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Graphic Design vocabulary · Typography

Sidebearing

Meaning in graphic design, with examples

nounAdvanced term

In graphic design, sidebearing means: The space between a glyph's visible outline and its advance-width boundary.

In Turkish: harf yan boşluğu

How it is used

Distinguish built-in sidebearings from adjustments made to individual letter pairs.

Example sentences

  1. The right sidebearing of the T leaves too much space before some letters.

    The glyph's default spacing affects its neighbours before pair adjustments.

  2. She checked both sidebearings while spacing the new lowercase set.

    Spacing requires judging the room on both sides of each glyph.

Common collocations

  • left sidebearing
  • right sidebearing
  • kerningAdjusting the space between two particular letters so that the gaps look even, for example pulling the A and V closer together in the word ‘AVENUE’.
  • trackingThe overall spacing between letters across a whole word, line or paragraph, adjusted evenly to make text look looser or tighter.

More terms: Typography

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