specimen

/ˈspɛsɪmɪn/ noun

Every element an essay can contain, set in the same system as the entries: one size, the axis, four colours.
A long page for judging how they sit together.

9 October 2026 · Amsterdam · 8 minutes

This is the opening paragraph of a long test entry. It has no argument to make; its job is to look like one. A real post begins the same way, with a paragraph of ordinary length that sets the measure, the rhythm of the lines and the colour of the page before anything unusual happens. Read it as texture: are the lines too long, is the leading comfortable, does the serif hold up at this size on your screen?

The second paragraph is longer on purpose, because most problems with a text column only appear once a paragraph runs past seven or eight lines and the eye has to find its way back to the left edge several times in a row. Somewhere in a paragraph like this there will be a word that wants to break badly, a line that ends on a short word, and a last line with only one or two words on it. The browser is asked to balance these where it can. There are also the small things that every essay contains without noticing: a date such as 9 October 2026, a figure such as 1,250 km, a range such as 15–20 per cent, a time such as 14:30, an abbreviation such as kWh or the EU, a pair of “quotation marks”, an apostrophe in a word like driver’s, and a dash – set off with spaces – in the middle of a sentence.

A short paragraph follows a long one. It should not look lost.

Emphasis and small things in the line

The line itself

Words can be emphasised in italic, which is the normal way to stress something or to name a book such as The Elements of Typographic Style. They can also be set in bold, which should be rare in running text, and very occasionally both at once. A correction can be ~~struck through~~ and replaced. A term from code, such as chargeOnArrival or route.plan(), is set in a fixed-width face inside the line without changing its height.

Long things must not break the column: a web address written out in full, https://www.example.com/a/very/long/path/that/goes/on/and/on/without/any/natural/place/to/break, has to wrap, and so does an unreasonably long word like electroencephalographically or Donaudampfschifffahrtsgesellschaft when it lands at the end of a line.

Links

Out, and in

A link that leaves the site carries a faint line beneath it, and pointed at, a full line is drawn in from the left, as with the ISO 15118 standard for how cars and chargers talk, or a longer piece of linked text such as the European regulation on the deployment of alternative fuels infrastructure that may run over a line break. A link to another entry is set the way dictionaries cross-refer, as a headword: see range, and demand. Several can follow each other closely: grid, tariff, demand. Pointed at, they have the same line drawn in as every link on the site: one behaviour, everywhere.

Notes

This is a margin note. It sits beside the paragraph it belongs to and can run to several lines when it has to.

A margin note is written on its own line above the paragraph. It is for an aside that the reader may skip: a definition, a caveat, a one-line summary of the paragraph. This paragraph has one. Notes are set in the sans, smaller in weight and quieter in colour than the text, and hang right against the axis like everything else in the margin.

¹This is the first footnote. It appears in the margin next to the paragraph that cites it.²This is the second. Notes can contain a link and emphasis.

A footnote is different: it is tied to a place in the sentence.¹ The number sits in the line and the note itself appears in the margin beside the paragraph, so nobody has to jump to the foot of the page and back. A paragraph can carry more than one,² and each keeps its own number.

Quotations

A short quotation can simply stay in the line, “like this one,” inside its paragraph. A longer one is set apart.

From the entry on range

A forecast is useful when it is honest about what it does not know. Drivers forgive a forecast that was wrong in the way it said it might be. They do not forgive a promise.

A quotation can also run to more than one paragraph, and may have no source at all:

The first paragraph of a longer quotation sets out the thought at an ordinary pace, long enough to wrap over a few lines so that the edge it makes can be judged.
The second paragraph continues it. Between the two there should be a clear pause, but they must still read as one voice and not as two separate quotations.

Lists

Unordered

A forecast needs three things:

a route,
the weather along it,
and a charger at the end that is working.

Ordered

Plan the route.
Forecast the charge on arrival, with its margin.
Choose the stop that removes the most doubt from what follows.

