| name | better-typography |
| description | Web typography from choosing fonts to spacing, wrapping and accessibility. Use when picking or pairing typefaces, configuring variable fonts or OpenType features, setting up a type scale, checking heading hierarchy, styling text in components, truncating text, styling underlines, selection, placeholders or carets, or reviewing frontend code for typography. Triggers on typography, fonts, font formats, woff2, variable fonts, font-weight, opentype, font-feature-settings, letter-spacing, line-height, type scale, heading hierarchy, heading levels, tabular numbers, text-wrap, truncation, line clamp, underlines, text-decoration, text selection, iOS input zoom, font smoothing, text contrast, measure, line length, text-box, smart punctuation, drop cap. |
Great typography
Good typography is mostly restraint. A sensible scale, comfortable spacing and enough contrast beat any clever effect. A label, a table cell, a marketing headline and an article paragraph should not share one set of rules. Apply these principles when building or reviewing anything with text in it.
When reviewing, read the page instead of scanning the code: squint to check the hierarchy holds, read one full paragraph for comfort, and resize the viewport to catch bad wrapping, widows and truncation at real content lengths.
The words themselves (button labels, error messages, empty states) are covered by the better-writing skill; this skill covers how text renders.
Match the project's styling system. Before suggesting or writing any fix, check how the codebase styles things and express every change in that system: Tailwind utilities in a Tailwind project, plain declarations in CSS, CSS Modules, styled-components or StyleX. The cheat sheet maps each declaration to its Tailwind equivalent. Never introduce a second styling approach just to apply a typography fix.
Quick Reference
| Category | When to use | Reference |
|---|
| Choosing fonts | Font categories, pairing, formats, typeface anatomy | choosing-fonts.md |
| Variable fonts & OpenType | Axes, weights, tabular numbers, stylistic sets | variable-fonts-and-opentype.md |
| Spacing & sizing | Type scale, heading hierarchy, line-height, letter-spacing, text trimming | spacing-and-sizing.md |
| Wrapping & punctuation | Measure, wrapping, truncation, smart punctuation, RTL | wrapping-and-punctuation.md |
| Details & accessibility | Underlines, selection, forms, decorative text, contrast | details-and-accessibility.md |
| CSS cheat sheet | Quick lookup of every property covered, with Tailwind equivalents | css-cheat-sheet.md |
Core Principles
1. Serve the Right Format
Use .woff2 (Brotli compression, broadly supported) on the web. .woff is a fallback only for very old browsers; .ttf and .otf are raw desktop formats with no web compression. How the files are loaded is the project's own concern, this skill does not prescribe it.
2. 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 the raw-tag properties for custom axes ("GRAD" 80) and niche features ("ss01" 1) that have no property of their own.
3. No Fake Weights
When a weight or style is not loaded, the browser synthesizes it. That is a safety mechanism, not a feature. Set font-synthesis: none so missing files fail visibly instead of rendering a faked bold or italic.
4. Fewer Fonts, Sizes and Weights
Rarely use more than three fonts. Weight and size define hierarchy, but overusing them hurts readability quickly. Pair for contrast, not similarity: a serif headline with a sans body reads as deliberate, two near-identical sans-serifs read as a mistake. Below 18px, stay at weight 400+; weights under 300 are display-only (28px+), they disappear at text sizes.
5. Use a Type Scale with Semantic Names
Define a small set of sizes and deviate from it as little as possible. Hard-coded sizes without a system break down at scale. For solo projects, default names like text-sm work fine as long as the usage rules are clear. On a team, name sizes by use (text-body-sm), not by size, so the rules stay consistent.
6. Heading Sizes Descend with Level
Map each heading level used on a page to a descending step of the type scale: a lower level must never render larger than a higher one on the same page. Adjacent levels may share a size toward the small end of the scale as long as weight or spacing keeps them distinct. Pick the tag from the document outline and control the size with CSS; never skip levels or reach for an h4 because it "looks right".
7. 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; fixed values like 24px do not. Tight line-height is for short text: anything that wraps to three or more lines needs at least 1.4, even in height-constrained rows.
8. Letter-Spacing by Size
Large headings often look better with slightly negative letter-spacing. Small uppercase labels need a little positive letter-spacing so letters do not feel crowded. Body copy at reading sizes needs neither.
9. Cap the Measure
Long lines make it hard for the eye to find the next line. Cap long-form text around 60–75 characters per line. Any unit works: 65ch measures characters directly, and a pixel or rem cap is just as good: at a 16px body size the range lands roughly between 560px and 680px depending on the font, so Tailwind's max-w-xl or max-w-2xl fit. What matters is that a cap exists and the resulting line length sits in range.
10. Wrap Deliberately
text-wrap: balance distributes text evenly across lines: use it on headings. text-wrap: pretty avoids leaving a single short word on the final line: use it on descriptions. Skip both in long-form text: browsers ignore balance past a few lines anyway, and evening out a whole paragraph wastes space and makes it harder to read. overflow-wrap: break-word where long words, links or IDs could escape the container. white-space: nowrap on labels and badges where a line break looks broken.
11. Tabular Numbers on Changing Values
Digits have different widths by default, so timers, counters and prices shift layout as they update. Apply font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums to any value that changes.
12. Truncate Without Losing Content
Single line: text-overflow: ellipsis with overflow: hidden and white-space: nowrap. Multiple lines: line-clamp. Truncation hides content, so if the missing text matters, keep the full value reachable in a tooltip or expanded view.
