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Typography for the Web

A 5-part design series on web typography — special characters, ligatures, whitespace variants, CJK considerations, and box-drawing art.

  1. 1

    Ligatures in Web Typography: From fi to Modern OpenType Features

    Master web ligatures — standard ligatures (fi, fl), discretionary ligatures, CSS font-feature-settings, OpenType features, and accessibility implications.

  2. 2

    Whitespace Characters in Web Development: Beyond the Space Bar

    Master all Unicode whitespace characters for web development — non-breaking space, thin space, em space, zero-width characters, and CSS white-space control.

  3. 3

    CJK Web Typography: Chinese, Japanese, and Korean Text on the Web

    Master CJK web typography — font stacks, line breaking rules, ruby annotation, vertical writing, CSS text-spacing, and mixed-script layout techniques.

  4. 4

    Box Drawing Characters: Building Text-Based UI with Unicode

    Use Unicode box drawing characters to build tables, borders, and text-based interfaces — the complete reference with copy-paste examples and CSS tips.

  5. 5

    Font Fallback and Tofu: Why Characters Display as Empty Boxes

    Understand font fallback — why characters render as empty boxes (tofu), how to build robust font stacks, unicode-range subsetting, and more.