In the second image the tracking has been reduced. Increasing or decreasing tracking has the power to reduce the amount of hyphenation in a paragraph, and banish widows (lone words at the end of a paragraph) and orphans (lone words at the top of a page, which should belong on the previous page). Many designers apply tracking to improve the look of typeset text.Letters and words are more visually distinguished from each other, allowing the eye to process them more easily than if characters were pushed closely together. Firstly, when tracking is increased it can improve the readability of text.Decreasing the tracking makes the words appear more compact, while increasing tracking increases the amount of white space between letters and words, creating a more airy effect.ĭesigners apply tracking for two main reasons: Tracking affects the visual density of a word, phrase or paragraph. Sometimes confused with kerning (which is used to adjust spacing between individual letters), tracking adjusts the letter-spacing uniformly over a range of characters. Tracking is the typographer’s term for letter-spacing. Here, we’re going to find out more about letter-spacing or Tracking, including what it is and how you can adjust letter-spacing to improve your own design work. In our typography breakdown series, we look at some of the key techniques which have the ability to transform lacklustre text into jaw-dropping typography.

How to set space in fontforge