On situating documents: Notes toward a descriptive and analytical framework

As a means of understanding and evaluating typographic documents as objects of design and instances of language in use, a descriptive and analytical framework is put forth. Identified as 'constructive factors' are formal characteristics of text and format, requirements of production and use, and contextual variables. The ways in which these factors might interrelate is examined briefly, and it is suggested that the most typical dynamic is that in which the stylistic requirement of idiomatically appropriate form is largely determined by a document's situational context. Typographic competency is then defined as the ability to match formal idiom to situation and to further model the idiom in response to situational specifics.