(This page describes the CSS in effect a long time ago.)
The redesign of my CSS was inspired by my reading of *The Elements of Typographical Style* by Robert Bringhurst and my general feeling that the web site was “thick” and heavy, crammed and full.
See Grofzg for headings and tables. Examine the whitespace above the headings and the readability of the tables. See SlackWare for headings and monospaced text.
Take care to check the printed pages, too. The stylesheet has an @media print section.
I like large font-sizes. This page is set 16/20. I’m using more leading (line-height 20pt is instead of simply 18pt) because I’m reading it at about 90 characters per line and longer measures need more lead, according to Bringhurst. It certainly looks much lighter.
The list of links at the top and at the bottom are set 12/13, with 1em spaces between them. Monospaced preformatted text is set at 16/19, which is as big, but tighter than ordinary text. It also means that I’m not using “measured intervals”, ie. after sections with a different line-height, I do not return to a multiple of 20pt. I don’t know how to do this using CSS.
I used to have bold links, but I no longer do. At first, I only noticed how much bold stands out, and how crowded and dark everything seems. But later in Bringhurst’s book I also read that the original Garamond did not have a bold weight. If something is bold on my pages, it really *jumps out*.
I’m not happy with using Skia. Sure, I like something rounded, organic – but perhaps Garamond itself would do fine? I think I can get away with using larger fontsizes for page titles and subtitles (level two headings) because I use a lighter gray to do it: `#666`.