Three ways to set the book
Same words, same page size, same care under the hood. What changes is the personality — the fonts, and the way each chapter opens. Have a flip through all three and see which one feels like Dad.
The most book-like of the three, and my pick for a memoir. Titles are set in Fraunces — a soft, old-style face that's everywhere in beautiful new books right now — over a text face drawn purely for comfortable reading. Each chapter opens centered, with a small dotted number and a dropped first letter.
The cleanest, most present-day look. Big, light chapter numbers in Inter sit above left-aligned titles, with plenty of air; the story itself is set in Spectral, a serif made for reading on paper and screen alike. Feels like a new hardcover from a big publisher.
The safe, enduring choice. No new fonts at all — it stays on Hoefler Text, a fine serif already on the Mac, and simply does the quiet craft right: letter-spaced small-cap chapter titles, true small caps, and old-style figures. It won't look dated in twenty years because it never chased a trend.
All three fix the same things
The old draft looked like a printout. Whichever design the family picks, these upgrades come with it — they're what makes a page read like a real book instead of a Word document.
- Real book paragraphs
- Indented first lines, no gaps between — the way novels are set.
- Proper sentence spacing
- The wide typewriter gaps after periods are gone.
- Old-style figures
- Numbers that sit into the line like lowercase letters, not shouting.
- Drop capitals
- A large opening letter to start each chapter's story.
- Running heads & folios
- Small-caps chapter titles and page numbers, set safely inside the margins.
- Fine justification
- Edge-kerning so the right margin is clean, without rivers of white.