Typography

[govuk-design-system]

Use this issue to discuss typography in the GOV.UK Design System, including links and lists.

[ignaciaorellana]

Idea: include ideas on what to do when you can't use Transport font

[torydunn-hmrc]

The style of having a smaller heading above the H1 shouldn't be called a "caption," which is used in publishing to mean the information associated with an image or non-text item. I'd suggest calling it a supraheading, which describes it's relationship to the H1.

[jennifer-hodgson]

Hi folks. Have been discussing "captions" versus "secondary headings" versus "supraheadings" with @stevenaproctor, and he suggested that what we gain in clarity with "supraheading" we lose in terms of Plain English. We suggest "section heading"...? Descriptive of what it's used for, easy to understand... Thoughts?

[torydunn-hmrc]

Seems like a good iteration to me. Thanks.

…

On 6 August 2018 at 10:31, Jennifer Hodgson ***@***.***> wrote: Hi folks. Have been discussing "captions" versus "secondary headings" versus "supraheadings" with @stevenaproctor <https://github.com/stevenaproctor>, and he suggested that what we gain in clarity with "supraheading" we lose in terms of Plain English. We suggest "section heading"...? Descriptive of what it's used for, easy to understand... Thoughts? — You are receiving this because you commented. Reply to this email directly, view it on GitHub <#64 (comment)>, or mute the thread <https://github.com/notifications/unsubscribe-auth/Aildwmuaj-7g3mLzCnnDxLgFAjZbbFUkks5uOA0JgaJpZM4RchTM> .

-- Tory Dunn Head of Design | CDIO Digital Services | Dorset House | 07392 289160

[timpaul]

An issue has been raised in the past about the 'link ink skipping' feature in modern browsers:

There's a concern that this causes some users to see single links as multiple links, and that is this a problem. Does anyone have any evidence to support this? If so, please comment here, or on this issue.

[36degrees]

There's an interesting thread on ink skipping on Twitter here.

[stevenaproctor]

@timpaul People have commented that the "Births, deaths, marriages and care" link on the GOV.UK frontpage looks like 3 links because the commas make it look like the link has ended.

The underline definitely makes q, y, g, j, commas and other descenders harder to read. I think this is true for all users and may contribute to why some sites do not have underlines.

There are situations where the ink skipping can cause people to read the link differently. There is an example in the Twitter thread @36degrees linked to of 9.9 or 99 percent. This kind of confusion would definitely cause problems if someone misreads an amount of money or percentage.

[antondrachuk]

Idea: include ideas on what to do when you can't use Transport font

Styles->Typography includes: “You should use an alternative typeface like Helvetica or Arial for services that are publicly available on different domains.” — are those the best alternatives in terms of accessibility? Especially when it comes to small sizes? At least one person suggests they might not be. There's also a pretty interesting comment thread there.

Some free typefaces that come to mind that are probably more readable would be something like Fira Sans, PT Sans or Source Sans.

[chaslinn]

I have been looking at the H1 and H2 styles in the prototyping kit recently and their apparent difference to the front end implementation (as far as I can see).

Just focusing on the H1 in the prototyping kit, I can see that the effective space below the H1 (50) is greater than the space above the H1 (either 30 or 40 depending on whether a Back link is present).

In live it is 30 below I believe. It is also possible to created similar situations for H2s in the prototyping kit where there is more space below than above the heading.

Theoretically there should always be less space below the heading than above, whatever the heading (H1, H2 or H3), as the content and heading need to be obviously visually associated.

It is possible that further guidance (to interaction designers) is required to make this happen with available styles or that the styles should be updated to achieve this affect. The desired effect can be achieved with override codes but we do not want to be overriding default behaviour I don't think.

In terms of importance of this issue, I would say it is greatly important that headings and hierarchical relationships are immediately understandable to a casual eye to avoid confusion and misunderstanding and that this potentially affects every page in a prototype, so for me high priority.

