Tuesday, March 1, 2011

How Small is "Too Small?"


A few more pages added to the book, and it IS adding up...still haven't added the vehicles to the equipment chapter (nor the tables, now that I think about it), and even without 'em, I'm closing in on 11 pages.

That's pages withOUT illustrations.

I suppose I could put the computer hacking rules in a different chapter (like...um...the chapter called "Rules"), but it's still looking pretty long. If I shrunk the font to 9 or 9.5 even it would free up a couple more pages...but what size font is too small? It's no good working to cram everything into 64 pages if it's illegible. The point is to make it simple, not require a microfiche reader...sheesh?

Honestly, I don't remember the font size I used for the B/X Companion. Was that too small?

5 comments:

  1. The 1E DMG uses an 8-point font, doesn't it? I find it perfectly readable. It might not be good for pdf viewing on a smart phone, but in print it's fine.

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  2. White Dwarf used 6pt back in the day, and that was just fine, so I'd imagine that 9pt would be okay.

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  3. 6pt is standard for newspapers' classifieds... those are pretty readable- but any smaller than that is too small for most.

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  4. Being a bit older, things under 10 pt give me trouble. The technical Journals I write for insist on 10 pt, although sometimes they use 8 pt for figure captions, and 6 point for subscripts. I have occationally resorted to condensed fonts for extra cram, same height but narrower letters an spaces between the words(One of my favorites from Word Perfect I believe was called Helvatica condensed)

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  5. Another editing pass might shave some lines. Have you messed with the margins? If it's a booklet-fold, format it in Word 12 pt as a normal doc with 0.5" margins and no gutter, then shift to PDF. Just print as booklet with 0.5" gutter. The text will end up smaller than 12 pt but it will still be readable.

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