Readability refers to the combination of letter form and its arrangement on the page. So leading, spacing, size and colour all affect legibility. So Mistral typeset in huge chunks centred on the page is going to score a low readability rating.
Legibility refers to the clarity of a piece of lettering, such as being able to discern a 'Q' from an 'O'.
Poor legibility and readability should only be an excuse if you are designing something where the typographic elements are decorative and you, as the designer, couldn't care less if the reader can decipher the words and the client agrees.
Simples rules for good readability
Use tracking and kerning to keep things nice and tight.
Don't justify text in narrow columns.
Take time to actually look at your type. If you have problems
reading it, so will everyone else.
Design for your Nan, not everybody can read 6pt Helvetica
Light printed on grey card.
Don't set text all in uppercase.
Know Your Onions - Graphic Design; by Drew de Soto (Page 80)
Kerning is altering the space between letters. If you swap my squares (right) for a letter 'M' and my circle for a letter 'O', you will catch my drift. A lot of typographer's craft is hidden in kerning. Simply put, good typographer's craft is hidden in kerning. Simply put, good typography, in terms of layout and setting, requires good kerning and letter spacing.
Letters in modern fonts are put together with 'space; around them. This harks back to the old days of hot metal printing when letterforms sat in a lug. When a 't' sits next door to an 'h', there is a pre-determined 'negative-space' around the two characters. In normal body copy, the space is so small that to kern each letter requires the designer to be mentally unstable. But at larger sizes, kerning should be employed so that words become a shape, and letters sit comfortably together. Think of it this way: a long bench in the park, sitting in a row are; one fat man (B), a very thin lady (I), a lither and fit girl (T) and a woman with three arms (E). If they all had the same space to sit in, they would look a bit uncomfortable (you can see this in the economy class in aeroplanes). But if the airline could kern them properly, the thin lady and the fat man would sit next door to each other quite happily.
(Page 91)
How to kern
Set a piece of text in your publishing package. If you set the text at say 78 point, it will be much easier to see. Kerning only really applies to headlines and subheads, at small sizes it just isn't worth it. There are two simple principles that help you get it right but, to be honest, after a while, kerning just feels and looks right.
Try looking at the 'negative space' between letters, that is, the are in total. Then look at equalising the space visually. I stress visually, as a 'G' has a huge amount of space inside it, whereas a 'V' has much less, an 'I' has none. The second tip is to try to get uniform space between characters that have uprights, try setting 'Illicit' and life becomes a bit easier.
Kerning is the minutiae of letterspacing. Like using tweezers instead of a spade. Strangely, the bigger the text size, the more delicately you treat the letters.
(Page 94)
Letterspacing
Does what it says on the tin, determines spaces between the letters, but globally, over large areas of text. Unusually, it is controlled with heavier handed tools than kerning. Designers tend to control large areas of text with letterspacing in one go - things like standfirsts and pull-out quotes. Set five lines of 18pt, sans serif text. Select the chunk of text and alter the letterspacing by -3. The whole thing tightens up and becomes a coherent block of text, which is good.
Take a look at the section about tweaking paragraphs.
Word Spacing
The space between the words. Not the easiest thing to fiddle around with, but can be used to great effect when setting stylish text.
It is generally said that if you are setting headlines, the space betweem each word should be about the size of a lower-case 'i'. It depends on the typeface, in my opinion, but headlines should defintely have tighter word spacing thatn body text. The default setting in DTP programmes tend to have a wide word spacing.
In body text, generally, if you have a longer line length, word spacing should be a little more 'open' than shorter line lengths.
Leading
We have dealt with horizontal spacing so far, now we shall deal with vertical spacing - leading. Called leading because in the old days of hot-metal printing, in order to create more space between lines, the compositor would use strips of lead - really. So it isn't pronounced like leadership, it's pronounced like the stuff they use on church roofs.
You can adjust the leading (sometimes called line spacing in idiotic programme) in a number of ways, have a play. But there are a few things you should consier and know. Leading is expressed, in terms of typography and the font size, on the leading amount. Some programmes use percemtages which is impossible to comprehend, what is the per cent leading of 8.5pt Bodoni on 116 per cent leading - dunno. But 8.5pt Bodoni on 11pt leading makes a whole lot more sens to me.
If you are setting 10 point (pt), 12pt leading is good. I don't know why, but 2-2.5pt leading on top nearly always looks good, at almost any size. Similarly, 14pt on 16pt is good, as is 18pt on 20pt. Don't be afraid to use half of a point, it makes the world a difference, although setting text on 12.3987pt makes life difficult to remember.
Generally, if you are working with longer line lengths, you will need a bit more leading, not too much, mind, otherwise when the reader gets to the end of the line, he or she falls off the end and goes back to the beginning to read the same line all over again.
