Non-Designer’s Type Book, The, Second Edition

Parentheses and Hyphens

I’ll bet it drives you nuts that the hyphens in phone numbers seem set too low. And the parentheses around the area codes bump into the numbers, which probably makes you crazy. You see, parentheses and hyphens are designed to be used with lowercase letters because that is where they appear most of the time. So when these characters are used with all caps or numbers, they appear to be low in relation to the taller size of the caps or numbers. But, thank goodness, this can be fixed.

Below, I shifted the hyphen and the parentheses up a little higher until they appeared to be centered—doesn’t it look much better, more consistent, in better balance? There is no scientific formula for the exact placement—your eye is the judge. ...