Typography

Typography is the craft of arranging letterforms so that written language can be read, understood and felt, using type designed in advance for repeated use.

A typeface is the design of a set of letterforms; a font is the specific object that delivers it. The distinction survives because it still clarifies real decisions.

Serifs are the small finishing strokes at the ends of letters, and the families that carry them trace five centuries of tools, technology and taste in Western type.

Sans serifs strip the finishing strokes away, and their two-century rise tracks industry, modernism, public signage and finally the screen as the dominant reading surface.

Display type is designed to be seen before it is read, and it follows a different set of rules from the text type that carries extended argument.

Hierarchy is the typographic ordering of content by importance, so a reader can find the structure of a document before reading a single sentence of it.

Measure is the length of a line of text, and together with word spacing it decides whether a reader's eye can travel a paragraph without losing its place.

Kerning adjusts the space between two specific letters; tracking adjusts it uniformly across a run. Confusing them is one of the most common typographic errors.

Leading is the vertical distance from one baseline to the next, and getting it right is what lets a reader's eye return accurately to the start of each new line without effort.

A grid is an invisible structure of columns, rows, margins and gutters that turns layout from individual judgment into a repeatable system many people can work within consistently.