When you put white text on a black background all sorts of strange things happen to a simple bit of setting, The black spaces look smaller and the white type looks heavier, even though it is the same size as the setting that is black on white. It is a good idea to compensate. Close up the word spacing and knock the size down a minute amount to gain the perfect balance. The example left is 0.3 smaller.
Text on the same amount of leading as the font size is said to be 'set solid', i.e. 12pt on 12pt leading. Some typographic designers (particularly in publishing) start sucking their teeth at the leading set this tightly, and negative leading, i.e, 10pt on 9pt , makes them have to have a lie down.
The rules states that descenders and ascenders shouldn't crash into each other, unless it looks better (I think it was Erik Spiekermann who said that). In truth, as with all things typographic, there are rules to make things easy to read and if you break them to make your text look funky; that's OK, assuming it does actually look funky. You might want to exercise caution when using funky and illegible text on things like pharmaceutical labels that explain the recommended dosage.
There are other principles of spacing that are handy to know and ignore as you choose - mostly these relate to paragraph spacing.
(page 95 + 96)
Legibility and readability.
"Type Matters!" Jim Williams P.68,69
A good typographer is one who can arrange type so as to produce a graceful and orderly page that puts no strain on the eye. This is the first and last fundamental requisite of book design, and like most simple operations it is a matter of years of training.
But beyond this essential problem of type arrangement is another field for the printer-designer which is less austere and richer in opportunities for invention, namely, the floral embellishment or decoration of the message. Here is the little added touch that goes far beyond the bare essentials of taste into the realm of fantasy.
For this reason the ornamentation of printing is at once the most charming and the most dangerous diversion the typographer can find: dangerous because all matters of decoration call upon the utmost discretion and sense of fitness for their effective use.
There are also many ways of beautifying the printed page. Before and during the early days of printing, illuminators carried over their arts into the printed page, and since then wood-cuts, intaglio engraving and lithography have all been used, but it is a question whether any method can be so happily combined with type as can 'printers' flowers which have been used since the 16th century.
Legibility is the clarity of individual characters and how easily they are deciphered.
Readability is the level of comprehension and visual comfort when reading typeset material. It is affected by the way the type is arranged, including the choice of typeface, size to measure, inter-character spacing and leading.
Kerning
Kerning is the reduction of white space between two characters (inter-character space). In text applications, kerning usually affects only the character pairs that possess the greatest amount of excess white space, and, when used, contributes to a more balanced and considered setting.
Kerning should not be confused with tracking, which is the overall reduction or increase of white space between characters in a body of text.
Letter spacing/ Tracking
Letter spacing is the insertion of additional white space between letters to make them easier to read or improve the appearance of the text; it is also referred to as "tracking". Settings using all capitals particularly benefit from letter letter spacing to aid readability.
Kerning
Kerning is the adjustment of the space between two letters. The characters of the Latin alphabet emerged over time; they were never designed with mechanical or automated spacing in mind. Thus some letter combinations look awkward without special considerations. Gaps occur, for example, around letters whose forms angle outward or frame an open space (W, Y, V, T). In metal type, a kerned letter extends past the lead slug that supports it, allowing two letters to dit more closely together. In digital fonts, the space between letter pairs is controlled by a kerning table created by the type designer, which specifies spaces between problematic letter combinations.
Working in a page layout program, a designer can choose to use metric kerning or optical kerning as well as adjusting the space between letters manually where desired. A well-designed typeface requires little or no additional kerning, especially at text sizes.
METRIC KERNING uses the kerning tables that are built into the typeface. When you select metric kerning in your page layout program, you are using the spacing that was intended by the type designer.Metric kerning usually looks good especially at small sizes. Cheap novelty fonts often have little or no built in kerning and will need to be optically kerned.
OPTICAL KERNING is executed automatically by the page layout program. Rather than using the pairs addressed in the fonts kerning table, optical kerning assess the shapes of all characters and adjusts the spacing wherever needed. Some graphic designers apply optical kerning to headlines and metric kerning to text. You can make this process efficient and consistent by setting kerning as part of your character styles.
Tracking
Adjusting the overall spacing of a group of letters is called tracking or letter spacing. By expanding the tracking across a word, line, or entire block of text, the designer can create a more airy, open field. In blocks of text, tracking is usually applied in small increments, creating a subtle effect not noticeable to the casual reader. Occasionally, a single word or phase is tracked for emphasis, especially when CAPS or small caps are used within a line. Negative tracking, rarely desirable in text sizes, can be used sparingly to help bring up a short line of text. White type on a black background is considered more legible when it is tracked.
Designers most commonly apply tracking to headlines and logos (where kerning adjustments are also frequently required). As text gets bigger, the space between letters expands, and some designers use tracking to diminish overall spacing in large scale text. Loose or open tracking is commonly applied to capitals and small capitals, which appear more regal standing slightly apart.
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