Typography and Type Setting
Typography questions test anatomy, measurement and spacing craft, then check whether you can translate them into production settings: font format, hyphenation limits, style sheets and baseline alignment.
Core rules
- Measurement: 1 point = 1/72 inch = 0.3528 mm; 12 pt = 1 pica; 1 em = the current type size; 1 en = half an em. Leading (line spacing) is written as size/leading, e.g. 10/12.
- Anatomy: x-height, cap height, ascender, descender, counter, stem, bowl. Point size is not apparent size - at 10 pt, a large x-height face such as Helvetica looks considerably bigger than a small x-height face such as Bodoni.
- Leading: about 120% of the size for body text (10/12); open it for long measures, light weights or reversed type; tighten it for display lines.
- Measure: 45–75 characters per line, with roughly 60–66 the comfortable target for book work.
- Spacing: kerning adjusts individual pairs (AV, To, LT); tracking adjusts ranges and belongs in fractions of an em. Positive tracking on lowercase body text above about 5‰ destroys word shape.
- Justification depends on hyphenation plus minimum and maximum word space. Ragged-right removes rivers but puts the burden on manual line breaks.
- Fixes for widows, orphans and runts: rebreak the paragraph, adjust tracking by a few units, or edit the copy - never stretch leading mid-column.
- OpenType features: true small caps, oldstyle and lining figures, fractions, discretionary ligatures. Web delivery uses WOFF2; variable fonts carry weight and width axes in one file.
Worked example
A 90 mm column set 10/12 pt. Convert: 90 mm = 255 pt. Average lowercase character width is about 0.45–0.5 em, so 4.5–5 pt per character, giving 255 ÷ 5 = 51 to 255 ÷ 4.5 = 57 characters - inside the 45–75 target. Now narrow the column to 60 mm (170 pt): 170 ÷ 5 = 34 characters, too short, so either drop to 9/11 pt (average width 4.5 pt → 38 characters, still short) or change to a two-column layout on a wider page. Lines per page: a 260 mm text depth equals 737 pt; at 12 pt leading that is 61 lines, which must sit on the baseline grid.
Traps that cost marks
Fixing bad justification with tracking instead of hyphenation; synthetic bold and fake small caps; straight primes used as quotes and apostrophes; double spaces after full stops; unembedded fonts; ignoring that increasing leading also increases page count and paper cost.
Key points
- 1 point = 0.3528 mm; 12 pt = 1 pica; the em equals the type size.
- Body leading is normally 120% of the size.
- Ideal measure is 45–75 characters, best around 60–66.
- Kerning is pair-specific; tracking applies to ranges.
- Justification is controlled by hyphenation and word-space limits.
- Use real small caps and correct quotation marks, not simulations.