Examples of headline letter spacing
In
typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), and ...
, letter spacing, character spacing or tracking is an optically consistent adjustment to the space between
letters
Letter, letters, or literature may refer to:
Characters typeface
* Letter (alphabet), a character representing one or more of the sounds used in speech; any of the symbols of an alphabet.
* Letterform, the graphic form of a letter of the alphabe ...
to change the visual density of a line or block of text. Letter spacing is distinct from
kerning
In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between Character (symbol), characters in a Typeface#Proportion, proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual le ...
, which adjusts the spacing of particular pairs of adjacent characters such as "7." which would appear to be badly spaced if left unadjusted.
History
Historically, with metal type, a kern meant having a letter stick out beyond the metal slug to which it was attached, or having part of the body of the slug cut off to allow letters to overlap. A kern could therefore only bring letters closer together (negative spacing). Digital kerning could go in either direction. Tracking can similarly go in either direction, but with metal type, one could make groups of letters only farther apart (positive spacing).
In the days of
hot metal typesetting
In printing and typography, hot metal typesetting (also called mechanical typesetting, hot lead typesetting, hot metal, and hot type) is a technology for typesetting text in letterpress printing. This method injects molten type metal into a mol ...
, ''letter spacing'' required adding horizontal space between letters of words set in metal type in increments of a minimum of a half-point. Some
publisher
Publishing is the activity of making information, literature, music, software and other content available to the public for sale or for free. Traditionally, the term refers to the creation and distribution of printed works, such as books, newsp ...
s and
typesetters
Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''glyphs'' in digital systems representing ''characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random Ho ...
avoided letter spacing because it was costly in materials and labor. Letter spacing required hand insertion of copper (a half-point), brass (one point), and printer's "lead" (two points) spaces between individual pieces of type or between
matrices
Matrix most commonly refers to:
* ''The Matrix'' (franchise), an American media franchise
** ''The Matrix'', a 1999 science-fiction action film
** "The Matrix", a fictional setting, a virtual reality environment, within ''The Matrix'' (franchis ...
. Despite the cost, letter spacing was used in print advertising and book publishing. It was also used for very short phrases set in
capital letters
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
or
small caps
In typography, small caps (short for "small capitals") are characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters (capitals) but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. This is technicall ...
to prevent the phrases from appearing too black compared to the rest of the page.
Printer and
type designer
Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below.
A typeface differs from other modes of graphic production su ...
Frederic Goudy
Frederic William Goudy (, March 8, 1865 – May 11, 1947) was an American printer, artist and type designer whose typefaces include Copperplate Gothic, Goudy Old Style and Kennerley. He was one of the most prolific of American type designers and ...
stated that "Men who would letterspace
blackletter
Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
would shag sheep." Goudy's statement inspired the title of the book ''Stop Stealing Sheep'', an introduction to typography.
Digital systems
Word processing and
desktop publishing
Desktop publishing (DTP) is the creation of documents using page layout software on a personal ("desktop") computer. It was first used almost exclusively for print publications, but now it also assists in the creation of various forms of online c ...
programs for personal computers, such as
LibreOffice Writer
LibreOffice Writer is the free and open-source word processor and desktop publishing component of the LibreOffice software package and is a fork of OpenOffice.org Writer. Writer is a word processor similar to Microsoft Word and Corel's WordPer ...
,
Microsoft Word
Microsoft Word is a word processing software developed by Microsoft. It was first released on October 25, 1983, under the name ''Multi-Tool Word'' for Xenix systems. Subsequent versions were later written for several other platforms includin ...
,
Microsoft Publisher
Microsoft Publisher is a desktop publishing application from Microsoft, differing from Microsoft Word in that the emphasis is placed on page layout and graphic design rather than text composition and proofreading.
Overview
Publisher is includ ...
,
WordPerfect,
QuarkXPress
QuarkXPress is a desktop publishing software for creating and editing complex page layouts in a WYSIWYG (What You See Is What You Get) environment. It runs on macOS and Windows. It was first released by Quark, Inc. in 1987 and is still owned and ...
