Typography
02 / Microtypography
Key question
What happens between the letters?
Microtypography takes care of the finer details: spacing between letters and words, the correct characters, figures, and styling. Mistakes are rarely noticed consciously, but they make a text feel restless and unprofessional.
Learning objective: You are able to assess tracking and kerning, use the correct characters according to Swiss conventions, and apply text styling purposefully.
Typography is created in the details.
2.1 / Clearances
Tracking, kerning, word spacing.
The space between the characters is designed just like the characters themselves. Three sizes determine it.
01
Letter-spacing
The spacing between all letters in a text. Larger text requires less, while capital letters require more.
02
Kerning
The kerning of individual pairs such as AV, Te, or 7. Good fonts include it.
03
Word spacing
Large enough to separate words, small enough to keep the line together.
Uppercase and small capitals should always be tracked slightly, by about 5 to 10 per cent. Lowercase letters in body text should never be spaced out.
Letterspace capitals, never lowercase.
2.2 / The right characters
Quotation marks, dashes, apostrophe.
In Switzerland, guillemets are used without spaces: «like this» and ‹like this›. Instead of ß, ss is used. The apostrophe is a dedicated character ’, not a straight single quote. Thousands are separated with an apostrophe: 12’000 francs.
Dashes have different lengths and functions: the hyphen connects words, the en dash is used as a parenthetical dash with spaces or as a range dash without: 18–21. An ellipsis is a single character: …
Every character has its role.
2.3 / Numerals and Highlighting
Small differences, big impact.
Many fonts feature multiple figure styles. Lining figures align with the cap height and suit tables and capital letters. Old-style figures have ascenders and descenders, blending seamlessly into running text. Tabular figures share the same width so that numbers align in columns.
Formatting emphasis highlights words. In body text, italics are usually enough. Bold is loud and best suited for navigation, small caps for names. The key is: one style of emphasis per purpose, not all at once.
One award per task.
Exercise
A text, correctly typeset
Task: Typeset an announcement text for the Rheinufer Theatre with microtypographical accuracy.
STEP 1
Write a text of around 120 words including dates, times, prices, and a quote.
STEP 2
Check it in the tool and correct all characters.
STEP 3
Set the title in capital letters and adjust the letter spacing.
STEP 4
Check three critical pairs such as 'Te', 'AV' or '7.', and adjust them if necessary.
Evaluation: Compare before and after at 200 per cent. What do you notice now that you didn't before?