Chapter 4. Text Properties

Text is everywhere around us. Text can be used for everything from listing the ingredients in breakfast cereal to writing an ode to a Grecian urn. It is the best system yet that humans have devised for relating complex thoughts.

Many people think of text as being simply a way of recording spoken words, but typography adds a language to text that goes far beyond the written word.

Typography affects how text appears by controlling not only the shapes and sizes of the letters being used (the font), but also the spaces between letters, words, lines, and paragraphs. On the Web, typography has taken up the challenges of displaying text on a computer screen to a wider audience.

Unfortunately, many of the challenges of typography on the Web have come about as a result of a need to circumvent the limitations of the medium.

In this chapter, I'll show you ways to present text using CSS to open up the screen and improve legibility, as well as to draw interest.