[dashouse]

Hi @chaslinn,

Thanks for your comment and your desire for good web typography :) Hopefully I will be able to give you a response to all of your questions. Let me know if anything isn't clear.

Frontend vs Prototype kit

Regarding "live" and "frontend" – It really depends what you mean by those terms. In terms of the GOV.UK Design System, GOV.UK Prototype Kit and GOV.UK Frontend, they all use the same rules. If you are referring to GOV.UK itself then spacing has been applied in many different ways across all of the individual rendering apps. You'll find completely different values, applied in different ways from page to page.

The spacing defined in GOV.UK Frontend (and therefore the Design System and Prototype Kit) was an attempt to systemise the typography and create a single way to do things.

I wrote a blog about this which I think will help give you some more context, even if the technical implementation is out of date. In this case check out the first image on to see just a few of the variants on just a few pages of GOV.UK.

General spacing rules

Regarding "Theoretically there should always be less space below the heading than above, whatever the heading (H1, H2 or H3), as the content and heading need to be obviously visually associated."

If we initially focus on Typography as a whole, this is what we're doing. We have a rule that "margin should flow in one direction", however to make sure there is more space below the heading (on every H level) than above then we have the concept of contextual adjustments.

This means h2, h3, h4, paragraphs, although only having margin-bottom when used on their own will actually have padding-top added in certain scenarios automatically.

For example: The h2, when following a lead paragraph has padding-top applied as a contextual adjustment.

If I zoom out and show you an example of using lots of heading levels, paragraphs and lists you'll see that these rules are in place for every level. Providing that there is nothing stopping the adjacent sibling selectors from working such as wrapping text inside <div>'s.

We have a great amount of consideration to the typographic hierarchy, making sure these relationships stay intact when the font size changes at the smaller breakpoints too. However there are some scenarios where a designer should make their own adjustments using overrides.

Page structure / Layout

Hopefully the above addresses the h2 and below, however you brought up an interesting point about the h1 and it's position on the page.

There was a couple of things at play here, we wanted text to start in the same position (give or take 5px) as it does on GOV.UK even though the margin and padding is applied in a different way.

For this we wanted to achieve an visually equal space (this may be technically slightly off) between the top of the heading and the start of the content below rather than having more space on top.

One thing you may not be aware of is the new way the page is structured.

Taking these from the Layout section of the Design System - https://design-system.service.gov.uk/styles/layout/ you can see that the spacing above the h1 comes from a wrapper called govuk-main-wrapper. This allows all content inside the grid to line up, rtaher than defining this on the h1 itself.

This should look like this:

When there is no back link, breadcrumbs or phase banner then there is a modifier to the govuk-main-wrapper class called govuk-main-wrapper--l. This actually increases the padding to make up for the space lost.

When applied this should look like this:

If you feel that what you're seeing in these screenshots is not how the typography is rendering in your app then we might be able to help find out why. Otherwise, I hope that at least explains some of the decisions we've made.

Dave

[stevenaproctor]

@dashouse I created a page in the prototype to demonstrate what @chaslinn is saying. This uses all the standard code from the Design System.

• H1 to paragraph is 50px
• Paragraph to H2 is 40px because of the rules you mentioned
• H2 to label is 30px
• Label to hint is 10px
• Hint to input is 15px
• Input to H2 is 30px
• H2 to legend is 30px
• Legend to hint is 10px (15px bottom and -5px top)
• Hint to first option is 15px

This means the H2 is always the same distance away from the form-group above it as it is from the form-group below it.

In your example content 1, the first paragraph is further away from the H1 than it is from the H2. The same is true in this example as well.

[dashouse]

Hey @stevenaproctor, sorry the original comment didn't mention headings as part of labels and legends. My answers, although relevant were largely based around text based content and didn't mention forms.

This particular problem with styling labels and legends as headings is that the heading needs to work in in context with the hint, error and the form element, locked in as one group inside a component. It also needs to have the same spacing applied so regardless if the heading is a legend or a label it looks the same.

