I thought I'd explain a few typography terms today, some terms have very different meanings in typography to what you might expect! To start with I'll explain the terms 'widow' and 'orphan' which are definitely different to the more common use of these words and thankfully not as sad. 

Widow

A widow is a single word left alone at the bottom of a paragraph, column or page. Sometimes a short group of words can also be described as a widow. They can make the text look unbalanced and appear to have too much white space at the end of a page.

There are a few ways to get around these widow words, as well as editing the content of the text itself, we can also play with the spacing in between individual letters or words, as well as altering the line spacing.

Orphan

An orphan is very similar to a widow (as per my previous post), but this describes a word that is alone at the top of a page.

Orphans really belong on the previous page, they interrupt the flow of reading across two pages, so if possible you want to keep them on the first page with the rest of their sentence!

You can get around these orphan words in the same way as you can the widow words, by editing the content of the text itself, altering the spacing in between individual letters or words, or by altering the line spacing.

Leading 

Leading is the spacing between lines of text. Adjusting the leading can help you to either save space or make the most of the space you have, by either moving the lines closer together or spreading them out. Leading can also be used to change the feel of a design, such as reducing the leading for a more edgy feel to the design. 

The term leading comes from when they used to place lead strips between lines of type on old letterpresses before the days of computers and digital printing!

Kerning 

Kerning is the spacing between individual letters. Fonts automatically space letters when you type, however they don’t always get it exactly right, and playing with the kerning to move letters fractionally closer together or further apart can make all the difference to your design. I admit I’m a bit of a geek about things like this and my hubby is now used to me pointing out signage where the letters ‘just don’t look right’! 

I also found this fun game (don’t laugh, I actually think it’s fun!) where you can have a go at altering the kerning yourself, if nothing else it will explain to you what I mean!! You can find it at https://type.method.ac/#

Kerning is something to look at in headings, logos, strap lines, and personalisation of initials etc, not something to worry about too much in a body of text, unless it jumps out at you as looking wrong. It’s something you need to do visually rather than by measuring, especially between certain letters that fit together differently, like VA compared to straighter letters like HL. Once you’ve started looking you’ll soon instinctively know what looks right! 

Tracking

Tracking is the uniform adjustment of the spaces between each letter. This can be set over a page of text rather than the kerning that I mentioned previously, which adjusted the space between individual letters. Adjusting the tracking will do the same thing but more generally and evenly, without the individual adjustments you can make by adjusting the kerning of individual spaces (which is handy as different letters are different shapes and fit together differently). Adjusting the tracking is most useful over larger blocks of text.

I hope these explanations have been helpful!