One key feature of the Web 2.0 world is that of building personal relationships.

We’re moving from an environment where information is controlled by large, powerful, faceless corporations to a world where everyone can have an opinion and anyone can become an authority.

Profiles are raised. Friendships are built. And we learn from people not companies.

If you run a blog then it’s essential not to forget the “personal” aspect of blogging. Too many blogs these days present information in a clear and easily-digestable format yet have no real “personality”.

Those few blogs that are written by “real people” – people you can see, people you can understand, people you relate to – now these are the blogs that succeed. These are the blogs that rapidly build a large, passionate tribe of followers.

But what steps can you take to make your own more more personal and to let your readers really get to know and like you?

Create A Kick-Ass “About Me” Page

I run a number of blogs in different niches and never cease to be surprised by how many people visit my “about me” page each week. It seems that visitors in a Web 2.0 world *want* to know about the person behind the site so give them what they want.

Don’t make the mistake of assuming that nobody will want to know who you are or that they’re *only* there to read your blog posts.

Your readers want to know who *you* are. They want to know what makes you unique, what your experiences are and why they can trust what you’re writing.

Heck, a few might even want to know what you look like (hint – try including at least one photo on your “about me” page).

Offer A Personal Introduction

If you met someone for the first time wouldn’t it be natural to introduce yourself to them before you started chatting about internet security, dog training or whatever your particular interest is?

One way to make your blog more personal is to offer a short, to-the-point introduction to welcome new visitors to your site and quickly explain who you are and what your site is about.

Think of it as the “elevator pitch” for your blog or your “about me” page boiled down into a couple of sentences.

There are a number of ways to make that first introduction. The first is to put it at the top of your navigation menu so it’s highly visible to new visitors.

The other is to use a WordPress plugin like What Would Seth Godin Do which will put your introduction at the top of each blog post but will only show it to new readers who don’t know you yet rather than annoying existing readers with whom you’ve already built up a relationship.

Include Your Name In Your Posts

If you’re using WordPress then a standard feature is the line that appears just under your post title that reads “Posted by Admin”.

“Admin” – is that really your name?

How much better to build rapport with your readers if this line read “Posted by Matthew”. Suddenly your readers know your name. They know you’re a human being. And that you’re proud of your work rather than trying to hide away behind a nameless title.

This little tip is easy enough to implement. Simply log into WordPress and visit the “Users” section. Here you’ll find your profile where you can change the name that readers see in a matter of moments.

Gravatar-Enable Your Blog

Wikipedia defines an avatar as “the graphical representation of a user”. Typically this is in the form of a photograph of yourself that is included by your name when you post in forums, on blogs and so on.

Gravatar is a free service that links your email address to an image of your choice so that nay time you use a Gravatar-enabled website and enter your email address you will find your chosen avatar pasted into the page.

How much nicer would it be when you’re responding to comments on your blog if a large number of people – including yourself – all had a photograph of themselves next to their name.

This makes the conversation far more personal (or to put it another way – far less faceless) and enables both you and your visitors to get a better idea of who it is they are communicating with.

Include Personal Posts About Your Life

You blog to provide high-quality content to your readers but from time to time why not break off to make a more personal, “from the heart” post about yourself and your experiences as of late.

You could even create a special category for “personal posts” or simply lace your new posts with a few snippets of information about yourself.

Remember that the people you feel closest to – and have the greatest respect and affection for – are normally those people you know the most about.

And we’re not just talking the good stuff either; admitting your weaknesses and mistakes can be just as important.

So be brave and open yourself up to your online audience. Let them glimpse the real you and I think you’ll be surprised at the positive response you get from your honesty.

Share Your Social Networking Homes

If you are active on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn or YouTube then why not share the links to your profiles on your blog?

Doing so will allow readers who like what you have to say to connect with you in a deeper, more personal way. This not only makes you more “human”, but thanks to the viral nature of many social networking sites, it can also help to spread your message far further than you may first imagine.

Create Videos Rather Than Just Text Content

I have nothing against text-based articles, but imagine how powerful it is to see someone in the flesh talking about a subject they are passionate about. You get to hear their accent, their tonation, to see the little facial expressions that make them unique.

Yes, I know talking to your camcorder can feel uncomfortable and you’ll probably feel like a fool the first time you do it. But making video posts is not only great for making your blog more personal but can even make blogging quicker and more fun because you can simply turn on your camera and start talking then quickly upload your video to YouTube or Vimeo for easy distribution.

