Typograph – Scale & Rhythm
lamb.cc
lamb.cc
Bringhurst was writing about bound books with text on facing pages. That advice is specifically aimed towards aligning the bottoms of facing pages, aligning lines of text on facing pages, and aligning lines of text on pages printed back-to-back. If you don't have multiple columns of body text (margin text uses different rules), and you aren't having your text printed back-to-back on semi-translucent paper, then the vertical motion rule doesn't apply.
People try so hard to follow this rule in web pages, but they just end up creating web pages that have way too much unnecessary spacing between things. This article is a good example; it has way too much spacing between headings and the paragraphs they introduce. It's easy to find more extreme cases on other sites.
This is section 2.2.2 of "The Elements of Typographic Style" (page 37 in version 3.1 of the book).
For instance where Bringhurst gets hung up on a kind of Pythagorean numerology about proportions. He seems to think that, if you can find some rational geometric basis for a proportion, then that provides an explanation for the aesthetics of the proportion.
The nineties are over. Nearly everyone has high resolution screens and every major OS now defaults to subpixel anti aliasing. No reason not to use a quite nice font like Minion Pro.