Family History Book Layout and Typography: Making Genealogy Readable

Typefaces, page sizes, margins, running heads, captions and index design for a family history book that is pleasant to read and easy to navigate.

A genealogy book is a reference book that people read like a novel: they look up their grandmother, then keep reading. Its layout has to serve both uses. These are the typographic decisions that make the difference between a book that is consulted and one that is admired on a shelf.

Page size

• A5 or 6 × 9 inches: a standard trade paperback, comfortable in the hand, cheap to print on demand. Charts must be small or turned sideways.
• A4 or US Letter: room for charts and photographs, easier to read for older eyes, heavier and more expensive. The most common choice for family histories.
• Landscape A4: unusual, but wide descendant charts fit without turning the book.

Typefaces

Body text in a serif face at 10.5 to 11.5 points with generous line spacing (about 1.3 times the type size). Serif faces such as Georgia, Palatino, Minion or Source Serif read well in long passages and print reliably. Use one sans-serif face (for example Source Sans or Helvetica) for captions, tables and the boxes of charts. Two typefaces are plenty.

Margins and columns

A single column for narrative, with an inner margin at least 2 cm wide for the binding and a slightly wider outer margin for thumbs. For lists of children and index entries, two columns save pages without hurting readability.

Structure that shows

• Running heads: the family name on the left page, the chapter title on the right.
• Headings: the couple's names as the heading of each family entry, with their numbers.
• Generation markers: a small superscript generation number after names in the Register style, or the Ahnentafel number before them.
• Consistent order inside each entry: birth, marriage, occupation and residence, death, then the children.

Charts inside the book

Put a chart at the beginning of every chapter, showing only the families that chapter covers, and a full chart as a fold-out or at the back. Print charts at a size where names are at least 2 mm tall; if a chart does not fit, split it by branch rather than shrinking it. Vector charts (from SVG or PDF) stay sharp at any size.

Photographs and captions

Place a photograph close to the text that mentions the people in it. Every caption names everyone from left to right with dates, and gives the year and the place of the photograph. A caption without names is a mistake you will regret.

Footnotes or endnotes

Sources belong in footnotes at the bottom of the page: readers can see the evidence without turning to the back, and the book looks like the reference work it is. Keep them short by using a full citation the first time and a short form afterwards.

The index

The index is the most used part of the book. Index every person under the surname, with given names and years to tell namesakes apart, and married women under both maiden and married surnames. Add an index of places if the family moved a lot. Generate the index from the data rather than by hand; a hand-made index of a thousand names is where books get abandoned.

Proof pages

Print a chapter at the final size before committing to a full print run. Check that the smallest text is readable, that the photographs are not too dark, and that the inner margin survives the binding. A test print costs a few euros and saves a reprint.

PrintFamilyTree's book export uses these defaults (A4 or Letter, serif body text, sans-serif charts, footnotes, an automatic index), so that the version you download is already a readable book before you begin to write your own chapters.