Greet­ings, web trav­eler. This is Matthew But­t­er­ick, au­thor of Prac­ti­cal Ty­pog­ra­phy.

I’m not a ven­ture-funded startup nor a ma­jor cor­po­ra­tion. I’m one guy—a self-em­ployed ty­pog­ra­pher in Los An­ge­les. And one of my pri­mary projects is this web-based book, which took lit­er­ally years to create.

That’s why this is not a free book. But it’s not ad-sup­ported ei­ther. Rather, it’s reader-sup­ported—mean­ing, I need read­ers like you to send me money. Not a lot of money. And not every reader. Some read­ers. Which read­ers? The ones who en­joy it and find value in the in­for­ma­tion. But there’s no pay­wall. It’s an honor sys­tem. For more in­for­ma­tion, see—

How to pay for this book

The trou­ble is, not every­one is play­ing fair. Like the web­site that linked you here. It’s cost­ing me money, be­cause it sends over a lot of read­ers, and al­most none of them end up paying.

So who does? Me.

Sorry, but I just can’t af­ford it any more. And frankly, I don’t want to af­ford it—most of the web­sites on my naughty list are har­vest­ing big money from your at­ten­tion (through ads) while re­ly­ing on oth­ers (e.g., writ­ers like me) to pro­vide the ma­te­r­ial they can talk about in their listicles.

So here’s the deal. You’re not for­bid­den from us­ing the site. Just type prac­ti­cal­ty­pog­ra­phy.com into the ad­dress bar of your browser. En­joy the book. If it’s not your cup of tea, fair enough. But if it helps you im­prove your own ty­pog­ra­phy, please do send in a pay­ment or buy one of my fonts. Again, it’s all ex­plained in—

How to pay for this book

Why? Be­cause it’s the right thing to do? No. Be­cause if too few read­ers pay, the book dies. Sim­ple as that.

—Matthew But­t­er­ick
mb@mb­type.com