For example the "Passport number" and "Expiry date" questions below:

We spent a number of weeks trying to find an automatic solution for some of the problems you have raised, we have a test scenario for the ways in which labels, legends and headings can be applied which has over 100 possible combinations.

To show just one scenario, here you see the spacing relationship between each potential element in the checkboxes component. As the heading changes size the relationship between the hint and error also changes.

Ideally, we would be able to adapt the spacing of the heading if a hint has not been entered, or if an error message isn't visible, however really pushing the limits of what we can achieve with SCSS and the Nunjucks macro.

In regards to form design this is the perfect scenario to use the override classes. They aren't intended as a last resort, but a way to adapt the defaults to your specific context.

For example, if you know you don't have any hints in your questions, you could override the margin so that the white space is equivalent to the hint just being invisible, rather than the block not being there at all.

We feel that this is where the Interaction Designer on each team will be able to make the best decisions for the particular question or service.

Perhaps we could include a few more examples on the question page pattern, showing how we'd use the overrides in specific scenarios?

[stevenaproctor]

@dashouse

This particular problem with styling labels and legends as headings is that the heading needs to work in in context with the hint, error and the form element, locked in as one group inside a component. It also needs to have the same spacing applied so regardless if the heading is a legend or a label it looks the same.

I totally agree that they should be considered a unit. If you remove the govuk-label--m and govuk-fieldset__legend-m classes in my example, the spacing stays the same. This is exactly what I would expect to happen in that label or legend, hint, error, input unit.

In regards to form design this is the perfect scenario to use the override classes. They aren't intended as a last resort, but a way to adapt the defaults to your specific context.

I totally agree that the override classes could be used here. But it means they would always have to be used if people legitimately used headings around their form groups.

In my example, the govuk-heading-ls are not part of the form-groups. They are separate headings that separate the page into sections. I am not saying I would design a form this way but there is a legitimate reason why people would do this.

I wonder if padding-top: 20px should be added by default to a heading that follows a form-group in a similar way to headings that follow paragraphs. What do you think?

[chaslinn]

Hi @dashouse thanks for taking the time for your detailed explanation. Unfortunately I feel I am not quite technical enough to easily understand it and am not totally clear what you are saying (sorry about that):

Are you saying the by design there will be more space below an H1 that above?

• In all the examples shown and talked about above the H1 has more spacing below than above (I think) - which @stevenaproctor mentioned but I am unclear whether you think this is a problem or by-design.

Also that for H2 and H3 that there should be less space below than above if coded correctly?

In my prototype page I also have an issue with the default headings which means that I do not get the spacing you are talking about:

It is possible that my code has errors (although I have had it checked), but I am wondering if I am missing guidance on how to ensure that my example doesn't happen. Label's and legends do complicate the matter further but just sticking to the H(s) at this point.

[dashouse]

Thanks @stevenaproctor, we can discuss this as a team and get back to you

[dashouse]

Hi @chaslinn, from looking at the screenshot the items are in a slightly different order than expected. It might be worth having a quick read of https://design-system.service.gov.uk/get-started/labels-legends-headings/ and https://design-system.service.gov.uk/patterns/question-pages/ to see how we recommend structuring question pages.

If you follow the structure of the label > hint > input, legend > hint > input and style your headings using the label and legend specific classes the relationship between each element should be much better. I can probably put together a quick example.

[dashouse]

Purely from a structural perspective, following the styling for labels, hints and inputs as a group the spacing will look like this.

The label and legend sizes can be changed based on preference / amount of questions

[chaslinn]

@dashouse thanks very much both for the example and suggestions for best practice - I will go away and read up more. That probably deals with the H2 issue to be honest (although I will check how it works with textual content below.

Any thoughts on the H1 issue?

