- Law 24, Adjust Leading and Kerning for Large Text.
Let's start with a few definitions.
What is leading?
Leading is the amount of vertical space
between two lines of text, and leading is measured
from the baseline of one line of text
to the baseline of another.
Leading is also called line spacing.
Leading is automatically set by the software you're using,
and the default amount of leading is usually 20 percent.
So, if you're using 10 point text,
default leading is going to be 12 points.
What is kerning?
Kerning is the amount of horizontal space
between two letters.
Don't confuse kerning with tracking or letter spacing.
Tracking is uniform horizontal spacing
across a range of characters, and remember kerning
deals with the amount of horizontal spacing
between just two specific letters.
Most typefaces have what are called built-in kerning tables,
and these kerning tables, their job is to
automatically adjust the amount of space
between certain letter pairs.
Why do certain letter pairs
need different amounts of kerning?
Imagine for every character that you type
that there's an invisible box that defines
the borders of that character.
These invisible boxes don't usually overlap
when you string characters together,
because if they did overlap,
then characters would start to appear on top of each other
or would be very crowded together.
But for certain letter pairs, these invisible boxes
need to overlap, and they need to overlap
so that the characters look right on the page.
For example, let's look at this letter pair.
We've got a capital T and an E.
Because of the shape of each letter,
the invisible boxes around each letter,
if we obey those borders, they make these two letters
appear to be too far apart.
A typeface's kerning table would contain
a special rule for this letter pair,
and that rule would automatically
scoot the E back to the left, so that it would fit
just under the crossbar of the T.
This would improve the look of this letter pair,
and, therefore, it would improve the look of your document.
Examples of other letter pairs
that often require extra kerning are AV, Vo, To, Ta, Wa,
and W with a period.
If leading and kerning are automatically
handled by software, why do we need to adjust them?
Let's look at some examples.
For body text, default leading is usually just fine.
There may be times when you want to play with leading
for certain effects.
For example, you might want to add more vertical space
to give a block of text a little extra air.
You'll often see people add leading on documents
like business cards or on invitations to jazz it up,
to add a little bit of fanciness to the document.
Text set at large sizes may also benefit
from leading adjustments.
Large text usually needs less leading,
and large text with few descenders needs even less leading.
So, here's an example of text that's been
set at two different sizes, one small and one large.
On the first example, the text looks just fine.
The leading looks good.
But when the text gets larger,
the lines look like they're too far apart.
The leading needs to be tightened up.
Here's the same large text,
and this time the leading's been tweaked.
See how much better that looks?
We just tightened up that leading,
and now our text looks better.
It looks more cohesive.
Small chunks of text that are set in all caps
also require less leading in order to look right,
and that's because of the lack of descenders
in all cap characters.
Here's a headline that is set in all caps,
and we've used default leading,
and because there are no descenders
in the all capital letters, the lines of the text
look way too far apart.
Here's the same headline,
but this time the leading's been tweaked.
We've tightened it up,
and now our headline looks a lot better.
Similarly with kerning, in body text you usually
don't need to worry about kerning.
As long as you're using a professionally designed typeface,
the kerning table should do its job,
and you will not have to get involved.
A special note, if you do use Microsoft Word,
kerning is not applied by default.
It's actually not turned on.
You have to go in and turn on kerning.
It's found in the font menu of Microsoft Word.
When text is set at large sizes,
kerning may need to be adjusted
between certain letter pairs, in order for these characters
to look correct and look right on the page.
Here's an example of some text that's been set
at two different sizes.
Notice how everything looks just fine at the smaller size.
The kerning tables are doing their job.
All the letters in the text look correct and evenly spaced.
There's nothing that really stands out.
But in the larger version, some of the letters
look farther apart than the other letters, like these here.
These letters need to be manually kerned.
They just don't look right.
So, let's fix it.
Here, the letter pair has now been manually kerned,
and it looks right.
It looks correct.
Now, all the letters look evenly spaced,
and none of those letter pairs
are negatively calling attention to themselves,
like they were before.
Let's summarize.
It's really important to pay attention
to text leading and kerning so that you're aware
when it needs to be adjusted,
and this is especially important when you're using text
that's being set at larger type sizes.
Text that uses proper leading and kerning
looks much more professional and is easier to read.
This attention to detail and proper typesetting
allows readers to focus on the content's message,
instead of being distracted by bad formatting.
That's Law 24, Adjust Leading and Kerning for Large Text.