typography-audit

name

typography-audit

description

Audits web typography against 78 rules in 10 categories: font selection and @font-face setup, sizing and measure, punctuation, spacing and rhythm, hierarchy, alignment and layout, OpenType features, brand identity, typeface pairing, and display type. Reports file:line findings with concrete CSS/HTML fixes ordered by impact. Use when writing or reviewing CSS/HTML for text, selecting or pairing typefaces, configuring font-feature-settings or @font-face, building a type scale, or asking "audit my typography", "fix the fonts", "review my type system", "why does this text look off". Triggers on font-family, font-size, line-height, letter-spacing, smart quotes, em dashes, faux bold or italic, variable fonts, widows and orphans. For whole-UI audits beyond type (accessibility, forms, navigation), use ui-design Audit mode; for choosing a visual direction or designing a new type system, use ui-design Direction mode.

Typography Audit

78 rules in 10 categories for web typography. Every finding names file, rule, and fix.

• IS: typography only: font loading, sizing, punctuation, spacing, hierarchy, text layout, OpenType features, typeface pairing, brand type, display type.
• IS NOT: broad UI review (accessibility, forms, navigation: use ui-design Audit mode), or a redesign (new typefaces, scales: use ui-design Direction mode).

Audit Workflow

Track this checklist:

Audit progress:
- [ ] Step 1: Scope. List changed files (or full sweep), map signals to categories
- [ ] Step 2: Run CRITICAL rules in scope (font-, size-, punct-)
- [ ] Step 3: Run HIGH rules in scope (spacing-)
- [ ] Step 4: Run remaining in-scope categories by descending priority
- [ ] Step 5: Report per the contract; every finding has file:line, rule ID, fix

1. Scope to changed files unless a full sweep is requested. For a PR: git diff --name-only filtered to .css, .scss, .html, .tsx/.jsx, and template files.
2. Map code to categories via the signal table; skip categories with no signal.
3. Load rule files by prefix (rules/font-*.md, etc.), only for the categories the signals selected.
4. Run categories in priority order so CRITICAL findings surface even if the audit is cut short.
5. After fixes, re-run only the rules that produced findings, then finalize the report.

Scoping Signals → Categories

Signal in code	Categories to load
@font-face, font-family, font files, variable fonts, font-stretch, transform: scaleX on text	font-
font-size, clamp(), media-query type changes, max-width on text, <em>/<strong>, text-decoration	size-
Copy in HTML/JSX (headings, paragraphs, labels)	punct-
line-height, letter-spacing, word-spacing, margin on text, text-transform: uppercase	spacing-
Heading elements, type scale tokens, --text-* properties	hierarchy-
text-align, lists, blockquotes, multi-column text	layout-
font-feature-settings, font-variant-*, figures/fractions in copy	opentype-
Logo/wordmark styles, brand tokens, text color tokens, license comments	brand-
Two or more distinct font-family values	pairing-
Hero/display sizes, drop caps, initial-letter	display-

Rule Categories by Priority

Priority	Category	Impact	Prefix	Rules
1	Font Selection & Weights	CRITICAL	font-	11
2	Sizing & Measure	CRITICAL	size-	6
3	Punctuation & Special Characters	CRITICAL	punct-	12
4	Spacing & Rhythm	HIGH	spacing-	8
5	Hierarchy & Scale	MEDIUM-HIGH	hierarchy-	8
6	Alignment & Layout	MEDIUM	layout-	6
7	OpenType Features	MEDIUM	opentype-	7
8	Brand & Identity	MEDIUM	brand-	8
9	Typeface Pairing	MEDIUM	pairing-	5
10	Display & Headlines	LOW-MEDIUM	display-	7

Category map and impact rationale: rules/_sections.md. Each rule file gives why it matters plus an incorrect and a correct example. Category impact reflects the category's worst-case rules; report findings with the rule's own frontmatter impact, which frequently differs (e.g. brand-color is HIGH inside the MEDIUM brand- category because it holds the WCAG contrast floor).

Review Output Contract

Report findings as:

## Typography Audit Findings

### path/to/file.css
- [CRITICAL] `punct-smart-quotes` (file.css:42): Straight quotes in heading copy.
  - Fix: Replace `"` with `“`/`”` (or UTF-8 curly quotes).
- [CRITICAL] `size-line-height` (file.css:18): `line-height: 20px`, a fixed value the 48px `h1` inherits, so its lines overlap.
  - Fix: Use unitless `line-height: 1.5`.

### path/to/clean-file.css
- ✓ pass

• Group by file; order by impact within file.
• Every finding: impact tag, rule ID, file:line, one-line issue, fix.
• Include clean files as ✓ pass so coverage is visible.
• End with a summary: counts per impact level.

Gotchas

• Don't preload all 78 rule files. Load only the prefixes the signal table selects.
• Report the rule's frontmatter impact, never the category's. Two rules get misreported most: brand-color is HIGH (an accessibility floor, not a brand nicety) and punct-daggers is LOW-MEDIUM (decoration, despite sitting in a CRITICAL category).
• Punctuation rules apply to rendered copy only. Flagging straight quotes or -- inside <code>, <pre>, or JS/TS string literals is a false positive; "fixing" them breaks the code.
• Don't flag missing OpenType features without confirming the loaded font ships them. Browsers silently ignore unsupported font-feature-settings tags, so the fix does nothing.
• Every finding needs file:line and a concrete fix; an unactionable finding forces a redo.
• An audit is not a redesign. Proposing new pairings or scales turns a 10-minute review into a design project; flag the issue and route redesign asks to ui-design.
• Don't equalize priorities. A LOW-MEDIUM display- nit above a CRITICAL faux-bold finding buries what actually looks broken.

Related Skills

• ui-design Audit mode: broad frontend quality (accessibility, forms, navigation, motion); its typography coverage is shallower.
• ui-design Direction mode: choosing typefaces, scales, and visual direction from scratch; run when a finding becomes a redesign request.
• copywriting: heading and label wording. This skill governs only the casing of that copy (punct-case-rules).
• Taste Training (blode.co/taste-training): trains the eye these rules encode, across type, copy, craft, interaction, and motion.