Typography is the art and technique of arranging type and type design.
The arrangement of type involves the selection of typefaces, point size,
line length, leading (line spacing), adjusting the spaces between groups of
letters (tracking) and adjusting the space between pairs of letters (kerning).

There are thousands of letter types available (typefaces). They are often
named after the person who designed them. Complete character sets of a
single size and style of a particular typeface are called fonts.

A font (letter type) can be written or typed in upper case (also known as
capital letters) or in lower case (small letters).

Letters are made up of basic parts - Stem, Bar, Curve, Continuous Curve
and Serifs.

Serif is the traditional typeface and has strokes which finish off the ends
of bars, stems and curves. Sanserif (sometimes written as sans - serif) is a
more modern font and doesn't have the extra strokes. Sans is french,
meaning 'without'.

Serif's come in various different shapes.
They are Hairline, Slab, Slab Bracketed and Full Bracketted.

 

Examples of the most common serif fonts:

Examples of the most common sanserif fonts:

 

Fonts can have different styles applied to them.

 

A font is measured in point (Pt) size. The measurement is taken from the
top of the ascender to the bottom of the descender.

Some font designs have longer or shorter ascendrs and descenders.
This is why different fonts typed in at the same point size can seem larger
or smaller than one another.

 

LEADING

Line spacing is known as 'leading'. This term comes from the original lead
printing type sets. A strip of lead was inserted between lines. Different widths were inserted to create larger of smaller gaps between the lines of text.

 

LETTER SPACING

Letter spacing is known as 'Tracking'. Letters can be spread apart or
condensed together for diffetrent effects.

 

KERNING

Kerning is sometimes confused with letter spacing, but kerning is the space between two different letters to correct visually uneven spacing.

The word 'WAR' below looks visually wrong when typed normally, as the 'W'
and 'A' look too far apart. Auto-kerning has been applied to the second word
and it looks a lot better, but the third word has been adjusted manually, bringing the 'W' and 'A' much closer together. This kerning makes the word look correct.

 

It has been proposed that the result of improper kerning should be called
keming, which is a typographic pun: improper kerning can result in the adjacent
"r" and "n" being (almost) attached, so that together they look like the letter "m".

(Ha, ha!)

 

WORD SPACING

Lowecasenletteringnnormallynhasnanspacenthensizenofnansmallnn.

UPPERCASEOLETTERINGOWILLOHAVEOAOSPACEOTHEOSIZEOOFOAOLARGEOO.

 

NOTE:
There should be one space after a pause in text (,;)
but two spaces after a stop (.!?)