward (turn on the widows and orphans feature). You can also move the paragraph to the next page manually, but do this last thing before you publish the book. It will leave an extra-large gap at the bottom of a page but that will look better than an isolated single line of text.

Chris Stevenson cs@sgenealogy.com www.sgenealogy.com