13. Write Copy Naturally, Style with CSS
Store text in natural case and control presentation with text-transform, so redesigns never require rewriting copy. Use smart punctuation: curly quotes in prose (straight quotes in code), an en dash for ranges like 2010–2020, an em dash to set off a thought, the single ellipsis character, to keep values like 16 px together and ­ to control where long words may break.
14. 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, or tune manually 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, like an abbreviation or a defined term. Unless the only thing animating is a color change, build the underline as a separate element instead of using text-decoration: color is the only part of a real underline that animates reliably.
15. Inputs at 16px on Mobile
iOS Safari zooms the whole page when an input's text is smaller than 16px. Keep input text at 16px on mobile viewports (text-base sm:text-sm). Avoid the maximum-scale=1 viewport meta: Safari ignores it for pinch zoom, but every other browser honors it and blocks zooming, which fails WCAG.
16. Size and Contrast Floors
Body text 16px (the web default and the right reading size). UI text can go smaller: 14px for inputs and menus (inputs still need 16px on mobile, see principle 15), 13px for captions, rarely below 12px. WCAG AA: 4.5:1 contrast for regular text, 3:1 for large text (24px and up, or 18.5px+ bold). When text fails these floors, report the failing pair and its ratio; don't change the project's colors unless asked.
17. Font Smoothing on the Root
On macOS text renders heavier than intended. Apply -webkit-font-smoothing: antialiased and -moz-osx-font-smoothing: grayscale (both covered by Tailwind's antialiased) once on the root layout so they cover all text.
18. Logical Properties for Direction
To support right-to-left content, use direction-agnostic properties: margin-inline-start instead of margin-left, text-align: start instead of left. Set lang so browsers pick the right quotes and hyphenation, and dir="rtl" where needed.
19. Style the Selection, Disable It Where It Distracts
::selection is a subtle way to embed brand in the reading experience; keep the combination legible. Use user-select: none on button labels where copying is unlikely and selection feels distracting, and make sure cmd+A only grabs text the user expects to copy. In cross-platform apps that feel closer to native, disable selection for the interface and keep it only on content worth copying.
Common Mistakes
| Mistake | Fix |
|---|
.ttf/.otf served on the web | Convert to .woff2 |
font-variation-settings: "wght" for weight | font-weight (works with non-variable fallbacks) |
font-feature-settings: "tnum" 1 | font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums |
| Browser-faked bold or italic | Load the file, set font-synthesis: none |
| Hard-coded one-off font sizes | Use the type scale |
h3 rendered larger than h2 on the same page | Map heading levels to descending scale steps |
| Heading tag picked for its size, skipping levels | Level from the document outline, size via CSS |
line-height: 24px on scalable text | Unitless value (1.5) |
| Full-width paragraphs | Cap around 60–75 characters per line |
| Orphan on the last line of a paragraph | text-wrap: pretty |
| Lopsided two-line heading | text-wrap: balance |
| Numbers cause layout shift | tabular-nums |
| Truncated text with no way to read it | Tooltip or expanded view for the full value |
UPPERCASE typed into copy | Natural case + text-transform |
| Justified text in an interface | text-align: start; reserve justify for specific editorial layouts |
| Underline cuts through descenders | text-decoration-skip-ink: auto, from-font metrics |
Inputs below 16px zoom on iOS | text-base sm:text-sm |
margin-left in RTL-capable UI | margin-inline-start |
| Selectable button labels in native-feel UI | , keep selection on real content |
Review Output Format
Present every review in two parts.
Findings
Group findings by principle. Use a markdown table with Severity, Location, Before, After, and Why columns. Include every change made or proposed, not a subset. Never use separate "Before:" / "After:" lines.
- Severity:
HIGH makes text unreadable, unavailable, or structurally misleading; MEDIUM harms hierarchy, wrapping, or scanning; LOW is isolated typographic polish.
- Location: cite
path/to/file:line. If the artifact has no source files, cite the exact screen and component instead.
- Before / After: show the current typography and an actionable replacement.
- Why: name the violated principle and its effect on readability or hierarchy.
Consolidate a repeated systemic issue into one row and list every affected location. Omit principles with no findings.
Example
Tabular numbers
| Severity | Location | Before | After | Why |
|---|
| MEDIUM | src/Price.tsx:17 | <span>{price}</span> on a live price | <span className="tabular-nums">{price}</span> | Proportional digits cause changing values to shift |
| LOW | src/numbers.css:8 | font-feature-settings: "tnum" 1 | font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums | The high-level property preserves fallback behavior |
Line-height and measure
| Severity | Location | Before | After | Why |
|---|
| MEDIUM | src/Article.tsx:33 | leading-none on a body paragraph | leading-normal (1.5–1.6) | Wrapped body text needs enough vertical separation |
| MEDIUM | src/article.css:12 | Full-width article column | max-width near 65 characters at 16px | Long measures make lines hard to track |
Verification and Verdict
After the findings:
- Verification: list the exact checks run and their observed results, including wrapping, hierarchy, text resizing, font loading, and dynamic-value stability when applicable. If a check was not run, state what still needs verification.
- Verdict:
Block if any HIGH finding remains, Needs changes if only MEDIUM or LOW findings remain, and Approve only when no actionable findings remain.
When there are no findings, omit the tables, state "No actionable typography findings", report verification, and end with Approve.