[dashouse]

@chaslinn Thanks, let me look into this for you. I have tested a couple of options for the h1 and I think potentially increasing the padding-top of the govuk-main-wrapper container by 10px, therefore making the space on the top and bottom equal will be more inline with GOV.UK. I will put together a pull request and make sure I reference this issue.

[chaslinn]

@dashouse thanks for this, my personal preference would be to reduce the bottom margin by 10 pix or even 20 px - I think the size 6 override looks best and seems to be in line with the existing services but this is why I am asking about art direction - did we start with a graphical prototype as well as a technical concept?

[dashouse]

@chaslinn The implementation in GOV.UK Frontend is based on the art direction of GOV.UK. We essentially systemised the previous typographic hierarchy from GOV.UK Elements and made it as close as possible to GOV.UK itself while making them work for multiple scenarios. I'm a graphic designer first, so this isn't a technical only approach.

The issue with commenting on existing services is that because of the way the styles had been applied in GOV.UK Elements, custom spacing using Frontend Toolkit as well as changes over time there is a great deal of discrepancy in services. When doing this work we looked at many many examples of services from across multiple departments and highlighted the differences, mistakes and intentional choices before designing the solution we came up with. Now we have systemised this approach we should start seeing a lot more consistent spacing across departments and services.

The other factor here is that some people prefer to use govuk-heading-l for their h1, this has a bottom margin of 30px which may be what you're used to seeing.

The pull request I opened this morning alphagov/govuk-frontend#1073 will increase the space above the h1 by increasing the size of the main content container, this makes it inline with GOV.UK (give or take a few px) which should help.

[chaslinn]

@dashouse You are right 43-45 px lower seems more common, sorry. see https://www.gov.uk/register-offices as an example (also of poor H2 spacing which I guess might be fixed by new styles now?). But it looks like we have chosen to make it larger bottom margin spacing, is that right? as in an increase to 50 px?

[dashouse]

It's hard to explain the level of inconsistency in all of the different apps and layouts. It was increased from a GOV.UK perspective from 45px to 50px, however it's decreased from GOV.UK Elements which was 60px.

This was really so we could hang everything off of the responsive spacing scale and have a consistent approach going forward.

GOV.UK are actually starting to pick up GOV.UK Frontend in a few of their templates so over time this problem will iron itself out eventually.

[edwardhorsford]

Hi 👋

I came here to ask for advice about the margin-bottom on the h1 - looks like it's come up before.

Here's an example from our service:

To me, there's a lot of space between the heading and the body content. I'll probably end up reducing our h1s by one level, which will reduce the margin by default too.

Trying with govuk-heading-l - the margin is reduced, but in proportion the space still feels rather large:

For reference, here's Notify's page, which uses ems, but looks to be about 11px:

[pflannery]

Hi.

Would be nice to see the "(opens in new window)" link variations under the links section.

I've seen a smaller fonts used for "(opens in a new window)" but ultimately would prefer the guidance to come from the design system .

[edwardhorsford]

Would it be possible to document how to get tabular numbers? I know they exist but can't find them in the typography section, the getting started section, or in site search.

I've seen several people on the Cross Gov slack lament the lack of tabular numbers / ask that they be introduced - since we have them it feels like we're not making it obvious enough.

Knowing they're possible in the table component, I searched the source and found that the table uses @include govuk-font($size: false, $tabular: true); - could this be exposed as a class and noted in the guidance somewhere?

[edwardhorsford]

@Tosin-Balogun no specific research, but the main places I've used before have been service homepage / landing pages / interstitial pages.

Some examples of usage:

Intro paragraph for start page:

Description paragraph:

[Tosin-Balogun]

Thank you for sharing these @edwardhorsford. I think we in the NHS have also used them on hub pages, but we wanted to know if they were suitable for introductions on content pages as well and there's not enough evidence on how they have performed there.

This is in relation to what the guidance says in both the GOV and NHS design system documentation.