So now it’s your turn. What techniques do you use to make your blog more personal?  What have you seen other bloggers doing that caught your attention?

Are there any key strategies you think I’ve missed?  Please leave your opinions in the comments box below…

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from 2 Create A WebsiteYou may also like to read:

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7 Tips To Make Your Blog More Personal is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

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photography-website is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

Among other things, effective typography manages to achieve three necessary objectives of web designing are Look, Appearance and Outcome which helps you to keep apart from normal wave.

Display typography is a potent element in graphic design, where there is less concern for readability and more potential for using type in an artistic manner. Below you’ll find Collection of High-Quality Fresh Free Fonts To Enhance Your Designs by which you can save money and focus on making great applications.

The basic purpose behind this post is to show you Popular, Artistic and most importantly Free Downloadable font types to save your time searching them online. Direct download link available for the entire fonts.

You can also find some related free references at the end of the post. Just make sure to read the license agreements carefully as they can change from time to time.

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from Instant ShiftYou may also like to read:

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30+ Latest Free Fonts for Your Designs is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

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10 Bad Web Design Habits You Should Avoid is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

Maybe it’s just me; maybe I’m just a creature of habit and fail to look closely at things I’m really used to seeing, and I forget that there’s more to CSS than what I’ve personally discovered and learned so far.

Well, while reading Christian Heilmann’s chapter in the Smashing Book 2, I noticed he used the following code snippet when showing some CSS (edited for brevity):

#pagetitle {
	border-color: black white white black;
}

My snap reaction was: “That’s got to be wrong. Since when does the border-color property allow separate shorthand declarations for the color of each border?” But then I quickly realized that I have probably used that property maybe one or two times in 10+ years of development, so what do I know? Plus, I’m sure Christian–a seasoned developer–knows what he’s talking about.

The fact is, every time I declare a border’s color, I always do it using the shorthand border property, like this:

#pagetitle {
	border: solid 1px black;
}

It’s rare that I ever use border-color, border-style, border-left-style–or any of those other long-winded versions of the border-related properties. In 99% of cases, using the shorthand border property does exactly what you need.

Sure enough, I checked out the SitePoint CSS reference and it says:

The shorthand property border-color sets the border color on all four sides of an element using from one to four of the values specified. Each border can have its own value.

So just like margin and padding shorthand values, the color for each border is declared in the order: top, right, bottom, left (clockwise from the top).

Also Works With border-style and border-width

You can do the same thing with the border-style and border-width properties, defining a different width and/or border style for each side of the targeted element.

And naturally, you can omit values if necessary, like this:

#pagetitle {
	border-width: 2px 1px;
	border-style: solid dashed;
}

Again, just like margins and padding, although we’re declaring only the first two values, the other two simply inherit from the first two.

Keep in Mind…

You can’t incorporate this multi-declaration technique using the border property (although that would seem logical); it only applies to the three properties mentioned above. So the following would be invalid:

#pagetitle {
	/* THIS IS INVALID! */
	border: solid dashed 1px 2px black white white black;
}

Also, you can’t do this with the outline-width, outline-style, or outline-color properties. Thus, when you declare an outline, it’s the same color, style, and width on all sides.

Not Very Practical…?

The truth is, you’ll probably never, or else rarely, have to use this in any project. So I guess it’s a good “nice-to-know” but doesn’t have a whole lot of application considering how rare it is to want different colors/styles/thicknesses on different borders on the same element.

I think if this has any kind of application, it might be in some JavaScript-driven code that changes the look of lines (in the form of borders) dynamically according to user input. But I guess in many cases that sort of thing would be better done with something like canvas.

So forgive me if you already knew any of this. I guess I’ve gotten so accustomed to declaring the same border style, color, and width on all sides using a single declaration that I never even thought about the possibilities available in those other properties. Would love to hear if this is new to anyone else reading this.

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from Impressive WebsYou may also like to read:

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Here’s Something Interesting About CSS Borders is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

7. A Usable Page Weight

Ironically I used to hate the Web. I started with dial-up and it was a miserable experience. Moreover, back in the day it seemed that every site I visited required some sort of plugin or add-on to make it work. Frankly, the Internet was a pain in the butt. This has changed on some levels. The need for plugins or add-ons is greatly reduced what with operating systems pre-loaded with all the necessary support. But some people still have dial-up. For the last six years I’ve had cable broadband and it’s a dream. I’m spoiled. And it’s very easy to forget the less fortunate and go hog wild, loading my pages with heavy graphics. It’s easy to forget how doing this will make for a less-than-happy experience to traditional dial-up and distant DSL users. Gotta keep the weight down.

