Font marking

Font marking is a typographical option to mark out individual parts of a text, i.e. to highlight them optically. Some types of markup are intended to enable the reader to grasp a text more quickly and to make “eye jumps” (“read across” or “skim” the text). Other types of markings are used primarily to provide text parts with additional information for the reader. Such additional information can be in italics, for example: "This is a book title" or "Warning, change to a foreign language" or "This is about the spelling of a word" ( metalanguage ).

Particularly in the field of diplomacy , that is, the doctrine of historical documents , in relation to special sections of text that emphasize written forms, one speaks of markup fonts ; The littera elongata , which appeared in documents from the Middle Ages and the early modern period, can be regarded as an important, since it is frequently encountered, example of such a markup .

Word origin

The typographic term distinction comes from the printer language . Originally, this meant the method of highlighting parts of a text using a font design that deviated from the basic font, e.g. B. by different font sizes and types, but also by underlining, locking or by other printing colors. Marking also meant making the relevant passages in the associated manuscript recognizable by hand.

Types of awards

Can award categories include: bold, italic, underline , majuscule , caps ,  locked , underlays and different fonts , -grade , and colors.

Certain possible uses can be found for each type of labeling.

• Bold and semi-bold fonts are primarily used to highlight individual important words within a text. Highlighting in this type of marking should be noticed before reading and can significantly increase orientation in the text and thus the reading speed (e.g. bold lemmas in a lexicon).
• The locking phrase, which can be used in the classic book layout, has largely the same function , while bold markings are unusual there.
• Italic font usually differs little from the basic font. Highlighting that should be noticed while reading is often in italics. For example, italic is used to indicate magazine titles. This type of marking also requires careful reading. Here it is important to note that the italic section uses the font, if available, and does not set the document electronically inclined ( "italics", called "oblique" or "wrong").
• Underlining is only acceptable if there are no other options, as is the case with handwriting or typing on a typewriter , as letters with a lower length are often overlined.
• Small caps and uppercase letters (including uppercase or capital letters called) are used to highlight important words and short passages of text. Longer paragraphs in uppercase or small caps within a text are difficult to read and can confuse the reader.
• Important words or sections within a text can be highlighted by color coding or underlaying areas. These are noticed even before reading and help structure the text. They are often used in textbooks to emphasize memorable sentences. The underlay should stand out clearly from the text to ensure good legibility . Variation of the font color to, for example, red as the signal color can reveal the importance of a text passage or negative numerical values. A historically significant variant of this method of designation, especially used in the Middle Ages, is the rubricing .
• Different fonts are suitable for differentiating and emphasizing individual paragraphs. It should be noted here that you do not mix too many fonts together, as this affects the reading comfort. In addition, one assumes a typographically good mix of fonts if, for example, two fonts from different font classes are mixed together, i.e. fonts that are formally clearly different. On the other hand, fonts of a font family do not stand out from each other enough.
• In a broader sense, the crossing out of text can also be understood as a distinction, since this does not change the text itself, but only influences its meaning by adding the crossing line.

The different types of markings are further differentiated. A distinction is made between active , integrated and negative awards . Active distinctions are defined as highlighting with a significantly stronger font , such as bold, uppercase or a completely different font. The integrated distinction refers to more subtle types of emphasis. These include italics and small caps. The integrated award is used most often because it is both unobtrusive and effective. A rather rare form is the negative markup, in which a bold text is marked with a lean font style or a smaller font size.

headlines

Headings are often set in bold, underlined, in a larger font size, or in a different font.

Formula set

In the mathematical formula set , italics are used for variables and upright letters for function names, constants or descriptive indices such as “min” or “max”.

Harmonious award

With this type of text it is ensured that the gray value of the text page remains the same overall. The marking point is not noticeable on a cursory glance at the text; the sides look calm and even. Only when reading does the reader notice the emphasis. Italic is the usual harmonic markup, occasionally the spelling with small caps is also used. Harmonious markings can only be used for parts of the text that are not intended to catch the eye and are not used for orientation for the reader.

Other languages

Highlighting in other languages ​​differs significantly from Western accentuation due to the font used.

Since the Chinese characters do not use italics, in Japanese and Chinese small dots (less often small dashes) are written next to the individual characters when written vertically and above (Japanese) or below (Chinese) the individual characters in order to emphasize something. It is thus similar to underlining.

Chinese: 着重 号 Japanese: こ こを強調

See also

• Web Typography - For using markup fonts on the web.
• In word processing and other text-oriented data processing applications, text markup falls under text formatting , which is implemented in the code by markup languages such as XML .

literature

• Albert Ernst: Interaction. Text content and typographic design . Königshausen & Neumann, Würzburg 2005, ISBN 3-8260-3146-6 .
• Jan Tschichold : Pleasing printed matter thanks to good typography. Maier, Ravensburg 1960 (reprint. Maro-Verlag, Augsburg 1988, ISBN 3-87512-403-0 ).

Individual evidence

1. ^ Meyer's encyclopaedic lexicon. Volume 3. Mannheim 1971, p. 188.