Grid in pages

Question

Hi. Im new to Pages and im curious if there is such a thing as a grid that can be switched on and off ?
Im trying to lay out photographs and text with consistency. Thanks.

Answer 1

There is no baseline grid for type which would certainly help with alignment of text across columns.
The concept of a baseline grid is very, very old. It is very, very old because it is based on the functionality of the bound book, in Latin the concept of the codex. The codex allows the font and the back of the leaf to be seen at the same time when the leaf is lifted as the bound book is browsed. The concept of the baseline grid predates the computerised composition and page description languages of the 1970s and 1980s. It predates the New Typography industrial design trend of the 1920s and 1930s. It predates the introduction of movable metal sorts in the 1450s in Germany and the 1460s in Italy (first at Subiaco outside Rome and then at Venezia). In a bound book, the letters in the line must align horizontally across the measured of the column, the letters in the lines of two or more columns on the same side of the medium must align, and the lines in the columns on the front and back of the medium must align (or the medium must be so thick that lack og alignment does not disturb since light does not seep through the medium).
Prof Dr Michelle Brown, now Curator at the British Library, discusses calligraphic ruling methods for mediæval parchments. Since sometime in the 1450s a baseline grid has been part and parcel of movable metal typography. When area composition arrived, the baseline grid was carried into computerised composition at first for single columns with the H e l l Digiset 50T1. The first completely digital composition was the trial of the Digiset 50T1 for the KTAS telephone directory of København in 1967 - imaging took 17 hours. With the Monotype Lasercomp in 1976 began the development of page description languages for the x-y coordinate space of the page as such with everything in it. Crosfield showed a system that integrated composition and colour images at IPEX in 1984 using the Lasercomp for output and H e l l installed its first such system at Flensburgerz Zeitung in 1984.
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