Web typography checklist Content Design Usability Content All spelling & grammar is correct. No double spaces between sentences. Replace dumb quotes with smart quotes." ➔ “ ” Replace all apostrophes with curly apostrophes.' ➔ ’ Use hyphens, en- and em-dashes properly. Do not write all caps in the code—that’s yelling; use CSS to generate all caps. Design Underlines are only for hyperlinks. Use the minimum necessary typefaces—stick to basic web fonts if possible. Avoid fake bold and italics. Avoid fake small caps. Choose a type scale and stick to the mathematical precision. Have the font sizes scale based on the available screen space. Avoid full justification—hyphenation doesn’t work reliably on the web. Apply hanging punctuation and optical margin alignment where possible. Try to avoid widows and orphans, though sometimes it’s practically impossible on The Web. Limit the line length to something reasonable, approx. 36em Usability Body text you want people to read should be no smaller than 16px (1em). Make sure the text is high enough contrast against the background. Chunk content into small sections with headers, lists, pull quotes, etc. Employ bold and italic to highlight important text and change computer speech phrasing. Links must be distinguished from the surrounding text, ideally with an underline. In most cases leave blanks lines between paragraphs instead of traditionally indented paragraphs.
