Typographic Alignment

Typographic Alignment In typesetting and page layout, alignment or range, is the setting of text flow or image placement relative to a page, column (measure), table cell or tab. The type alignment setting is sometimes referred to as text alignment, text justification or type justification. Basic variations There are four basic typographic alignments: ▪ Flush left—the text is aligned along the left margin or gutter, also known as left-aligned or ragged right; ▪ Flush right—the text is aligned along the right margin or gutter, also known as right-aligned or ragged left; ▪ Justified—text is aligned along the left margin, and letter- and word-spacing is adjusted so that the text falls flush with both margins, also known as fully justified or full justification; ▪ Centered—text is aligned to neither the left nor right margin; there is an even gap on each side of each line. Note that alignment does not change the direction in which text is read; however text direction may determine the most commonly used alignment for that script. Flush left In English and most European languages where words are read left-to-right, text is often aligned ‘flush left’, meaning that the text of a paragraph is aligned on the left-hand side with the right- hand side ragged. This is the default style of text alignment on the World Wide Web for left-to-right text. Quotations are often indented. Flush right In other languages that read text right-to-left, such as Arabic and Hebrew, text is commonly aligned ‘flush right’. Additionally, flush- right alignment is used to set off special text in English, such as attributions to authors of quotes printed in books and magazines, and is often used when formatting tables of data. Justified A common type of text alignment in print media is ‘justification’, where the spaces between words, and, to a lesser extent, between glyphs or letters, are stretched or compressed to align both the left and right ends of each line of text. When using justification, it is customary to treat the last line of a paragraph separately by simply left or right aligning it, depending on the language direction. Lines in which the spaces have been stretched beyond their normal width are called loose lines, while those whose spaces have been compressed are called tight lines. Some modern typesetting programs offer four justification options: left justify, right justify, center justify and full justify. These variants specify whether the last line is flushed left, flushed right, centered or fully justified (spread over the whole column width). In programs that do not offer this extra functionality, justify is equal to left justify. Centered Text can also be ‘centered’, or symmetrically aligned along an axis in the middle of a column. This is often used for the title of a work, and for poems and songs. As with flush-right alignment, centered text is often used to present data in tables. Centered text is considered less readable for a body of text made up of multiple lines because the ragged starting edges make it difficult for the reader to track from one line to the next. Tracking/Letter Spacing In typography, letter spacing, also called tracking, refers to the amount of space between a group of letters to affect density in a line or block of text. Letter spacing can be confused with kerning. Letter spacing refers to the overall spacing of a word or block of text affecting its overall density and texture. Kerning is a term applied specifically to the spacing adjustment of two particular characters to correct for visually uneven spacing. Kerning adjusts the letters closer together (negative spacing), tracking adjusts the letters further apart (positive spacing). Letter-spacing adjustments are frequently used in news design. The speed with which pages must be built on deadline does not usually leave time to rewrite paragraphs that end in split words or that creates orphans or widows. Letter spacing is increased or decreased by modest (usually unnoticeable) amounts to fix these unattractive situations. Leading In typography, leading refers to the distance between the baselines of successive lines of type. The term originated in the days of hand- typesetting, when thin strips of lead were inserted into the forms to increase the vertical distance between lines of type. The term is still used in modern page layout software such as QuarkXPress and Adobe InDesign. In consumer-oriented word processing software, this concept is usually referred to as "line spacing" or "interline spacing." Kerning In typography, kerning (less commonly mortising) is the process of adjusting the spacing between characters in a proportional font, usually to achieve a visually pleasing result. Kerning adjusts the space between individual letter forms, while tracking (letter-spacing) adjusts spacing uniformly over a range of characters.[1] In a well-kerned font, the two-dimensional blank spaces between each pair of characters all have similar area. The related term kern denotes a part of a type letter that overhangs the edge of the type block. Weight Weight The weight of a particular font is the thickness of the character outlines relative to their height. Helvetica Neue weights A typeface may come in fonts of many weights, from ultra-light to extra-bold or black; four to six weights are not unusual, and a few typefaces have as many as a dozen. Many typefaces for office, Web and non-professional use come with just a normal and a bold weight. If no bold weight is provided, many renderers (browsers, word processors, graphic and DTP programs) support faking a bolder font by rendering the outline a second time at an offset, or just smearing it slightly at a diagonal angle. The base weight differs among typefaces; that means one normal font may appear bolder than some other normal font. For example, fonts intended to be used in posters are often quite bold by default while fonts for long runs of text are rather light. Therefore weight designations in font names may differ in regard to the actual absolute stroke weight or density of glyphs in the font. Attempts to systematize a range of weights led to a numerical classification first used by Adrian Frutiger with the Univers typeface: 35 Extra Light, 45 Light, 55 Medium or Regular, 65 Bold, 75 Extra Bold, 85 Extra Bold, 95 Ultra Bold or Black. Deviants of these were the "6 series" (italics), e.g. 46 Light Italics etc., the "7 series" (condensed versions), e.g. 57 Medium Condensed etc., and the "8 series" (condensed italics), e.g. 68 Bold Condensed Italics. From this brief numerical system it is easier to determine exactly what a font's characteristics are, for instance "Helvetica 67" (HE67) translates to "Helvetica Bold Condensed". The TrueType font format introduced a scale from 100 through 900, where 400 is regular (roman or plain), which is also used in CSS and OpenType. Donald Knuth in his Metafont and TeX system of programs perhaps made the first algorithmic description of fonts. There are many names used to describe the weight of a font in its name, differing among type foundries and designers, but their relative order is usually fixed, something like this: Hairline Thin Ultra-light Extra-light Light Book Normal / regular / roman / plain Medium Demi-bold / semi-bold Bold Extra-bold / extra Heavy Black Extra-black Ultra-black / ultra The terms normal, regular and plain, sometimes also book, are being used for the standard weight font of a typeface. Where both appear and differ, book is often lighter than regular, but in some typefaces it is bolder. Pt Size Pt size is the size of the text on the document, for example this font size is 12pt. Some professional digital typefaces include fonts that are optimised for certain sizes, e.g. by using ink traps. There are several naming schemes for such variant designs. One such scheme, invented and popularized by Adobe Systems, refers to the variant fonts by the applications those are typically used for, with the exact point sizes intended varying slightly by typeface: Poster extremely large sizes, usually larger than 72 point Display large sizes, typically 19–72 point Subhead large text, typically about 14–18 point (Regular) usually left unnamed, typically about 10–13 point Small Text (SmText) typically about 8–10 point Caption very small, typically about 6–8 point .

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