,
Adobe InDesign
Adobe InDesign is a desktop publishing and page layout designing software application produced by Adobe Inc. and first released in 1999. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers, presentations, ...
,
Adobe FrameMaker
Adobe FrameMaker is a document processor designed for writing and editing large or complex documents, including structured documents. It was originally developed by Frame Technology Corporation, which was bought by Adobe Systems, Adobe.
Overvie ...
,
Adobe Illustrator
Adobe Illustrator is a vector graphics editor and design program developed and marketed by Adobe Inc. Originally designed for the Apple Macintosh, development of Adobe Illustrator began in 1985. Along with Creative Cloud (Adobe's shift to month ...
, and
Adobe Photoshop
Adobe Photoshop is a raster graphics editor developed and published by Adobe Inc. for Microsoft Windows, Windows and macOS. It was originally created in 1988 by Thomas Knoll, Thomas and John Knoll. Since then, the software has become the indu ...
, use differing methods of adjusting letter spacing. Most systems have the default letter spacing at zero and instead use the character widths and
kerning
In typography, kerning is the process of adjusting the spacing between Character (symbol), characters in a Typeface#Proportion, proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual le ...
information built into the font itself.
Although digital type sets tighter than metal type on average, this results primarily from the availability of kerning. Digital type does allow for negative sidebearings, which were uncommon in metal type because of the difficulty in cutting a "
kern
KERN (1180 AM) is a commercial radio station licensed to Wasco-Greenacres, California, and serving the Bakersfield metropolitan area. The station is owned by American General Media. The radio studios and offices are in the American General Me ...
".
In the days of machine-implemented lead typesetting, such as
Linotype machine
The Linotype machine ( ) is a "line casting" machine used in printing; manufactured and sold by the former Mergenthaler Linotype Company and related It was a hot metal typesetting system that cast lines of metal type for individual uses. Lin ...
s and the
Monotype System, letter spacing had to be uniform. In modern digital page-layout software, high-end applications all use relative measurements proportional to the size of the type. QuarkXPress uses units of 1/200 of an
em, and Adobe InDesign uses 1/1000 of an em. Therefore, in QuarkXPress, a tracking setting of 3 reduces the visual density of the text noticeably, but in InDesign a tracking setting of 3 is barely noticeable.
Fixed spaces
Letter spacing may also refer to the insertion of fixed spaces, as was commonly done in hand-set metal type to achieve letter spacing. Fixed spaces vary by size and include hair spaces, thin spaces, word spaces, en-spaces, and em-spaces. An en-space is equal to half the current point size, and an em-space is the same width as the current point size.
Changing kerning perception
Even with no kerning control, a visually pleasing result can be achieved with some control of the space between letters.
[ ]["The Rhetoric of Typography: Effects on Reading Time, Reading Comprehension, and Perceptions of Ethos"](_blank)
Eva Brumberger
Technical Communication, Volume 51, Number 1, February 2004 , pp. 13-24
With
CSS1
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone technol ...
, a standard of 1996, the property (illustrated) offers some control for "kerning perception", as kerning can be simulated with non-uniform spacing between letters. The
CSS3
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as Scalable Vector Graphics, SVG, MathML or XHTML). CS ...
standard includes the property. In the meantime,
web designers
Web design encompasses many different skills and disciplines in the production and maintenance of websites. The different areas of web design include web graphic design; user interface design (UI design); authoring, including standardised code an ...
used the workaround of , mainly to enhance spaced texts of
titles
A title is one or more words used before or after a person's name, in certain contexts. It may signify either generation, an official position, or a professional or academic qualification. In some languages, titles may be inserted between the f ...
and
banner
A banner can be a flag or another piece of cloth bearing a symbol, logo, slogan or another message. A flag whose design is the same as the shield in a coat of arms (but usually in a square or rectangular shape) is called a banner of arms. Also, ...
s.
