Better Typography

Typography

Typography is mostly restraint: a sensible scale, comfortable spacing, enough contrast. A label, a table cell, a marketing headline and an article paragraph do not share one set of rules.

When reviewing, read the rendered page instead of scanning the code. Bad wrapping, widows and truncation only show up at real content lengths.

Write every fix in the project's styling system, and use the exact values below rather than familiar-looking equivalents. The cheat sheet maps each declaration to its Tailwind equivalent.

The words themselves belong to better-writing. Semantic heading structure belongs to better-accessibility. Spatial RTL layout and logical properties belong to better-layout. Contrast measurement belongs to better-colors. This skill owns how text renders, wraps and behaves in mixed-direction content.

Serve the right format

Use .woff2 on the web, for Brotli compression and broad support. .woff is a fallback for very old browsers. .ttf and .otf are desktop formats with no web compression. How the files load is the project's concern.

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 raw tags for custom axes ("GRAD" 80) and niche features ("ss01" 1) with no property of their own. Axes and feature tags are listed in variable-fonts-and-opentype.md.

Load intended weights and styles

Browsers synthesize a weight or style the active family doesn't provide, distorting the real face. Load the faces the design uses.

font-synthesis: none turns synthesis off, but it erases emphasis rather than reporting it. Set it only after checking every required bold, italic, small-cap, superscript and subscript form stays distinct across the fallback stack.

Fewer fonts, sizes and weights

Rarely use more than three fonts. Weight and size define hierarchy; overusing them hurts readability fast. Pair for contrast, not similarity: a serif headline over a sans body reads as deliberate, two near-identical sans-serifs read as a mistake.

Below 18px, stay at weight 400 or heavier. Weights under 300 are display-only at 28px+; they disappear at text sizes. Pairing guidance is in choosing-fonts.md.

Use a type scale with semantic names

Define a small set of sizes and deviate from it as little as possible. Hard-coded sizes with no system behind them break down at scale.

Solo, default names like text-sm are fine when the usage rules are clear. On a team, name sizes by use (text-body-sm) so the rules survive other people. Scale construction is in spacing-and-sizing.md.

Heading sizes descend with level

Map heading levels to descending steps of the type scale, so a visually subordinate heading never overpowers its parent. Adjacent levels may share a size toward the small end of the scale, as long as weight or spacing keeps them distinct. The semantic element is better-accessibility's; this skill sets only the visual treatment.

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; a fixed 24px does not.

Tight line-height is for short text. Anything that wraps to three or more lines needs at least 1.4, even in a height-constrained row.

Letter-spacing by size

Large headings often look better with slightly negative letter-spacing. Small uppercase labels need a little positive letter-spacing, or the letters feel crowded. Body copy at reading sizes needs neither.

Cap the measure

Long lines make it hard for the eye to find the next one. Cap long-form text around 60–75 characters per line. Any unit works, as long as a cap exists and the line length lands in range. See unit choices and the pixel equivalents.

Wrap deliberately

Four declarations, four jobs:

• text-wrap: balance distributes text evenly across lines. Use it on headings.
• text-wrap: pretty stops a single short word landing on the final line. Use it on descriptions.
• overflow-wrap: break-word where a long word, link, or ID could escape the container.
• white-space: nowrap on labels and badges where a line break looks broken.

Skip balance and pretty in long-form text.

Tabular numbers on changing values

Digits have different widths by default, so timers, counters and prices shift the layout as they update. Apply font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums to any value that changes.

Truncate without losing content

For a single line, text-overflow: ellipsis with overflow: hidden and white-space: nowrap. For several, line-clamp. Truncation hides content. When the missing text matters, keep the full value reachable in a tooltip or an expanded view.

Write copy naturally, style with CSS

Store text in natural case and control presentation with text-transform, so a redesign never means rewriting copy.

Use smart punctuation in rendered text:

• Curly quotes in prose, straight quotes in code.
• An en dash for ranges: 2010–2020.
• The single ellipsis character, not three periods.
•   to hold 16 px together across a line break.
• ­ to say where a long word may break.

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. Tune by hand 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, such as an abbreviation or a defined term.

Color is the only part of a real underline that animates reliably. So unless the only thing animating is the color, build the underline as a separate element rather than using text-decoration.

Inputs at 16px on mobile

iOS Safari zooms the whole page when an input's text is smaller than 16px. Two fixes hold the size at 16px and look different, so ask which one the design wants:

• Size the input up on mobile (text-base sm:text-sm). Changes how it looks on small screens.
• Keep font-size: 16px and render the intended size with transform: scale(), compensating width and line-height. Identical at every viewport, more code to maintain.

Both recipes are in details-and-accessibility.md.

Size and contrast floors

Start long-form body text at 16px, the browser default. Move off it only for a reason you can name: the typeface runs small, the measure is narrow, or the product is a dense professional tool.

UI text can go smaller. 14px is a useful starting point for inputs and menus, 13px for captions and rarely below 12px. Inputs still need 16px on mobile.

When text looks low-contrast, use better-colors to measure the rendered pair and better-accessibility to classify the requirement. Leave the colors alone unless asked.

Font smoothing on the root

On macOS, text renders heavier than intended. Apply -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased and -moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale once on the root layout, never per component. Tailwind's antialiased covers both.

Language and bidi behavior

Set lang so browsers and assistive technology pick the right pronunciation, quotes and hyphenation. Set dir at the document or at the content boundary where direction changes. Preserve digit order, and use <bdi> to isolate a mixed-direction value. Spatial mirroring and logical CSS properties belong to better-layout.

Keep useful text selectable

Keep text selectable by default. ::selection can carry brand into the reading experience, as long as the selected combination stays legible.

user-select: none belongs on a draggable or gesture-driven surface where accidental selection interferes. Never across the interface and never because a button label can be highlighted.

Before you finish

Reporting

Severity. HIGH makes text unreadable or truncates content with no way to recover it. MEDIUM breaks the type system or the heading hierarchy. LOW is isolated polish.

Verification. Without a browser: computed size and weight for each heading level, checked descending; declared line-height and measure; truncation rules against realistic string lengths. With one: resize the viewport to catch wrapping, widows and truncation at real content lengths. Report every check you could not run as Not verified.

Format. Group findings under the principle each violates, ordered by severity, one row per root cause listing every location it appears in:

Location is path/to/file:line. Why names the principle and the user impact.

End with Block when any HIGH remains, Approve otherwise, leaving the rest in the table as work to do. Never Approve coverage you did not inspect. With nothing to report, state "No actionable typography findings" and report verification.