Space (typography)

Space in typography is the empty interval between letters, words, lines, or other printed elements. Its size and placement shape legibility, rhythm, and visual hierarchy.

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Kerning: The adjustment of space between a specific pair of characters to improve visual balance. It fine-tunes the interval between letter pairs rather than applying one uniform spacing value.
Glyph: A visual representation of a character in a particular typeface. Spacing is positioned around glyph shapes, which can differ from the characters they represent.
Typography: The design and arrangement of type to make written language legible and expressive. Spacing is one of typography’s basic tools for organizing type.
Whitespace (visual arts): Unoccupied areas in a visual composition, including margins and gaps between elements. It is the broader compositional idea that includes typographic space.
Tracking: The uniform adjustment of spacing across a run of text. It changes the overall density of text without targeting individual letter pairs.
Em (typography): A relative typographic unit based on the current type size. It provides a scalable reference for specifying spacing.
Readability: The ease with which a reader can understand written text. Spacing affects how readily words and lines can be distinguished.
Punctuation space: A typographic space inserted around punctuation according to a language’s composition rules. Its placement follows punctuation conventions, not just general word-spacing practice.
Word spacing: The horizontal distance between adjacent words in a line of text. It controls how clearly word boundaries appear and how evenly a line fills.
Side bearing: The built-in horizontal space on either side of a glyph in a font. These font-design values contribute to the gaps between unkerned characters.