What is A Book Typesetting?
Book typesetting is the process of designing
the layout/format/design of the text of a book. There are
a number of aspects of book typesetting that the editor/author
should keep in mind when typesetting the book. First, the
font should be appropriate for the type of book. A
serious book that is non-fictional should not have a font that
looks comical or too detailed. Rather a more conservative
font would be appropriate for the book.
Book typesetting also involves the
organization of the different elements of the book, including
graphics, text, charts, graphs, photos, type, etc. The
arrangement of these elements should flow together and have a
unifying them. If they are not flowing together well, or
if a certain element does not fit with the theme of the book,
it should be discarded or placed within a portion of the book
where it fits better. The book should not be too filled
with one element or another, but mixed with a good balance.
Of course when typesetting a book, the author
should use a software spell checker to check spelling and
grammatical mistakes. However, these spell checkers often
do not include very unique words or words of a different
language. So the author/editor must also go through the
book line by line to ensure that the grammar and spelling
errors are all cleaned up. The more people who proofread
the book, the better the results will be with fewer
errors. The author should understand the use of every
word in his/her book. If a word’s usage is questionable,
the author should look up the word in the dictionary to ensure
that his/her use of the word is warranted.
Again, there should be at least two people
minimum who proofread the book. One person goes through
the book and spells out every word as well as speaks every
grammatical mark. So the person would speak the words
“period, comma, quote, single quote,” while the other person
would carefully listen and note whether the grammatical mark
should be placed there. The other person would also note
whether the verbal structure of the book makes sense when
spoken out loud.
In terms of punctuation, one space should
always be used after all punctuation with no exceptions. The
two spaces rule applies to typewriters only. Underlining should
never be done as modern word processors can type in
italics.
The above guidelines should always be
followed when typesetting a book to ensure the highest
quality.