• https://service-manual.nhs.uk/design-system/styles/typography
• https://design-system.service.gov.uk/styles/typography/#paragraphs

I'm wondering if you have observed any user behaviour when used on start pages

[calvin-lau-sig7]

In 2023, the GOV.UK Design System team will be reviewing and improving our typography standards to make sure they’re up-to-date and as accessible as possible for users and service teams.

Read a blog post about our plans.

[samantharwright]

When dropping the H1 size down to govuk-heading-l class on content pages with lots of nested content, it becomes difficult to differentiate between H3 and H4 in the hierarchy as there isn't a class smaller than govuk-heading-s. Could an xs size be introduced? Or has anyone else discovered a need for this too?

[joelanman]

@samantharsaw is the solution here to use heading-xl for the h1? That's the standard guidance for content pages

[samantharwright]

Hi @joelanman this was specifically for content pages where there is quite a long heading. We've dropped the size down to -l from -xl as advised for long headings

[stevenjmesser]

Have any other services found issues with purple visited links in their testing? See alphagov/govuk-frontend#3242 for a description of the issue.

[selfthinker]

Last week we had a meeting with a GOV.UK publishing department and learned that they mistook the lead paragraph to be a heading, specifically a level 2 heading.
That prompted them to (wrongly) only use level 3 headings in their content. Although the guidance says to start with an H2 in the main content section, they assumed there already is an H2. Following that logic, using an H3 would be the right thing.
I have seen lots of content on GOV.UK only using H3s, so I assume that this wasn't the only department misunderstanding that.

It is usually an accessibility issue if something looks like a heading when it isn't a heading. I personally don't think the lead paragraph looks like a heading (because I know the context of how all the other headings look like) but I can easily see how someone else might think it is one.

Has anyone come across this before? Has anyone ever thought of "fixing" it?

I suspect even if citizens confused the lead paragraph with a heading, it will very rarely have any consequence for them. The only type of users I can think of who might be affected are screen reader users who can see how the paragraph looks like. They might be confused why the screen reader doesn't register the paragraph as a heading.

[querkmachine]

At the end of last year we added box-decoration-break: clone to the link focus styles in order to resolve an inconsistency in Chromium-based browsers. alphagov/govuk-frontend#3087

This may present an issue if a link has been customised with paddings or margins.

In this hypothetical example, here the link has been given some margin-left to separate it from the associated heading:

However, when the link becomes focused, the start of the next line becomes indented as the margin is cloned on focus.

This is probably not a significant issue at this time, but something to note down for future reference.

[DWPenjamin]

We recently tested our service with additional captions above our h1s which indicated which section they are currently on, and I thought it would be worth sharing the feedback we received on them.

Most users did not notice them

• "No I didn't, that could have been highlighted"
• "I knew it was there but didn't notice it"
• "I didn't read it. I read the huge, bold [title]."
• "This bit at the top? No I think you go straight to the big black writing."

Users felt the design / spacing (next to h1) wasn't right

• "The size. Or making the title smaller.  that would make it stand out more"
• Q. "Do you think it's useful?" A: "Yes I think it should actually be dark black as well"
• Q: "helpful?" A: "No, you need to separate them."
• Q. "why didn't you notice it?" A. "It's grey and smaller? it s quite close to the next line [title]"
• Participants took wild guesses about what the grey text meant and some thought it was the page title (because of its position), but couldn't then understand why the text that came next was so much bigger.

Some users got that it's not essential information and is there if you need it

• "Yeah I think it's clear, summarises the page. Probably not overly necessary with the big text what the page is about - don't need it but nice to have"

I realise that the intention is likely it doesn't want to draw attention from the h1 and if users don't necessarily notice it, it's not a bad thing. But I wanted to share those findings as I felt general feedback on specific designs will likely be helpful.

We significant improved comprehension by adding "This section: in front". This didn't make the grey captions more noticeable, but ensured that participants did understand the captions - and their relationship to the page titles - when they did notice, or when the captions were pointed out to them.

