Kerning, Tracking, and Leading: Spacing in Typography

WHY IT EXISTS: Default font settings are a starting point, not a final product. Certain letter combinations look awkward without manual adjustment, and different contexts (headlines vs. body text) require different spacing densities to be readable and look professional. These controls provide that fine-grained power.

THE MENTAL MODEL: Think of your text as buildings on a city block. Leading is the space between streets (lines of text). Tracking is adjusting the space between all the buildings on a street (all letters in a word). Kerning is fixing the awkward gap between two specific buildings that just don't fit well together, like a skinny skyscraper next to a wide plaza.

HOW IT WORKS: Kerning adjusts the space between specific pairs of letters (e.g., 'A' and 'V', 'T' and 'o'). Fonts have built-in kerning tables, but designers often tweak them manually for logos or headlines. Tracking, or letter-spacing, uniformly adds or removes space between all letters in a selected block of text. Positive tracking adds space for an airy feel, while negative tracking removes it to create a dense block. Leading, or line-height, controls the vertical distance between baselines of text. The term comes from the lead strips typesetters used to add space between lines of metal type.

WHEN TO USE IT: Use kerning for large display text like logos and headlines where awkward letter pairs are most noticeable (e.g., in the word "WAVE"). Use tracking to adjust the overall density of a text block; slightly positive tracking can improve readability in all-caps text. Use leading to ensure lines of body text are easy to follow; a common rule is a leading value of 1.25x to 1.5x the font size.

WHEN NOT TO USE IT: Avoid manual kerning on body text; it's inefficient and the font's default kerning is usually sufficient. Avoid extreme negative tracking, as it makes letters collide and become illegible (e.g., 'cl' can look like 'd'). Avoid overly tight leading, which makes it hard for the eye to find the next line, and overly loose leading, which makes paragraphs feel disconnected.

ONE CANONICAL EXAMPLE: In the word "AVATAR" set in a large headline, the default spacing can make the 'A' and 'V' look too far apart. A designer would apply negative kerning to tuck the 'V' slightly under the arm of the 'A'. They might also apply a small amount of positive tracking to the whole word to give it a more open, cinematic feel. Finally, if this were part of a paragraph, they would set the leading to around 140% of the font size for comfortable reading.