Letter-spacing

With lock or lock set is referred to in typography a typestyle for highlighting portions of the text by increasing the distances ( by insertion of spaces ) between each letter. The opposite of locks is undercutting (English kerning).

Etymology

The Middle High German word lock ( OHG sperran ) makes direct reference to the space bands (originally equipped with rafters, complete with bar, related to spear ). It is therefore not limited to the Middle High German word sperric ( konfiszierbar, obstreperous ) back with the meaning of disproportionate ( bulky ) space requirement.

Use

In many blackletter there is no bold and italic styles, so that the lock record is the only decent way of highlighting. Also on the typewriter font lock was used by spaces.

For non- broken fonts is no longer used with the second half of the 20th century the block. Is criticized, inter alia, the poor legibility of long words such as in BLUMENTOPF EARTH. However, it can be used in artistic and exclusive works or reproducing historical documents. Even in documents and legal documents is still partially blocked, eg for highlighting names in family books or equal footing with other awards in court correspondence or for highlighting in the Conditions in online legal. Underline and spaced characters were generally replaced by bold and italic font in typography.

Technical implementation

For the use of spaced type, there are different attributes. Most integration in styles is also possible to unify.

• Classic lead sentence: Spacing means of space bands as spacers
• Word processing and desktop publishing: character attribute character spacing or tracking ( if applicable kerning)
• Typewriter: not supported in the simple models, top class models, analogous to word processing; Typically, the markup was performed by means of locking font by inserting spaces and the words of three space separated.
• HTML and CSS: The usual CSS attribute is letter-spacing ( Character Spacing ), eg must be generated , wherein either the preceding space and the following characters must be enclosed or with the CSS margin property inzeiliger a space before and after the blocked text and at the beginning of a protected space () may be required. The originally intended for this purpose font-stretch (font walking distance ) could not enforce the absence of browser support. In " pure " HTML spaces must similarly be used for typewriter. To avoid automatic line breaks, nonbreaking spaces are required here.
• LaTeX: Here is the Soul package with the attribute \ as available. In the example \ so { blocked } the text "disabled " is issued, the run length is predefined and can not be adjusted. Pure LaTeX can also be adapted here with space only.

Regulate

• Space before and after the blocked text mitgesperrt, punctuation except for periods, and quotation marks also. example: This is f a l s c h blocked, so it is r i c h t i g locked.
• Numbers are not locked.
• When broken scripts in the German forced ligatures ch, ck, st and tz and the letter ß not resolved. All other ligatures (eg ff, fi, st ) be dissolved and locked:
• Locks are basically at the eighth square. Space with full width would have a blocking run too wide and only on typewriters and other environments where only fixed width fonts are available used (eg plain text emails without Unicode encoding).