Editing Emphasis (typography) (section)

=== Letter-spacing ===
[[File:Emphasis typography2.png|thumb|An example of [[:de:Sperrsatz|''sperrsatz'']]. Note wider spacing of the word ''gesperrt'' ("letterspaced").]]
Another means of emphasis is to increase [[Letter-spacing|the spacing between the letters]], rather than making them darker, but still achieving a distinction in blackness. This results in an effect reverse to boldface: the emphasized text becomes lighter than its environment. This is often used in [[blackletter]] typesetting and [[typewriter]] manuscripts, but by no means restricted to those situations.<ref>An example of an English translation of Russian original, with a non-typewriter font (i.e. variable-width letters) is in Eigeles, M. A., Kinetics of adhesion of mineral particles to air bubbles in flotation suspensions, Comptes Rendus (Doklady) de l'Académie des sciences de l'URSS, XXXIV(4), 340–344, 1939.</ref>

This letter-spacing is referred to as ''sperren'' in German, which could be translated as "spacing out": in typesetting with letters of lead, the spacing would be achieved by inserting additional non-printing slices of metal between the types, usually about an eighth of an em wide. On typewriters a full space was used between the letters of an emphasized word and also one before and one after the word.

For black letter type boldface was not feasible, since the letters were very dark in their standard format, and on (most) typewriters only a single type was available. Although letter-spacing was common, sometimes different typefaces (e.g. [[Schwabacher]] inside [[Fraktur (script)|Fraktur]]), underlining or colored, usually red ink were used instead.

Since blackletter type remained in use in German speaking parts of Europe [[Antiqua-Fraktur dispute|much longer]] than anywhere else, the custom of letter-spacing is sometimes seen as specific to German, although it has been used with other languages, including English.<ref>Example: Schäfer EA, Canney EL, Tunstall JO. On the rhythm of muscular response to volitional impulses in man. The Journal of Physiology 1886;VII(2):111–117. [http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1113/jphysiol.1886.sp000210/abstract]</ref> Especially in German, however, this kind of emphasis may also be used within modern type, e.g. where italics already serve another semantic purpose (as in linguistics) and where no further means of emphasis (e.g. small caps) are easily available or feasible. Its professional use today is very limited in German. This use of spacing is also traditionally found in Polish.<ref>[https://sjp.pwn.pl/poradnia/haslo/Jak-zaznaczyc-emfaze;15691.html Jak zaznaczyć emfazę?] – [[Polish Scientific Publishers PWN|PWN]]</ref>

German orthographic (or rather typographic) rules require that the mandatory blackletter [[Typographic ligature|ligatures]] are retained. That means, ''ſt'', ''ch'', ''ck'', and ''tz'' are still stuck together just as the letter ''[[ß]]'', whereas optional, additional ligatures like ''ff'' and ''ſi'' are broken up with a (small) space in between. Other writing systems did not develop such sophisticated rules since spacing was so uncommon therein.

In [[Cyrillic]] typography, it also used to be common to emphasize words using letter-spaced type. This practice for Cyrillic has become obsolete with the availability of Cyrillic italic and small capital fonts.<ref>Bringhurst: [[The Elements of Typographic Style]], version 3.0, page 32</ref>