CompuServe Messages

I dunno, Kathleen. It is possible to contour this particular paragraph without too badly violating the style book. I've always considered the drop-cap "A" to be an exception because of the unusually strong line the sides take combined with the lack of visual weight at the top of the character and the resulting space to the remainder of the word. For instance, I wouldn't contour a "V" or "W" in this style specifically because the first word would still be unbroken. In contouring to the "A" here, I would stick to the style by making sure that the angle of contour very closely followed the right leg in creating a straight line. And I knew it! I knew it! I knew it! The _first_ thing to go when a designer gets heavily into DTP is the ability to copyfit! <grin> The "sizes." widow is 15 points long. Changing "retailers" to "dealers" would only net 3 or 4 points because you're dropping three narrow characters – "rti" – and replacing them with a wide(ish) one – "d". You could cheat the gutter by 3 points (4 would risk touching), but it wouldn't gain any line breaks ("in" in line 2 needs 5 points to break up to line 1, line 1 is already near minimum wordspacing), and you still couldn't come up with the 15 points needed in line 4, since its wordspacing is pretty tight, too. (Don't hold me _exactly_ to those measurements – this is by eyeballing it, but it should be close nonetheless.) My solution? "Air-out" lines 1, 4 and 5 by cranking-up the wordspacing a bit. The net result would be two more words on the last line. Still not good, but better than what's there. Either that, or rewrite the 'graph, or violate the style. …mm