Example of one iteration of the captions we tested

[selfthinker]

In the latest accessibility audit of www.gov.uk DAC raised an issue with the blue link colour (#1d70b8) on white. It fails WCAG 1.4.6 Contrast (Enhanced) (Level AAA). Although we don't necessarily aim to meet AAA criteria and especially the contrast criterion can be difficult to meet without making things worse for other users, I thought I'd share it here anyway.

One of their low vision users commented:

The low contrast and lightly rendered links on GOV.UK pages create a challenging experience. The links’ lack of visibility against background glare, particularly when grouped together, leads to reading fatigue and difficulty in discerning the text. The contrast between the main text and the link text within larger bodies of text poses additional challenges. The stark difference makes it hard to switch focus between the two, often leading to misreading or inability to correctly identify the links. Using higher contrast for links may enhance their visibility and readability. It's important that the links are distinguishable while maintaining the overall visibility of the content.

The same low vision user also mentioned how the hover state of links is very difficult to see for them and therefore makes it difficult to understand where the pointer is. They were very happy with the focus state, but because they are someone who predominantly uses a mouse to navigate, the focus state doesn't help them to find where they are on the page.
This didn't end up in the report but was mentioned during a demo.

It would be interesting to know if other services had similar feedback for either of those two issues.

[sbasile-ch]

Regarding the "Links to change a language" and the 3rd guideline:
"[...] make sure:
...

• the link element includes an hreflang attribute ...

I've spent some time reading about that attribute (mainly, but not only, here)
and I'm not fully convinced about that given guideline.
That's not where & how, I'm undertanding, that hreflang attribute is supposed to be used.
Might you please add more info regarding that requirement ?

Also, minor point probably but anyhow the link might better point to the standard RFC8288, rather than to w3schools which in some places (here or here) is not considered the best source

[owenatgov]

Hi @sbasile-ch 👋🏻

Could you please expand on what you expect the hreflang attribute to do? To me it feels like we're in line with browser recommendations. A page has a link with an hreflang, a link to that page includes a matching hreflang. I wonder if there's soemthing I'm missing in how that line is perceived on the links page.

Re: your second point, I think it's reasonable to swap out w3schools for MDN as we reach for MDN more commonly in guidance. I've raised a PR to this effect for the rest of the team to assess.

[sbasile-ch]

Hi @owenatgov
thanks.
I just find some different interpretations of what hreflang is there for. The main usage (pretty much everywhere wiki included) being of it as a Meta element, so staying in the <head> section and relevant to SEO only), while at the link level I cannot see that used other than for "documentation" purposes.

EDIT: I think I went to the bottom of this. Most of what is detailed out there refers to hreflang of the <link> element rather than <a>, as they both have it and they address different use cases.
All the info at that "Link" specs seem to address just the <a> anchor tag.
To prove that the confusion is easy, I'd say that in theory the last PR is addressing the <link> one , while, replacing the previous <a> w3schools case it should probably point to this one

[obrunt90]

Hey gang - new designer here for HMRC - does anyone know how we handle orphan/widow copy. In previous roles (external companies) we've always hunted them down and coded in so they shouldn't happen. Just wondering what the system is here (a quick glance says that we don't force them).

[ordyboii]

Hiya, in a recent DAC audit of the Claim Child Benefit service, they raised an issue with the link colour (#1d70b8) on white backgrounds. It fails WCAG 1.4.6 Contrast (Enhanced) (Level AAA). Although this isn't critical as it's AAA criteria, I thought I'd share it here in reference to @selfthinker 's post from February 7 also.

DAC had raised:

The link text on the page fails to meet WCAG 2.2 guidelines for contrast enhanced. This issue may affect users with low vision, who may find it difficult to distinguish the light blue link text against the white background colour on the page. To meet WCAG 2.2 guidelines for contrast enhanced, the minimum contrast ration is 7:1 (it is currently 5.2:1).

It would be interesting to know if other services had similar feedback from audits.