I’m not saying the Web isn’t a place for heavyweights, it is, but with due consideration. If you want to offer heavyweight graphics and whatnot, let visitors navigate to them, instead of offering them on the initial page load. And warn users if something big is coming up. It’s only fair to allow those who want to opt out the opportunity to do so.

I suggest aiming for an upper limit of 100kb per page of combined background and embedded images (this is testable). You can buy a lot for a 100kb. To get the most bang for the buck, reduce the over all number of images, optimize them exporting only flattened, compressed files, and please pre-size embedded images for their location (being sure to add the height and width attributes to the img element). I’ve seen thumbnail-sizes that were really 900kb monsters with styles off! That’s just wrong.

8. A Helpful Error Page

If you’ve ever been lost, it’s always nice to see some helpful soul willing to give directions (assuming you are willing to admit you’re lost). On the Web you can be that helpful soul. Not only, as mentioned in the last installment, can you offer a site map to proactively guide your visitors, you can offer a friendly, styled “404” error page (or pages if you want to cover more errors). Your error page should offer at the very minimum offer a link home, a navigation menu, and at least a link to the site map. If you want to be a really helpful soul, though, try combing most if not all your nav tools and putting them on one page. Make a perfect 404 page offering a site map on the page (easy with dynamic site maps), search, even contact info, and more.

This is not hard to do. Ask your Web host for starters. Specifically ask them about custom error pages since you’ll want to provide something useful and most default server error pages, even styled ones, aren’t really very helpful at all.

9. Good Headings

In the last installment I spoke of the importance of using the right mark-up for the purpose at hand. I mentioned headings but didn’t go into detail. That’s because headings are so important they, well… they deserve a heading of their own. The use of headings is logical, and styling them is wide open, just use your imagination.

What good are they? They offer section demarcation, semantics and ordering, beauty in the right hands, a search indexing benefit, greater accessibility, and even a navigation source for some users of assistive technologies like screen readers. What more incentive could you possibly need to act on this recommendation?

10. Jump Links Provided

You may have detected by my suggestions so far that I’m big on helping Website users. I feel that the easier my sites are to use, the better their experience will be. I want them to not only find the goods, being supported along the way as needed, passively and on demand if at all possible, but I want them to want to come back. So, one of my twelve is going to have to be offering skip or jump links. I find these are very helpful to everyone with exception to most of those who use a mouse or pointer — and that is a greater number of people than you may realize. A jump link affords users the opportunity to jump down the page to the content or navigation, by-pass redundant or lengthy sections, access help content, and jump back up the page if you consider a top link or back to menu link a jump link. I do. Some may argue that it’s a replication of browser behavior offering links like this, but I’ve not heard recently of record numbers of browser-savvy surfers if you know what I mean. Plus, they’re simply innocuously helpful.

One rule: If you’re going to offer jump links, it’s best to make them visible, but not always necessary. There are ways to hide jump links from view while still maintaining a high level of accessibility and usability to a very large percentage of users. Do note, however, that displaying them will increase that percentage to 100.

11. Focus Styles

I’m not a dedicated keyboard user, but I do use my keyboard a lot. It’s helpful at times, convenient at other times. It’s an option. Sometimes I use my keyboard on the Web, tabbing onto pages, bouncing around from link to link following the natural source order of the page. Sometimes, however, depending on the site, this can be difficult. I’ll be tabbing along, minding my own business, when all of a sudden, wham, I’m lost. I don’t know where I am on the page. The reason is invariably the developer of the site failed to offer one to the most simplistic of accommodations: link :focus. Probably due to simple ignorance. But I’m here to change that.

To offer link focus it involves nothing more than a simple style sheet entry, like this:

a:focus, a:active { color : black; background-color : yellow; }

The a:active is for Internet Explorer, and to provide the when-activated styling on other graphical browsers. Obviously you can get more creative, but that above will help make your Web pages a lot more navigable to keyboard users and nobody will suffer a diminished experience.

