The mailman delivered my copy of The Newspaper Designer’s Handbook yesterday, and I thought I’d pass on my impressions.

Buy this book.

Cross-trained copy editor/designers out there, particularly those who came to copy editing first, will find it a rich resource. Those who began designing by accident, and who have no real formal training (e.g., me), will find it invaluable.

It answers such pressing questions as:

• What the hell is a pica, anyway? Don’t laugh. Journalists who joined the profession after full pagination find it less vital to know that little tidbit.

• How can dummies help me work smarter, not harder? (And what does 4-38-1 mean in headline lingo?) Yeah, I design without a net sometimes too, but I find that sections come out cleaner when I sketch them first.
• Does a proportion wheel have a purpose other than as a coaster?

The book also includes illustrated pages showing what cool, old-school copy editors call page elements. That way, when some crusty journo winces at your ugly armpit, you’ll know what he’s talking about.

The drawback? I bought a used copy, and it cost $50. Pricey, but author Tim Harrower did a thorough job. And, like that textbook you wish you hadn’t sold in college, it also has a CD. The disc features tests and exercises. Smartly, it’s an HTML interface, so it works across platforms. (Sadly, the HTML they’ve used only seems to work 100-percent in Internet Explorer. Safari, the Macintosh browser, doesn’t display the main page correctly. Opera seems to work alright, except for “click-to-enlarge” image windows.)

I’ll quit the rave, but thought it deserved it. I asked Dick Thien, a founding editor of USA Today, about design books more than 18 months ago. Unreservedly, he told me this book was the only one I needed. I’m glad I finally got it.