AThe horizontal spacing between individual letter pairs
BThe uniform spacing added or removed across all letters in a block of text
CThe vertical distance between baselines of consecutive lines of text
DThe proportional relationship between cap height and x-height
Leading (rhymes with 'heading') is the vertical space between lines, measured baseline to baseline. It is called leading because early typesetters inserted strips of lead between lines of metal type. Kerning adjusts spacing between specific letter pairs; tracking adjusts spacing uniformly across a text block.
Question 2 True / False
'Font' and 'typeface' refer to the same thing and can be used interchangeably.
TTrue
FFalse
Answer: False
A typeface is the design family — Helvetica, Garamond, Times New Roman. A font is a specific instance of that typeface at a particular weight and size — Helvetica Bold 12pt is a font. In everyday speech the distinction is often ignored, but understanding it matters when specifying typography precisely or working with type systems.
Question 3 Short Answer
Why does justified text alignment sometimes hurt readability, and when is it most likely to cause problems?
Think about your answer, then reveal below.
Model answer: Justified text forces each line to span the full column width by stretching word spacing. In narrow columns or with long words, this creates uneven gaps — 'rivers' of white space that run through the paragraph and disrupt reading flow. The problem is worst in narrow columns with little manual hyphenation.
Justified alignment can look clean in wide-column print contexts (newspapers use it successfully with hyphenation). But in digital interfaces or narrow layouts without automatic hyphenation, the word-spacing distortions become highly visible and make text harder to read than left-aligned (ragged right) text.