12. Robots.txt File

You may be wondering why I included something so mundane as a robots.txt file in this line-up, but I feel it’s very helpful to have one. It provides instructions to honest indexing robots and spiders like the GoogleBot, telling them to stay out of certain directories you don’t really want them in anyway. Why have your bandwidth wasted needlessly?

Some people, I’ve heard, want to disable right-click on their sites thinking that they may somehow actually succeed in stopping people from copying their images (can’t be done), yet they don’t have a robots.txt file excluding their images directory. The latter would be far more worthwhile. It’s very easy to make one, there are even tools you can use to help you get the job done.

Is There More?

The short answer is, yes, of course. But if you satisfy all twelve items in this two-part article, you have done well. You’ll be offering a quality site that is a cut above many sites of the Web. And the benefits, you may find, will actually be noticeable, and perhaps even tangible. Happy coding.

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from WPDFDYou may also like to read:

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Twelve Things Most Sites Need – Part II is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

They’ve been around for a while now: reset style sheets. They’re becoming more commonplace among web designers, and even Yahoo is using a reset stylesheet of their own in their development. There are a few different viewpoints and opinions on the use of reset stylesheets, though. Do you reset?

What are reset stylesheets?

For those that don’t know, a default reset stylesheet is a .css file that you use in your HTML documents. The file has CSS rules that effectively neutralize a browser’s default rendering of HTML elements and positioning. It sets all margins and padding to 0 and removes text decoration, size, and weight from HTML tags that normally have these by default, like the header tags (h1 – h6), em, and strong.

To use a reset stylesheet, you link it in your header like any other stylesheet. Then, when you’re writing your own CSS, you can choose exactly how each element is to look. You can turn the bold text back on for the headers, and set the exact amount of padding you want, for example. Set your font faces and spacing however you like. The idea behind this extra work is that when a browser is reset to this zeroed-out state, you can specify exactly what you want your elements to look like, and practically all browsers will have an easier time rendering your design as you intended it rather than how the browser’s defaults want to display it. The reset stylesheet removes the browser’s defaults, so you don’t have to worry about them.

If you want to try out a reset stylesheet, you can get Eric Meyer’s reset stylesheet here, or you can try out YUI’s Reset.

Keep in mind: resetting in web design, like many other things, has its pluses and it has its minuses.

Reset stylesheet advantages

Resetting greatly helps a designer build designs that look most similar (sometimes, identical) cross-browsers.
Because a reset will “zero out” a browser’s formatting of your HTML, you get total control in your own CSS to declare exactly what you want, without the worry of whether or not a specific browser is going to tamper with your design.

Reset stylesheets can be modified to suit your tastes. A reset doesn’t always have to zero out absolutely everything. Maybe you’re comfortable with how the different browsers handle some things, or maybe you have a different idea for what the baseline for most of your projects should be. You can modify a reset stylesheet to suit your needs and create a uniformity amongst your work that is unique to you.

An experienced designer who resets can save time. It’s true that learning to use a reset stylesheet can take some time to get used to, but once you’ve learned the ins and outs of your reset, and have your own modifications that you’ve built over time, you can pop your reset and modifications into a design and just start designing.

Simply put: your HTML document becomes a blank canvas and you can work with whatever CSS you wish.

Reset stylesheet disadvantages

The “clean slate” effect takes some getting used to. This adds a bit of a learning curve to your web design, which you’re probably already nice and familiar with. Most likely, you’ve built up your methods and workflow over time, and something as drastic as a reset stylesheet can slow you down again.

Because resetting takes everything down to basics, you have to re-add things that you might think should just be included, like bold text in headers. You’ll also need to pay special attention to where exactly you want all your design elements to appear, and how. Things you used to let the browser take care of, you now have to code for. This leaves you writing more CSS than you probably want to, or even need to.

Even through all this extra work when using a reset stylesheet, the reset still doesn’t guarantee that your designs will look identical in various browsers. In fact, in some extreme cases, your design may end up looking no different across browsers than if you hadn’t used a reset stylesheet. YUI’s reset stylesheet, for example, works best with just what they consider “Grade-A” browsers, and some parts of the reset don’t affect browsers not on this list. Granted, the Grade A list is the list of browsers we all design for primarily, anyway.

Differing points of view on reset stylesheets

Eric Meyer released his stylesheet, and people picked it up then seemingly immediately split into groups: those who like it, those who hate it, those who don’t use it but can see its usefulness, and those who use it if the job calls for it. Want to see some people who fall into these various groups?

