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| Docent sights juggernaut Headline set tight with minus letter spacing |
| Docent sights juggernaut Headline set with no additional letter spacing |
| Docent sights juggernaut Headline with more open letter spacing |
| Docent sights juggernaut Headline with open letter spacing similar to metal type |
| Docent sights juggernaut Headline with still more letter spacing |
| Docent sights juggernaut Headline with wide letter spacing |
| Docent sights juggernaut Headline with wider letter spacing, sometimes used for broadcast |
Letter spacing,character spacing ortracking is an optically consistenttypographical adjustment to the space betweenletters to change the visual density of a line or block of text. Letter spacing is distinct fromkerning, which adjusts the spacing of particular pairs of adjacent characters such as "7." which would appear to be badly spaced if left unadjusted, andleading, the spacing between lines.
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 ofhot metal typesetting,letter spacing required adding horizontal space between letters of words set in metal type in increments of a minimum of a half-point. Somepublishers andtypesetters 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 betweenmatrices. Despite the cost, letter spacing was used in print advertising, book publishing, and custom printing (such as high-end stationery, business cards, wedding invitations, and such). It was also used for very short phrases set inall caps orsmall caps to prevent the phrases from appearing too dark compared to the rest of the page.
Increased letter-spacing has sometimes beenused for emphasis, most often inblackletter typesetting and intypewriter manuscripts, where alternative emphatics like italic or bold fonts are less available. In German-language contexts, where blackletter typefaces survived longer than elsewhere, the practice (calledsperren) is not quite extinct. Printer andtype designerFrederic Goudy stated that "Men who would letterspace blackletter would steal sheep."[1] Goudy's statement inspired the title of the bookStop Stealing Sheep,[2] an introduction to typography.
Word processing anddesktop publishing programs for personal computers, such asLibreOffice Writer,Microsoft Word,Microsoft Publisher,WordPerfect,QuarkXPress,Adobe InDesign,Adobe FrameMaker,Adobe Illustrator, andAdobe Photoshop, use differing methods of adjusting letter spacing. Most systems have the default letter spacing at zero and instead use the character widths andkerning 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".
In the days of machine-implemented lead typesetting, such asLinotype machines and theMonotype 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 anem, 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.
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.
Even with no kerning control, a visually pleasing result can be achieved with some control of the space between letters.[3][4]
WithCSS1, a standard of 1996, theletter-spacing property (illustrated) offers some control for "kerning perception", as kerning can be simulated with non-uniform spacing between letters. TheCSS3 standard includes thefont-kerning property.[5] In the meantime,web designers used the workaround ofletter-spacing, mainly to enhance spaced texts oftitles andbanners.
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 widerline andword spacing, leads to increased reading comprehension among bothdyslexic and non-dyslexic children.[6][7][8] Contrarily, tighter spacing is thought to decrease comprehension among such population subgroups, and is accompanied bycrowding and a perception of smallness.[6]
Letter spacing adjustments are frequently employed innews design. Due to deadlines, news editors do not usually have time to rewrite paragraphs that end in split words or createwidows or orphans.[citation needed]
DiscussingComic Sans, some researchers, including Sue Walker, Jenny Thomson, andJohn Stein, posit that the typeface's wide spacing, rather than the shape of its characters, is the reason for its success among dyslexics.[9]
The dictionary definition ofletterspacing at Wiktionary
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