Grafton sets the Sunday leaflet like the book in the pew.
The Sunday leaflet is the most-read thing a parish publishes. Grafton sets it to the standard of the Prayer Book in the pew. Staff assemble each service from standard blocks, and Grafton handles the type, the spacing and the page breaks.
- TypefaceEB Garamond at 11 on 13 point, with old-style figures
- Small capitalsTrue small capitals, letterspaced, for headings, citations and the divine name
- In useSt. Francis in the Fields Episcopal Church, Louisville, since 2026
- The nameRichard Grafton, who with Edward Whitchurch printed the first Book of Common Prayer in 1549
The output
Each part of the service is a block, and each block has one way to print. Whoever plans the week, the page comes out the same.
From block to page
Six blocks from the 9:00 service on August 23, 2026, and the page they produced. Point at a block, or tab to it, to see where it prints.Tap a block to see where it prints.
Outlines where this block prints on page 1.
What Grafton replaces
Before Grafton, St. Francis built each leaflet by hand in Word.
By hand, in Word
Every week
- Find the week's readings and copy them into the document.
- Copy in the collects and the Prayer Book texts.
- Paste in the hymns and the announcements.
- Reset the fonts that came in with each paste.
- Fix the spacing, line by line.
- Rework the layout until the pages break cleanly.
- Proofread for the errors that slipped through.
About five hours a week
Hundreds of clicks, constant copying and pasting, and a file only one person knew how to keep in order.
With Grafton
Every week
- Choose the music.
- Check the order of worship.
- Click Generate.
Layout is nobody's job.
How it works
Each person enters only the part they own. The music director sets the music of the day and marks which services sing each piece, the liturgist sets the order of each service, and season templates supply the defaults.
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Step 1
Set the season
A season template holds the defaults for every Sunday in a season: lectionary track, form of the Prayers of the People, Eucharistic prayer. Any week can be changed without changing the season.
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Step 2
Plan the Sunday
Choose each piece of music once and tick the services that sing it, then adjust any service’s order of worship. The parish’s customs are built in. The 5:00 service sings the Phos Hilaron in place of the Gloria, and the final hymn is the Procession Out, never the “recessional.”
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Step 3
Generate
Grafton checks that each service is ready, then sets the leaflets you ticked. Finished leaflets are kept in History.
The template
The Annotated template keeps a few strict rules. Bold marks the congregation’s words and nothing else. Italic is reserved for directions and the titles of works, never for emphasis. Spaced small capitals and white space mark the divisions of the liturgy in place of rules, and everything prints in black. Page 6, where the Liturgy of the Table begins, shows each rule at work.
What to look for
Point at an item, or tab to it, to see it on the page.Tap an item to see it on the page.
Page 6 of the August 23 leaflet as Grafton generated it, in EB Garamond at 11 on 13 point, typeset with XeLaTeX. The blue marks are ours.
The type
From Sabon to EB Garamond
The 1979 Prayer Book is set in Sabon, Jan Tschichold’s face after the roman types of Claude Garamond, and the parish’s brand book calls for it as well.
Grafton sets the leaflet in EB Garamond, Georg Duffner and Octavio Pardo’s revival of Garamond’s own types. It is free to use under the SIL Open Font License, and it shares Sabon’s ancestry, so the leaflet and the book in the pew come from the same source.
Grafton is built on work others gave away, above all Donald Knuth’s TeX, carried forward in XeLaTeX, and EB Garamond.
Four formats from one plan
The opening page of the 9:00 service on August 23, 2026, in each format, at their true relative sizes.
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Minimal
For a congregation that prays from the Prayer Book in hand. Minimal prints the shape of the service with page numbers, the music and the parish’s own material, and leaves out what the book already carries.
CircledThe Opening Acclamation prints as a heading and a page number only.
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Standard
Standard prints the full text of the service on the same half-letter page, without the margin band.
CircledThe welcome note, set inline under the title instead of in the margin.
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Annotated
Annotated prints everything in one leaflet: the full text, margin notes beside the hymns and readings, and the parish supplement. It is Grafton’s default.
CircledMargin notes in a band on the outside edge.
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Large Print
Large Print sets Standard’s content on a letter page for readers with low vision, with body text enlarged from 11 point to 16.
CircledBody text at 16 on 20 point, across a 7 inch column with no margin band.
Scroll sideways to see all four. The pages keep their relative size.
Every format comes from the same plan.
Tick the formats each service needs and Grafton sets each one for its own page size and type size.
Steps that no longer exist
Copy the text into a second file
Resize the type for large print
Re-flow for half-letter pages
Fix the page breaks again
By service
Each service gets only the formats it needs. For August 23, Grafton produced Minimal for the 8:00, Annotated and Large Print for the 9:00 and 11:15, and Standard for the 5:00.
| 8:00Rite I | 9:00Rite II | 11:15Rite I | 5:00Rite II | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Minimal | ||||
| Standard | ||||
| Annotated | ||||
| Large print |
Minimal and Standard use half-letter pages. Annotated and Large Print use letter pages.
Pages in fours
A folded booklet needs a page count that divides by four. Grafton adds filler pages only when the count needs them: on August 23, a blank inside page and a cross ornament brought the Annotated leaflet to 16.
Illustration. Grafton writes the pages in reading order; the copier's booklet setting places them on the sheets.
Contact Anselm Apps
Grafton is in use at one parish. If your church prints a leaflet every week, we would like to hear how it gets made now.
Tell us your parish, your service schedule and what you print each week.
Anselm Apps is Joshua White's software label. Grafton is its first product.