Jonathan Snook is one who falls into the “those who don’t use it but can see its usefulness” group. He posted on his site his thoughts on reset stylesheets, and why he doesn’t use them. In a nutshell, he states that reset style sheets take things overboard, and while he doesn’t necessarily have anything against them, they just don’t suit his tastes. In his opinion, they require too much work to go about re-declaring things in your own CSS that should just be there, which reset style sheets take away.

Eric Meyer obviously falls into the “those who like it” group. After Jonathan’s post above, Eric felt that people were getting the wrong idea about his thoughts on reset stylesheets, so he cleared things up on his site. He never intended reset stylesheets to become a “be-all, end-all” solution to cross-browser compatibility, and in fact, wants and actively encourages users you take his reset and modify to fit their tastes, or even not to use it at all if they don’t want to.

Jens Meiert (grouped in “those who hate it”) states pretty strongly Why Reset Style Sheets are Bad. Jens says that “novices should not use them, [and] experts would not use them,” then goes on to list the reasons why (load time increases and accessibility concerns, among others) and lists alternatives to resetting.

If you’ll read through the above links, you’ll find that many of the comments on those sites are made by users who fall into the last category: “those who use it if the job calls for it.”

What do I think?

When it comes to resetting in my web design, I fall somewhere between “don’t use it but can see its usefulness” and “use it if the job calls for it.” When I’ve played with it for my own local pet projects, I found it adding time to the project that I could have avoided. I can see, though, that if I spent some more time with it and made my own tweaks, which is what Eric intended with the idea of a reset sheet anyway, it might speed up my work in the future and help my designs. For right now, though, for anything serious, I won’t use it, but I’ll still recommend others give it a shot.

It’s a tool.

Everyone has their own method of designing and they have their own tools. These tools include your text editor of choice, your operating system of choice, what graphics editors you use, palette generators if you choose to use them, and now, reset stylesheets. If you prefer to draw your design on paper, scan it into Photoshop and add color, then cut the design into divs, that’s what you do. If you prefer to mark up the HTML of your site first, then tack on a reset stylesheet and build your CSS before adding your images, great. Everybody does things differently.

I think it’s best to view a reset stylesheet as a tool in your toolbox. It’s in mine, and while I’m not too good with that tool yet, I know some people can use it masterfully, while others choose not to use it at all. Either way, the craft is yours to do with what you wish, how you wish to do it. I don’t think the inclusion or non-inclusion of a reset stylesheet says anything more than, “Hey, this designer used/didn’t use a reset stylesheet.”

I’d like to encourage users who are thinking of using a reset stylesheet to give it a shot in their next project. Maybe you’ll like it, and if you don’t, then no harm done; you can always just not use it.

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from WPDFDYou may also like to read:

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Do You Reset Your Web Design? is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

Part two of last week’s examination of the personality of punctuation. Click here to read Part 1.

Em Dash and Hyphen

Em dashes and hyphens are sisters, and whenever they go out together, they get stopped by strangers.

“Are you twins? You all look so much alike!”

At this, they roll their eyes. Sure, they look similar, but it’s obvious — to them, at least — that they’re each completely unique.

The em dash is the eldest. She’s taller than her sister, more graceful, and a bit more aloof. She needs her space — specifically, one space on either side. Some people misinterpret her attitude as snobby because of her near-encyclopedic knowledge of famous quotes. However, since em dashes are used to indicate attribution, (“The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation.” — Henry David Thoreau) she’ll demurely credit her knowledge to her job.

No, the real reason she’s distant at times is that she’s insecure about her place in punctuation society. She has two main jobs, one as a sort of watered down parenthesis (see the third paragraph in this section), and one as a sort of watered down semicolon (see the fourth paragraph in this section), and sometimes she wonders if she’s even necessary at all.

The hyphen doesn’t have this problem. She’s the baby, and like most younger siblings, she’s a total ham — and a total copycat. Whereas em dashes link a phrase to the rest of a sentence, hyphens link words to other words. Far more social than her aloof older sister, the hyphen doesn’t mind being right next to the words she links, and sometimes within the word itself.

