If you work with in­for­ma­tion and ideas, then writ­ing plays a cen­tral role in your pro­fes­sional life.

You might be a pro­gram­mer, writ­ing doc­u­men­ta­tion for a new soft­ware tool.

You might be a sci­en­tist, writ­ing a pro­posal for a re­search grant.

You might be a law­yer, writ­ing a brief for court.

When we think of “pro­fes­sional writ­ers,” maybe we think of nov­el­ists or jour­nal­ists. But the pro­gram­mer, the sci­en­tist, the law­yer—and you, if your work de­pends on pre­sent­ing writ­ten ideas—all de­serve to be called pro­fes­sional writers.

But as pro­fes­sional writ­ers, we do more than write. We edit, we for­mat, we print, we gen­er­ate PDFs, we make web pages. More than ever, we’re re­spon­si­ble for de­liv­er­ing the writ­ten word to our read­ers. So we’re not just writ­ers—we’re publishers.

Ty­pog­ra­phy is the vi­sual com­po­nent of the writ­ten word. And be­ing a pub­lisher of the writ­ten word nec­es­sar­ily means be­ing a ty­pog­rapher.

This book will make you a bet­ter typographer.