Layout is all important with typesetting. A good book can be made unpleasant to read if the typesetter fails to do the work carefully and consistantly. Modern software certainly makes tho job a lot easier than it was twenty years ago, but to a certain degree that only means that it is now easier to do a bad job.

If you have work to give to a typesetter, you might ask them how they handle the aspects listed on the facing page. Also, it is well worth looking at books that they have done in the past in order to make your own judgement. If you are producing your own Camera Ready Copy, then these are things that you will have to handle yourself.

On the following pages are some samples of detailed work that I have done, to show what modern software is capable of.

1. What about widows (that is, the last line of a paragraph that finds that it's all by itself at the top of a page).
2. Evenness of word spacing in different lines, and hyphenation of words in order to reduce the size of spaces.
3. Consistency of layout style (e.g. font size and spacing in chapter headings).
4. Consistency of text style (e.g. space or no-space before a page number).
5. Using en-rules in the right places.
6. Removing bad breaks in the index.