Letter Spacing

How much space sits between individual characters.

Where to find it
Labelled Typography → Letter spacing in the "Selected Column" section of the Modify drawer.
Per device
Yes — you can set one value for every screen, or separate values for phone, tablet, and desktop.
Underlying CSS
letterSpacing

In plain English

Letter spacing — tracking, to a typographer — adds or removes space between every character. It is a fine adjustment: the useful range is fractions of a pixel to a couple of pixels, and anything more starts to look like a mistake.

This is one of the few settings that accepts negative numbers, and negative values are genuinely useful. Very large headlines are set at a size the typeface was not designed for and often look slightly loose; pulling the letters together by a fraction of an em tightens them up.

Positive spacing has a narrower use: short stretches of capital letters. A label set in uppercase reads better with a little air between the characters, because capitals were never designed to sit next to each other in a run.

When you would use it

  • A large headline looks loose: try a small negative value such as -0.02em.
  • An uppercase label or button reads as cramped: try 0.05em to 0.1em.
  • A logotype or wordmark needs a specific, deliberate look.

How to change it

  1. Select the column, open "Selected Column", then "Typography", then "Letter spacing".
  2. Enter a small number and choose a unit. em is best, because the spacing then scales with the font size.
  3. Negative values are allowed here and are the right tool for tightening large headings.
One value, or one per device? Every input in this setting sits under a “Same value for all resolutions” checkbox. Leave it checked for a single value everywhere, or uncheck it to give phones, tablets, and desktops their own. How per-device values work.

Watch out for

  • Letter spacing on body text almost always hurts readability. Leave paragraphs alone.
  • Use em rather than px so the spacing stays in proportion when the font size changes.
  • Too much positive spacing breaks words into disconnected characters and is measurably harder to read.

Related settings

For developers

The technical reference for what this setting produces: MDN: letter-spacing. You do not need any of it to use the setting — it is there for whoever is building the components or debugging the published page.

Where to go next