Legibility
Adjusting the letter spacing of a given text has been shown to affect reading speed and accuracy. A wide body of research suggests that text with wider letter spacing, as well as wider
line
Line most often refers to:
* Line (geometry), object with zero thickness and curvature that stretches to infinity
* Telephone line, a single-user circuit on a telephone communication system
Line, lines, The Line, or LINE may also refer to:
Arts ...
and
word spacing
Word spacing in typography is space between words, as contrasted with letter-spacing (space between letters of words) and sentence spacing (space between sentences). Typographers may modify the spacing of letters or words in a body of type to aid ...
, leads to increased reading comprehension among both
dyslexic
Dyslexia, also known until the 1960s as word blindness, is a disorder characterized by reading below the expected level for one's age. Different people are affected to different degrees. Problems may include difficulties in spelling words, r ...
and non-dyslexic children.
Contrarily, tighter spacing is thought to decrease comprehension, and is accompanied by
crowding
Crowding (or visual crowding) is a perceptual
Perception () is the organization, identification, and interpretation of sensory information in order to represent and understand the presented information or environment. All perception inv ...
and a perception of smallness.
Letter spacing adjustments are frequently employed in
news design
News design is the process of arranging material on a newspaper page, according to editorial and graphical guidelines and goals. Main editorial goals include the ordering of news stories by order of importance, while graphical considerations inc ...
. Due to deadlines, news editors do not usually have time to rewrite paragraphs that end in split words or create
widows or orphans.
Discussing
Comic Sans
Comic Sans MS is a sans-serif typeface designed by Vincent Connare and released in 1994 by Microsoft Corporation. It is a non-connecting script inspired by comic book lettering, intended for use in cartoon speech bubbles, as well as in other cas ...
, some researchers, including Sue Walker, Jenny Thomson, and
John Stein, posit that the typeface's wide spacing, rather than the shape of its characters, is the reason for its success among dyslexics.
See also
*
Emphasis in typography
*
Kashida
Kashida or Kasheeda ( fa, کشیده; "extended", "stretched", "lengthened") is a type of justification in the Arabic language and in some descendant cursive scripts. In contrast to white-space justification, which increases the length of a lin ...
*
Microtypography
Microtypography is a range of methods for improving the readability and appearance of text, especially justified text. The methods reduce the appearance of large interword spaces and create edges to the text that appear more even. Microtypograph ...
*
Sentence spacing
Sentence spacing concerns how spaces are inserted between sentences in typeset text and is a matter of typographical convention. Since the introduction of movable-type printing in Europe, various sentence spacing conventions have been used in ...
*
Typographic ligature
In writing and typography, a ligature occurs where two or more graphemes or letters are joined to form a single glyph. Examples are the characters æ and œ used in English and French, in which the letters 'a' and 'e' are joined for the first li ...
*
Word spacing
Word spacing in typography is space between words, as contrasted with letter-spacing (space between letters of words) and sentence spacing (space between sentences). Typographers may modify the spacing of letters or words in a body of type to aid ...
Notes
References
* Bringhurst, Robert. ''The Elements of Typographic Style.'' Hartley & Marks: 1992. .
* Kane, John. ''A type primer.''
Prentice Hall
Prentice Hall was an American major educational publisher owned by Savvas Learning Company. Prentice Hall publishes print and digital content for the 6–12 and higher-education market, and distributes its technical titles through the Safari B ...
: 2002. .
* Lupton, Ellen. ''Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students.''
Princeton Architectural Press
Princeton Architectural Press is a small press publisher, specializing in books on architecture, design, photography, landscape, and visual culture, with over 1,000 titles on its backlist. In 2013, it added a line of stationery products, including ...
: 2007. ).
* Spiekermann, Erik. ''Stop Stealing Sheep & Find out how type works.'' Adobe Press: 2002. .
* Owen Williams, ''Testing David''. Nakai Theatre Home Grown Festival 2008, Whitehorse, Yukon, Canada, (2008)6
External links
{{Typography terms
Typography
Whitespace