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Information about Leading

This article deals with the typographic meaning of "leading". For the management meaning, see leadership.




In typography, leading (IPA [ˈlɛdɪŋ], rhymes with heading) refers to the amount of added vertical spacing between lines of type. In consumer-oriented word processing software, this concept is usually referred to as "line spacing". Leading may sometimes be confused with tracking, which refers to the horizontal spacing between letters or characters.

The word comes from lead strips that were put between set lines. When type was set by hand in printing presses, slugs or strips of lead (reglets) of appropriate thicknesses were inserted between lines of type to add vertical space, to fill available space on the page.

Text set "solid" (no leading) appears cramped, with ascenders almost touching descenders from the previous line. The lack of white space between lines makes it difficult for the eye to track from one line to the next, and hampers readability.

The following block of text has no leading:

Typography (Greek: typos "form", graphein "to write") is the art and technique of setting written subject matter in type using a combination of typeface styles, point sizes, line lengths, line leading, character spacing, and word spacing to produce typeset artwork in physical or digital form.



This block of text set with 50% leading is easier to read:

Typography (Greek: typos "form", graphein "to write") is the art and technique of setting written subject matter in type using a combination of typeface styles, point sizes, line lengths, line leading, character spacing, and word spacing to produce typeset artwork in physical or digital form.



This block of text at 100% leading is also easy to read, but makes less efficient use of vertical page space:

Typography (Greek: typos "form", graphein "to write") is the art and technique of setting written subject matter in type using a combination of typeface styles, point sizes, line lengths, line leading, character spacing, and word spacing to produce typeset artwork in physical or digital form.



In CSS, leading is implemented by the line-height property.

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Typography terminology
PagePagination Recto Verso Margin Column Canons of page construction
Enlarge picture
Lowercase 'a' in Adobe Caslon
ParagraphWidows and orphans Leading River Baseline Median Alignment Justification
CharacterLigature Letter-spacing Kerning Majuscule Minuscule Initial x-height Ascender Descender Diacritics Counter Subscript Superscript
StyleSerif Italic Slab serif Sans-serif Blackletter Script Dingbat
PunctuationHanging punctuation Hyphenation Curly quotes En dash Em dash
TypesettingType design Type foundry Movable type Calligraphy Phototypesetting Letterpress Typeface Font Computer font Point Pica Cicero Em En Lorem ipsum Hamburgefonts Punchcutting
Character encoding Rasterization Hinting
The word leadership can refer to:
  1. The process of leading.
  2. Those entities that perform one or more acts of leading.
  3. The ability to affect human behaviour so as to accomplish a mission designated by the leader

Terminology, usage and conceptual scope


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Typography is the art and techniques of type design, modifying type glyphs, and arranging type. Type glyphs (characters) are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques.
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International Phonetic Alphabet can be used to show pronunciation in English. For a quick chart of how, without the details presented here, see IPA chart for English.
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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. Since the advent of personal computers the term tracking is frequently used.
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printing press is a mechanical device for applying pressure to an inked surface resting upon a medium (such as paper or cloth), thereby transferring an image. The systems involved were first assembled in Germany by the goldsmith Johann Gutenberg in the 1430s.
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2
(Amphoteric oxide)
Electronegativity 2.33 (scale Pauling)
Ionization energies
(more) 1st: 715.6 kJmol−1
2nd: 1450.5 kJmol−1
3rd: 3081.
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ascender is the portion of a letter in a Latin-derived alphabet that extends above the mean line of a font. That is, the part of the letter that is taller than the font's x-height.

Ascenders, together with descenders, increase the recognizability of words.
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descender is the portion of a letter in a Latin-derived alphabet that extends below the baseline of a font.

For example, in the letter y, the descender would be the "tail," or that portion of the diagonal line which lies below the v
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In science

In the sciences, readability is a measure of an instrument's ability to display incremental changes in its output value. For example, a balance with a readability of 1 mg will not display any difference between objects with masses from 0.6 mg to 1.
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Greek}}} 
Writing system: Greek alphabet 
Official status
Official language of:  Greece
 Cyprus
 European Union
recognised as minority language in parts of:
 European Union
 Italy
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Regulated by:
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Typesetting involves the presentation of textual material in graphic form on paper or some other medium. Before the advent of desktop publishing, typesetting of printed material was produced in print shops by compositors working by hand, and later with machines.
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Point, in typography, may also refer to a dot grapheme (e.g.: full stop; Interpunct) as in the expression, decimal point. For non-typographical uses, see point.

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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. Since the advent of personal computers the term tracking is frequently used.
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Word spacing in typography is the process of increasing or decreasing the space between words. Typographers may modify the default spacing of a letter in a body of type to aid readability and copy fit, or for aesthetic effect, but this does not alter word spacing alone, and is
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Greek}}} 
Writing system: Greek alphabet 
Official status
Official language of:  Greece
 Cyprus
 European Union
recognised as minority language in parts of:
 European Union
 Italy
 Turkey
Regulated by:
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Typesetting involves the presentation of textual material in graphic form on paper or some other medium. Before the advent of desktop publishing, typesetting of printed material was produced in print shops by compositors working by hand, and later with machines.
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Point, in typography, may also refer to a dot grapheme (e.g.: full stop; Interpunct) as in the expression, decimal point. For non-typographical uses, see point.

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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. Since the advent of personal computers the term tracking is frequently used.
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Word spacing in typography is the process of increasing or decreasing the space between words. Typographers may modify the default spacing of a letter in a body of type to aid readability and copy fit, or for aesthetic effect, but this does not alter word spacing alone, and is
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Greek}}} 
Writing system: Greek alphabet 
Official status
Official language of:  Greece
 Cyprus
 European Union
recognised as minority language in parts of:
 European Union
 Italy
 Turkey
Regulated by:
..... Click the link for more information.
Typesetting involves the presentation of textual material in graphic form on paper or some other medium. Before the advent of desktop publishing, typesetting of printed material was produced in print shops by compositors working by hand, and later with machines.
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This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject.
Please help recruit one or [ improve this article] yourself. See the talk page for details.
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Point, in typography, may also refer to a dot grapheme (e.g.: full stop; Interpunct) as in the expression, decimal point. For non-typographical uses, see point.

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This article or section is in need of attention from an expert on the subject.
Please help recruit one or [ improve this article] yourself. See the talk page for details.
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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. Since the advent of personal computers the term tracking is frequently used.
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Word spacing in typography is the process of increasing or decreasing the space between words. Typographers may modify the default spacing of a letter in a body of type to aid readability and copy fit, or for aesthetic effect, but this does not alter word spacing alone, and is
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