Great typography
Good typography is mostly restraint. A sensible scale, comfortable spacing and enough contrast beat any clever effect. A label, a table cell, a marketing headline and an article paragraph should not share one set of rules. Apply these principles when building or reviewing anything with text in it.
When reviewing, read the page instead of scanning the code: squint to check the hierarchy holds, read one full paragraph for comfort, and resize the viewport to catch bad wrapping, widows and truncation at real content lengths.
The words themselves (button labels, error messages, empty states) are covered by the better-writing skill; semantic heading structure by better-accessibility; spatial RTL layout and logical CSS properties by better-layout; rendered-pair contrast measurement and color remediation by better-colors. This skill owns how text renders, wraps, and behaves in mixed-direction content.
Write every fix in the project's own idiom: the styling system already in use, never a second one alongside it. The cheat sheet maps each declaration to its Tailwind equivalent.
Quick Reference
| Category | When to use | Reference |
|---|---|---|
| Choosing fonts | Font categories, pairing, formats, typeface anatomy | choosing-fonts.md |
| Variable fonts & OpenType | Axes, weights, tabular numbers, stylistic sets | variable-fonts-and-opentype.md |
| Spacing & sizing | Type scale, heading hierarchy, line-height, letter-spacing, text trimming | spacing-and-sizing.md |
| Wrapping & punctuation | Measure, wrapping, truncation, smart punctuation, RTL | wrapping-and-punctuation.md |
| Details & accessibility | Underlines, selection, forms, decorative text, contrast | details-and-accessibility.md |
| CSS cheat sheet | Quick lookup of every property covered, with Tailwind equivalents | css-cheat-sheet.md |
| Review output format | Severity scale, findings table, verification, verdict | review-output.md |
Core Principles
1. Serve the Right Format
Use .woff2 (Brotli compression, broadly supported) on the web. .woff is a fallback only for very old browsers; .ttf and .otf are raw desktop formats with no web compression. How the files are loaded is the project's own concern, this skill does not prescribe it.
2. Properties Over Raw Tags
When a CSS property exists, use it. font-weight: 650 instead of font-variation-settings: "wght" 650, font-optical-sizing: auto instead of "opsz", font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums instead of font-feature-settings: "tnum" 1. Properties keep working when a non-variable fallback renders. Reserve the raw-tag properties for custom axes ("GRAD" 80) and niche features ("ss01" 1) that have no property of their own.
3. Load Intended Weights and Styles
Browsers may synthesize a requested weight or style that the active family does not provide. Prefer loading the faces the design actually uses. Set font-synthesis: none only after verifying that every required bold, italic, small-cap, superscript, and subscript form remains visually distinct across the complete fallback stack; disabling synthesis is not a diagnostic and must not erase emphasis.
4. Fewer Fonts, Sizes and Weights
Rarely use more than three fonts. Weight and size define hierarchy, but overusing them hurts readability quickly. Pair for contrast, not similarity: a serif headline with a sans body reads as deliberate, two near-identical sans-serifs read as a mistake. Below 18px, stay at weight 400+; weights under 300 are display-only (28px+), they disappear at text sizes.
5. Use a Type Scale with Semantic Names
Define a small set of sizes and deviate from it as little as possible. Hard-coded sizes without a system break down at scale. For solo projects, default names like text-sm work fine as long as the usage rules are clear. On a team, name sizes by use (text-body-sm), not by size, so the rules stay consistent.
6. Heading Sizes Descend with Level
Within a coherent page hierarchy, map heading levels to descending steps of the type scale: a visually subordinate heading should not accidentally overpower its parent. Adjacent levels may share a size toward the small end of the scale as long as weight or spacing keeps them distinct. Pick semantic heading elements according to better-accessibility; this skill controls only their visual treatment.
7. Line-Height by Role
Headings tighter, around 1.1. Body copy 1.5 to 1.6. Prefer unitless values so line-height scales with the font size; fixed values like 24px do not. Tight line-height is for short text: anything that wraps to three or more lines needs at least 1.4, even in height-constrained rows.
8. Letter-Spacing by Size
Large headings often look better with slightly negative letter-spacing. Small uppercase labels need a little positive letter-spacing so letters do not feel crowded. Body copy at reading sizes needs neither.
9. Cap the Measure
Long lines make it hard for the eye to find the next line. Cap long-form text around 60–75 characters per line. Any unit works; what matters is that a cap exists and the resulting line length sits in range. Unit choices and the pixel equivalents.
10. Wrap Deliberately
text-wrap: balance distributes text evenly across lines: use it on headings. text-wrap: pretty avoids leaving a single short word on the final line: use it on descriptions. Skip both in long-form text. overflow-wrap: break-word where long words, links or IDs could escape the container. white-space: nowrap on labels and badges where a line break looks broken.