Longer items, and items inside items

A list item can be a full sentence that runs past the end of the line, in which case the second line has to start under the first word and not under the marker.
An item can have items of its own:
- a first sub-item,
- a second sub-item that is long enough to wrap, so that the indent of its second line can be checked as well,
- and a third.
And the list can carry on afterwards.

Numbered lists can be long enough to reach two digits.
Two.
Three.
Four.
Five.
Six.
Seven.
Eight.
Nine.
Ten, where the wider number must still hang cleanly in the gutter.
Eleven.

Headings inside a section

A section, with its number in the margin, can be divided once more.

A smaller heading

The smaller heading has no number. It sits closer to the text that follows it than to the text before it, so that it reads as a label for what comes next.

Another smaller heading

Two of them in a row, each with a short paragraph, show whether the spacing above and below is right when they come thick and fast.

Figures

A photograph spans the whole grid, margin and text column together. Its number and caption sit beneath it, in the grid.

An electric car plugged into a charging station, its cable arcing across the frame. — Figure 1A photograph with a caption of ordinary length. Photograph by Michael Förtsch, Unsplash.

A drawing keeps to the text column. Its caption hangs in the margin, level with its top, and its lines take the colours of the page, so it turns with the theme.

Figure 2
A drawing: charge on arrival as a forecast. The band widens with distance.

Text carries on directly after a figure, and a second photograph can follow soon after the first.

A charging post at the edge of a car park, its cable coiled around it. — Figure 3A second photograph, with a longer caption that runs to more than one line so that the way it wraps under the picture can be checked. Photograph by Roger Starnes Sr, Unsplash.

Film

A film is a still on the full grid until it is played. There is one control, set in the type, and nothing moves or makes a sound until it is asked to.

Tables

Table 1
A small table: common connectors and their typical maximum power.

Connector	Current	Region	Up to, kW
Type 2	AC	Europe	22
CCS2	DC	Europe	350
NACS	DC	North America	250
CHAdeMO	DC	Japan	50

A table can also be wider than the column of text, with more columns than fit comfortably, and with longer text in some of its cells.

Stop	Distance, km	Arrive, %	Charge, min	Leave, %	Power, kW	Note
Utrecht	42	71	0	71	0	Passed without stopping.
Arnhem	104	48	12	80	150	Short stop; the charger was free on arrival.
Oberhausen	212	37	18	85	250	The stop that removes the most doubt from the rest of the journey.
Köln	281	58	0	58	0	Passed without stopping.
Frankfurt	463	12	25	80	300	Arrival with the forecast margin almost used up.

Table 2A wide table, with figures in several columns and a longer note in the last.

Code

Code that needs more than a few words is set apart, in a fixed-width face, on its own lines. Long lines scroll sideways; they never wrap.

python

def charge_on_arrival(battery_kwh, consumption_kwh_per_km, distance_km, margin=0.05):
    """Forecast the charge left at the end of a leg, with its margin."""
    used = consumption_kwh_per_km * distance_km
    left = max(0.0, battery_kwh - used) / battery_kwh
    return left, (left - margin, left + margin)   # a forecast, not a promise

No language given

GET /route?from=Amsterdam&to=Frankfurt&car=id4
200 OK

Mathematics

Inline

Inline maths sits in the line at the size of the text. Range is energy over average consumption, $R = \frac{E}{\bar{e}}$ , and it inherits the doubt in both. Simple symbols such as $x$ , $σ$ and $n^{2}$ should not disturb the spacing of the lines around them.

(1)

\frac{σ_{R}}{R} = \sqrt{{(\frac{σ_{E}}{E})}^{2} + {(\frac{σ_{\bar{e}}}{\bar{e}})}^{2}}

Display

Equations stand flush left on the text edge, never centred. Their number hangs in the margin, where the section numbers are. A second one follows, to check that the numbering continues.

(2)

E_{arrival} = E_{start} - \int_{0}^{d} e (x) d x

A break

Sometimes an essay changes subject without wanting a heading. A break marks the pause.

After the break the text simply continues, as this paragraph does. It is also the last section, so what follows it is the end of the entry: the way to the previous and the next one.