One of her favorite games is jumping around a phrase and seeing how she can change the meaning. Take “three month old puppies,” for instance. The hyphen might jump between “month” and “old” — three month-old puppies — and then squeal over the idea of three puppies, each of them a month old. Then she might jump between “three” and “month” — three-month-old puppies — and squeal again over the idea of a number of puppies, all three months old.

Whenever the hyphen plays this game, the em dash just smiles and pats her head.

Commas

We’re not done with the sibling metaphor yet. I want you to think back to middle school, back when you thought you were the coolest person on the face of the earth. Yet nothing could shatter that illusion faster than when your obnoxious kid brother showed up and revealed some embarrassing detail — like the rocketship footie pajamas you wore to bed every night, or your huge crush on Daniel Radcliffe.

That’s what commas are: obnoxious kid brothers.

Think about it. They’re always getting underfoot, mucking things up, slowing things down, and changing what you meant to say. Need I remind you of that old punch line (also the title of a fabulous grammar guide I recommend to everyone I meet), “Eats, shoots and leaves”?

The thing about younger siblings that no one ever wanted to admit was that they were much, much cuter than we were. And that made them useful. Want a raise on your allowance? Have Li’l Brother ask Mom and Dad — no one can say no to his patented puppy-dog eyes. You broke Gumma’s antique hurricane lamp? Little Sis knows just how to break the news to her. She’s so cute that Gumma will practically be thanking her.

Commas, like little siblings, eat this stuff up. After all, the only reason they were constantly underfoot was because they actually believed that you were the coolest person on the face of the earth. All they wanted was to be your faithful sidekick. So the next time you’re mulling over a sentence that looks a little comma-heavy, remember that they’re only trying to help.

Exclamation Point

You’re throwing a party, and it’s dying fast. Everyone stands around awkwardly, sipping beer from their red plastic cups, not talking much, occasionally stealing glances at their wristwatches.

Just then, your exclamation point buddy shows up. He’s half drunk, dressed in nothing but a Speedo and an American flag, and wielding a bottle of Patron like tennis racquet. “Who wants to get this party started?!” he yells. Within a few minutes, wallflowers are doing keg stands in your bathtub, there’s a heated beer pong tournament in your kitchen, Mardi Gras beads are flying left and right, and a hip jam band has materialized in your living room. The exclamation point beams. He’s done his job.

The trouble starts when he invites a few more of his friends. They trickle in one by one, until they outnumber your party guests, and then the real pandemonium ensues. The jam band has turned into a thrash punk outfit, and the mosh pit is crushing your furniture. The beer pong tournament devolves into fight club — one guy punches another in the jaw and gets thrown through a wall for his trouble. Everyone who did a keg stand is violently ill. But the exclamation points are just getting started. Just then, the house is bathed in flashing blue and white lights. “It’s the cops! Cheese it!” your exclamation point buddy yells, and everyone splits. You’re left with thousands of dollars worth of property damage and medical bills.

The point of this cautionary tale is that exclamation points are fun, but too many of them can land you in big trouble. Limit use of exclamation points to one per paragraph, otherwise you run the risk of your punctuation speaking louder than your words.

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from WPDFDYou may also like to read:

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Punctuationality (Part 2) is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

It’s easy to resent punctuation. Its purpose is to clarify sentences, so why are the rules governing it so complicated? There are so many exceptions, so many exceptions to exceptions — it’s enough to make you want forego punctuation altogether.

Well, back when it was alive and kicking, the Latin language did just that — and it didn’t stop there. Written Latin also omitted spaces between words or lowercase letters.

It sounds kinda nice, doesn’t it? No more worrying about whether that comma is in the right place, and on the flip side, no more embarrassing urge to whip out a red pen and correct restaurant menus. What’s not to love?

A lot, it turns out. The result of all this grammatical simplification looked a little something like this:

GALLIAESTOMNISDIVISAINPARTESTRESQUARUMUNAMINCOLUNTBELGAEALIAMAQUITANITERTIAMQUIIPSORUM
LINGUACELTAENOSTRAGALLIAPPELLANTUR

You don’t need to be discipulae lingua Latina to understand how nightmarish that sentence is. Now let’s see how it looks when we apply our modern grammatical conventions:

Gallia est omnis divisa in partes tres, quarum unam incolunt Belgae, aliam Aquitani, tertiam qui ipsorum lingua Celtae, nostra Galli appellantur.

Behold the power of punctuation! Interword spacing, commas, and a period have helpfully transformed a terrifying sentence-monster into five easy-to-digest compartments.

