Re: Good Margin and Linespacing Settings

ivowel@xxxxxxxxx wrote:
I have design questions. I know that these are highly subjective, but
I wonder whether there is some "standard" that I could adopt.

The nice thing about standards is that there are so many to choose from :-)

First, most working papers I see are not single-spaced, but leave
about half a line of empty spaces between lines. Maybe I have just
gotten used to it, but it seems easier on the eyes than single
spacing.

On office paper (Letter or A4), yes: standard 1.2x spacing is too small for the width of the paper. I prefer about 1.666x.

Second, LaTeX's standard paper margins seem excessive, too. In the
US, this means at least 1.5" on the margins. Feels a little more like
a postage stamp than a standard working paper.

It's not that they are excessive, but that for articles the assumption was that most journals were not Letter or A4 size, but typically much smaller, so the text width and height were set to allow for this. Printing a draft on Letter or A4 will indeed look quite wrong: trim the paper to leave (for example) a half inch margin, and it will look much more like a journal page.

But times change: many journals (at least this side of the pond) are now done on A sizes for convenience and cheapness at the press, or are produced entirely electronically anyway.

1.2x is still the default for linespacing, but it should be adjusted according to the typeface being used. In many cases the journal's spec will say what the size and spacing should be.

Margins are getting smaller all the time, as publishers try to save paper. Small margins appear to me to reduce legibility, but apart from Tschichold's classical diagram, I'm not aware of any "standard" -- most designers I work for pick their own, and if I have to do my own, I tend to err on the side of width, with a wider binding margin than foredge, and a wider bottom margin than top; but that's a personal preference. There may well be an ISO or other standard but I simply haven't looked.

///Peter
.

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