Register

Register is shown here at text size. Use the controls to review its weight, italic axis, spacing, and readability with the font's default settings.

A typeface earns its keep in running text, not in a logo. Set at reading sizes the drawing recedes and the rhythm takes over: the width of the counters, the spacing between letters, the length of the ascenders against the line.

Read a paragraph twice. The first pass tells you whether the words arrive without friction. The second pass, slower, tells you where the shapes fight each other, which pairs sit too tight, which letters carry more weight than their neighbours.

Weight behaves differently below sixteen pixels. Strokes that look clean at display sizes start to fill in, and the space inside a lowercase e or a can close up. Move the weight axis while reading this column and the point where the text stops breathing becomes obvious.

Numerals deserve their own reading. In a table they should line up; in a sentence they should sit at the same level of attention as the words around them. Switch tabular figures on and the columns snap into place while the prose loses a little of its ease.

Italic is a change of voice, not a slant applied after the fact. Look at how the a, the g and the f differ from their upright forms, and whether a single italic word inside a roman sentence still belongs to the same family.

Punctuation is where a text face is often caught out. Commas, quotes and hyphens are small enough to be treated as an afterthought, and heavy enough to disturb the line when their weight is wrong. Read a passage full of dialogue and they will show themselves.

Line length changes everything. The same setting that feels comfortable across a narrow column turns tiring across a full page, and a face that looks generous at one measure can feel loose at another. Two columns here, roughly sixty characters each, is a reasonable place to start.

Language matters as much as size. Accented characters, dotted and dotless i, the eszett and the various forms of the letter g all carry expectations that differ from one country to the next. Type the text of a language you know well and check whether it still reads like that language.

None of this is settled by looking at a chart. Set your own words in the box above, at the size you actually publish at, and read them the way a reader would.