Like it or not, punctuation is necessary. So what to do about all those hard-to-remember rules? Well, the trick is to make the same allowances for punctuation that we do for people. We all blatantly contradict ourselves in one way or another. It’s these little exceptions to the rules we set for ourselves that make us that much more interesting and unique. Punctuation is no different. Rather than getting frustrated by all the exceptions to the rules, try embracing “punctuationality” — the personality of punctuation.

Naturally, a comprehensive guide to all the available punctuation in the English language is a bit beyond the scope of a single article, so instead I’ll concentrate on the stylistic uses of a few commonly used marks over the course of two articles.

Ellipsis

I like to think of ellipses as industrious workers who don’t particularly enjoy what they do for a living, but take pride in doing a good job. But when they get home, they like to unwind Michael Phelps style — and I’m not talking about swimming laps.

Most ellipses find work in the scripts for cheesy daytime soap operas. They indicate a pause, usually weighted, punctuated with a raised eyebrow or a look of desperate longing. These pauses speak melodramatic volumes.

“I… love you, Jacob.”
“But Marie… we… can never be…”
“Unless…”

All that emotion, saying so much without words, is taxing on ellipses. That’s why, when they get home, they order a pizza, pop in Half Baked or Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, and call up their best friend, Dude, to come hang out.

“Dude… I just had the funniest thought. What if…”
“What?”
“…”
“Dude?”
“Dude… I forgot what it was…”
“Dude…”

All those empty pauses signifying nothing are the ultimate in relaxation for poor, tired ellipses. They pass out around 1 a.m., wake up in time to take a shower and grab a cup, and then they’re back at it, infusing our soap operas and romance novels with the right amount of over-the-top melodrama.

Join us next week for more in-depth examination of the personality you never knew punctuation had.

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from WPDFDYou may also like to read:

• Punctuationality (Part 2)
• A Capital Idea: Setting the Record Straight on Capitalization Online
• 10 Bad Writing Habits you Should Avoid
• 25 Beautiful Minimalist Designs
• SEO With Google Webmaster Tools – Part 1: Setting Up a Site

Punctuationality (Part 1) is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website

As the practice of Web design ages, some common rules and “best practices” inevitably embed themselves in the craft. Among these are the processes for using specific types of semantics when coding your site, like using divs as hooks in your X/HTML for your CSS, and making your page beautiful and functional that way. Another is to ensure readability of your site by choosing a proper number of fonts (generally, no more than three or four, and for the minimalist, one or two). More important than that is the type of font you choose.

Typography in your Web design is undoubtedly important. For some time now, it’s been taught and practiced that using a sans-serif font is the best choice for page content and large blocks of text in Web design, while serif fonts should be reserved for use in small doses or as the style of choice for your headings. WPDFD even has a very recent article that states this. Some other places you can find this teaching:

• About.com
• Urban Fonts
• Web Design Reference

In a nutshell, here are some of the key points in using sans-serif fonts.

• Sans-serif fonts look good at most sizes.
• They tend to have a more contemporary or business feel.
• Most operating systems render them neatly.
• Serif fonts tend to lose readability at smaller sizes.
• Serif fonts, when viewed on a Windows computer, may look terrible. This is because Windows has a ClearType ability that smoothes the edges of screen fonts, which would make the serif fonts look good, but many Windows computers don’t have this option turned on by default.
• Sans-serif fonts, on the other hand, can look good with or without Windows’ ClearType turned on.

Overall, designing with sans-serif fonts for your main content is a good general typography rule for your Web design. Many often-visited sites use sans-serif fonts for viewing on the web, and it certainly works well for them. Google is an obvious example. Also, Microsoft and Yahoo follow this convention. Especially prominent sites in our own field, like A List Apart use it to very good effect. And if you’ll take a quick look around, you’ll notice WPDFD sticks mainly to sans-serif fonts, as well.

But. (You knew that was coming, didn’t you?)

I fired up my RSS reader recently and came across a fairly attractive page with an entry about designing with type characters. This particular page doesn’t touch directly on using serifs in Web design, but I found it easy to read.

It was also fairly refreshing. Seeing so many sans-serif fonts used in only so many ways on the Web isn’t exactly tiresome, but it certainly does lend a certain charm to serif fonts when you seem them executed well in Web design.

