Bringhurst's advice about vertical motion doesn't really apply to web pages.
Bringhurst was writing about bound books with text on facing pages. That advice is specifically aimed towards aligning the bottoms of facing pages, aligning lines of text on facing pages, and aligning lines of text on pages printed back-to-back. If you don't have multiple columns of body text (margin text uses different rules), and you aren't having your text printed back-to-back on semi-translucent paper, then the vertical motion rule doesn't apply.
People try so hard to follow this rule in web pages, but they just end up creating web pages that have way too much unnecessary spacing between things. This article is a good example; it has way too much spacing between headings and the paragraphs they introduce. It's easy to find more extreme cases on other sites.
This is section 2.2.2 of "The Elements of Typographic Style" (page 37 in version 3.1 of the book).
Well said. While I love "The Elements of Typographic Style", I find there is plenty to argue with, even before dragging the advice to the web where it may not apply.
For instance where Bringhurst gets hung up on a kind of Pythagorean numerology about proportions. He seems to think that, if you can find some rational geometric basis for a proportion, then that provides an explanation for the aesthetics of the proportion.
Why? Looks quite good with subpixel anti-aliasing.
The nineties are over. Nearly everyone has high resolution screens and every major OS now defaults to subpixel anti aliasing. No reason not to use a quite nice font like Minion Pro.
It doesn't look that nice to me. I think that is a font that is designed for Apple/Adobe style subpixel anti-aliasing instead of ClearType anti-aliasing. For someone like me, who greatly prefers ClearType, this font looks very ugly (mostly because it seems semi-bold).
Bringhurst was writing about bound books with text on facing pages. That advice is specifically aimed towards aligning the bottoms of facing pages, aligning lines of text on facing pages, and aligning lines of text on pages printed back-to-back. If you don't have multiple columns of body text (margin text uses different rules), and you aren't having your text printed back-to-back on semi-translucent paper, then the vertical motion rule doesn't apply.
People try so hard to follow this rule in web pages, but they just end up creating web pages that have way too much unnecessary spacing between things. This article is a good example; it has way too much spacing between headings and the paragraphs they introduce. It's easy to find more extreme cases on other sites.
This is section 2.2.2 of "The Elements of Typographic Style" (page 37 in version 3.1 of the book).