Proportions of Spacing

Carina Marano

I'm looking for literature that speaks to the relationship between letter, word, and line spacing. There is the axiom that line spacing should be larger than word spacing, and word spacing larger than letter spacing, but are there suggested proportions that speak to what those ratios should be? Understanding that there are many variables that influence spacing such as measure and character width, the relationship between spacing elements seems an scantly explored avenue.

Albert_Jan_Pool

The new norm DIN 1450 on legibility of typefaces provides some information on this subject. It describes the nominal sizes of stem width, counter width, inter-character space and word space, related to the x-height. The committee that reworked the new version of DIN 1450 reviewed several measurable proportions of lower case letters for defining a nominal size that represents the width of a typeface. In the DIN 1450 we suggest that the counter of the width of the lower case ‘n’ is to be taken as a nominal size.

Craig Eliason

Are you familiar with Cyrus Highsmith's book Inside Paragraphs? It's a useful exploration of spacing issues, though I don't know that it gives the rules of thumb you are looking for.

Nick Shinn

Discussion of word space: http://typophile.com/node/3466
I always “eyeball” the width of the space character, never use a formula.

Lucas Leo Catalano

When ratios and axioms are used to talk about type design I always assume that who ever is proposing such ideas is hoping to be taken more as practical commentator rather than orthodox preacher. Probably why there are not many people who would publish literature of the depth you're looking for to avoid coming off as dogmatic.

Else, I'm a +1 for Cyrus Highsmith's book Inside Paragraphs,
and Frank Blokland himself or his work may help.

Peter Enneson

The subject of proportions is explored briefly in:
http://books.google.ca/books/about/Letterletter.html?id=L6AQAQAAMAAJ&redir_esc=y
pages 126 to 128.

Exact proportions aren't specified.

Stuart Sandler

The only formula I've ever heard with regard to establishing the space character width is approximately half the width of the Capital O character. A good majority of the time it has felt correct in my typefaces with only minor adjustments to suit my taste.

Jackson Showalter-Cavanaugh

There is also the David Kindersley stuff, mostly relates to spacing:

http://www.kindersleyworkshop.co.uk/shop/optical-letter-spacing.php

http://www.kindersleyworkshop.co.uk/spacing/

http://typophile.com/node/19789

Craig Eliason

Here's the Typophile thread with the most "rules of thumb" offered: http://typophile.com/node/32235
The width of /i/ (including sidebearings) is mentioned by a few posters.

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