That same page above also has links to a few other pages that use serif fonts well. For your convenience, I’ll link them here, too, and include my thoughts:

• Twisted Intellect
  I like this page. It reads well and it’s a very elegant design. The typography here is very nice.
• The 3rd SEED Conference
  While Twisted Intellect uses serif fonts, it doesn’t use them for lots of content. The 3rd SEED Conference does exactly the opposite: the entire design is serif fonts; no images. It’s just layout, placement, and typography. This is executed beautifully and I really like what’s been done here.

There are some other sites I’ve come across while just browsing leisurely, too, that caught my eye with their use of serifs.

• Jens Meiert: Why Reset Style Sheets are Bad
  This is a good-looking, minimalistic blog that uses serif fonts to good effect. And hey, the page even touches on an interesting topic.
• Fun With Fonts
  This is not only a cute short story about a robot; it’s also a good use of typography. The serif font here accomplishes its job very well.

The examples of good-looking pages above were all delightful to look at and to read. As opposed to sans-serif fonts, it seems that serif fonts do take a bit more skill for a Web designer to wield effectively, but the payoffs can be quite impressive.

Things to keep in mind

From what I can see, there are numerous advantages and disadvantages to using a serif font.

Benefits of using a serif font:

• Thanks to the vast majority of web sites using sans-serif fonts, using a serif font can lend your page a refreshing, personal, warmer, and more visually attractive appeal. Any or all of these effects can be accomplished with the right styling.
• A page using serif fonts is different, and helps you stand out.
• Serif fonts tend to give a web designer more to “work with.” Their shapes can range from rigid and stoic to elegant and understated.
• I think serif fonts benefit more from color and experimenting with color, though this is just personal opinion on this one.

Things to watch out for when designing with serif fonts:

• This is one of the biggest points against using a serif font, so pay close attention: Serif fonts, especially when italicized, usually look terrible in Windows! The ClearType preference must be turned on for the fonts to look nice, and many Windows users do not know where to turn ClearType on or what ClearType even is.
• Serif fonts lose readability at smaller font sizes. A medium to large font size works best.
• See here for an example of how serifs can break down and make the eye struggle at too small a size.
• Serif fonts tend not to have a “business” feel about them, so it’s probably still best to avoid them when designing a commercial site. They lend themselves better to “personal” or “informative” content.

When you really look at the points against serif fonts, though, you can see that generally they break down into two main problems: readability in Windows and text size concerns. Both of these problems aren’t as big a trouble as you might think.

For one, Internet Explorer 7, while not the best browser around, uses its own ClearType rendering, whether or not ClearType is turned on in a user’s Windows settings. Most Windows users still use Internet Explorer to browse, so serifs for these users will seamlessly look as you, the designer, intend them. The widespread use of Internet Explorer 7 alone significantly reduces the concern for how serif fonts will look in Windows.

Secondly, if a user does use Firefox or another browser in Windows, your concern for how your serifs will look can drop a bit more. It’s safe to think that most (or at least some) users who have another browser installed also have enough knowledge of Windows preferences that they’ll have ClearType turned on, or have the knowledge of how to do so.

As far as text size is concerned: that’s totally up to you. This is a non-concern as far as many Web designers consider it, since you are the designer and can choose to use a decent-sized serif font. This leads to a third point against serifs that is focused more on you than on technicality: serifs are a bit tougher to use in Web design than sans-serifs.

That’s not a terribly large issue, though, because it’s one that you can get around with your design. In fact, as is the case with the sites I’ve listed above, it may not even be something to “get around,” but instead an intentional tool to work with in your design.

Keeping the “design” in Web design

I would like to see more modern Web designs using serif fonts for their content. They look really nice when used well, and it’s a scary thought to think that we may be running into design clichés with the whole sans-serif-for-content “rule.” The Web is a great canvas, and I hope designers can continue to do great and beautiful things with it, especially when those beautiful things step outside the lines and manage to remain functional.

This post was generated by an RSS Feed from WPDFDYou may also like to read:

• Simple CSS: Creating More Readable Text
• 30 Excellent Fresh Free Fonts For Your Designs
• Knowing About Web Safe Fonts
• 35 Fresh High-Quality Free Fonts for Professional Designers
• 40 High-Quality Latest Free Fonts For Your Designs

Don’t Be Afraid of Serif Fonts is a post from: Build Me A Fab Website