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Comment by pier25 | Hacker News Reader

I really don't agree with many of the points of the article.

Non indented bullets? That is just wrong on so many levels (pun intended). Negative letter spacing is way less legible IMO. Etc.

Also, the web is a different medium than paper. These old school typographic idioms are becoming less and less relevant every day.

The most used websites such as Facebook or Twitter are proof that users don't really care about old school vertical rhythm.

OTOH I will agree that we still haven't distilled the graphical language of the web. Hopefully in a couple of decades we will have a consensus based on a historical body of practices.

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Just because Facebook and Twitter don't do it, then it's not important? Just because hamburgers are the most consumed food in the western world, we don't need restaurants that practice fine cuisine?

I don't think people are aware of the subtitles of typography, so it's nice to see articles like this.

I (web dev) personally just read a book on typography and it was eye opening how much I didn't realize I didn't know.

If your page is mostly memes and 1-2 sentence quips like Facebook and Twitter, sure, this is probably overkill. If your page is text heavy like blogs and documentation, this is your way to stand out.

I'm not very artistic, so my edge is technical. Topography is precisely the type of overlap that can really help my work stand out, so I'd love to see more of this type of content.

It's not important because it really doesn't affect usability, as evidenced by millions of users.

The game has changed and from what I've seen a lot of typographers still live in the paper age.

> The most used websites such as Facebook or Twitter are proof that users don't really care about old school vertical rhythm.

Facebook and Twitter are aggregations of ultra-short-form mixed media content; vertical rhythm is a technique applicable (or at least most applicable) to long-form textual (or at least text-dominant) content.

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