11. Tabular Numbers on Changing Values
Digits have different widths by default, so timers, counters and prices shift layout as they update. Apply font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums to any value that changes.
12. Truncate Without Losing Content
Single line: text-overflow: ellipsis with overflow: hidden and white-space: nowrap. Multiple lines: line-clamp. Truncation hides content, so if the missing text matters, keep the full value reachable in a tooltip or expanded view.
13. Write Copy Naturally, Style with CSS
Store text in natural case and control presentation with text-transform, so redesigns never require rewriting copy. Use smart punctuation: curly quotes in prose (straight quotes in code), an en dash for ranges like 2010–2020, an em dash to set off a thought, the single ellipsis character, to keep values like 16 px together and ­ to control where long words may break.
14. Underlines from the Font
Default underlines sit wherever the browser decides. Pull position and thickness from the font's own metrics with text-underline-position: from-font and text-decoration-thickness: from-font, or tune manually with text-decoration-thickness, text-underline-offset and text-decoration-skip-ink. text-decoration-style draws the line dotted, dashed or wavy; a dotted underline is a common hint that a word carries extra information, like an abbreviation or a defined term. Unless the only thing animating is a color change, build the underline as a separate element instead of using text-decoration: color is the only part of a real underline that animates reliably.
15. Inputs at 16px on Mobile
iOS Safari zooms the whole page when an input's text is smaller than 16px. Two fixes hold the font size at 16px in different ways, so ask which one the design wants instead of choosing silently: size the input up on mobile (text-base sm:text-sm), which changes how it looks on small screens, or keep font-size: 16px and render the intended size with transform: scale(), compensating width and line-height so the design is identical at every viewport. Both recipes.
16. Size and Contrast Floors
Start long-form body text near the browser default of 16px, then judge it in the actual typeface, measure, platform, and product density. UI text can go smaller: 14px is a useful starting point for inputs and menus (inputs still need 16px on mobile, see principle 15), 13px for captions, rarely below 12px. When text appears low-contrast, use better-colors to measure the rendered pair and better-accessibility to classify the requirement; do not change colors unless asked.
17. Font Smoothing on the Root
On macOS text renders heavier than intended. Apply -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased and -moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale (both covered by Tailwind's antialiased) once on the root layout, never per component.
18. Language and Bidi Behavior
Set lang so browsers and assistive technology choose the right pronunciation, quotes, and hyphenation. Set dir at the document or content boundary where direction changes, preserve digit order, and use <bdi> for isolated mixed-direction values when needed. Spatial mirroring and logical CSS properties belong to better-layout.
19. Keep Useful Text Selectable
::selection can carry brand into the reading experience when the selected combination stays legible. Keep text selectable by default. Use user-select: none only on a specific draggable or gesture-driven surface where accidental selection demonstrably interferes with the interaction; never disable selection across the interface or merely because a button label can be highlighted.
Common Mistakes
| Mistake | Fix |
|---|---|
.ttf/.otf served on the web | Convert to .woff2 |
font-variation-settings: "wght" for weight | font-weight (works with non-variable fallbacks) |
font-feature-settings: "tnum" 1 | font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums |
| Synthesized face differs from the intended design | Load the required face; disable only the verified synthesis mode without erasing emphasis |
| Hard-coded one-off font sizes | Use the type scale |
| Child heading visually overpowers its parent | Map that section's hierarchy to descending scale steps |
| Heading element picked for its default size | Choose semantics with better-accessibility, then set the visual size in CSS |
line-height: 24px on scalable text | Unitless value (1.5) |
| Full-width paragraphs | Cap around 60–75 characters per line |
| Orphan on the last line of a paragraph | text-wrap: pretty |
| Lopsided two-line heading | text-wrap: balance |
| Numbers cause layout shift | tabular-nums |
| Truncated text with no way to read it | Tooltip or expanded view for the full value |
UPPERCASE typed into copy | Natural case + text-transform |
| Justified text in an interface | text-align: start; reserve justify for specific editorial layouts |
| Underline cuts through descenders | text-decoration-skip-ink: auto, from-font metrics |
Inputs below 16px zoom on iOS | Ask first: text-base sm:text-sm, or 16px scaled down with transform to keep the designed size |
| Root layout omits font smoothing | Apply antialiased once at the root |
| Mixed-direction value renders in the wrong order | Set the correct lang/dir; isolate the value with <bdi> when needed |
| Selection disabled across application chrome | Restore selection; suppress it only on a specific interaction that conflicts with dragging or gestures |
| Extra-info hint with no visual cue | Dotted underline via text-decoration-style: dotted |
Thin/Light weight on 14px UI text | Weight 400+ below 18px; thin weights are display-only |
leading-none on a three-line card description | At least 1.4 on any text that wraps to 3+ lines |
Reporting
A standalone typography review is finished when every confirmed finding is reported in the format in review-output.md, with verification and a verdict. Under better-interface, its format governs instead.
