And your post is the first thing I’ve read in a while that tries to pull back the reins a little and remind us that we aren’t as powerless as we might think we are and can’t give up our responsibilities yet.

Thanks for maintaining the balance.

I think my problem simply lies in the breadth of the statement as it stands. To say that we can’t control kerning and leading is, I think, a clouded statement that needs a bit more definition. We can control kerning and leading within our designs, and, yes, that control can be adjusted by the end user, but the ability to control type elements is still there.

I understand, upon further reflection, what Mr. Eskin was trying to say. Yet, if I take an objective step back and look at the sentence from the viewpoint of an individual who perhaps does not work in the web design field, or someone who is just moving in that direction, I have to ask myself does the latter half of his quote clarify or confuse me as to the capabilities of working with type on the web?

With that said, I know I’m splitting hairs. Thank you very much to Emily Gordon and Nick for your thoughts, insight and stimulating conversation.

Here’s the sentence in question:

Part of the challenge for exacting print people, as web editor Blake Eskin observes, is that “there’s a level of precision that you can’t achieve online—you can’t control kerning or line spacing, for instance,” so content and search-engine functionality are key.

This is a perfect example where some simple clarification of a quote could have made all the difference between comprehension and confusion.

While I do agree that eventual control of typographical elements on the web are out of the designer’s hands due to user preference, browser defaults, etc., we have been given an amount of control (through css) that we can exert over our designs as they go out of our studios.

During the concept and design phases of a site we can employ our baseline standard as regards typographic control. We can exert a level of precision within our text elements. And, yes, this can be overridden at the browser level, but that control still exists within the css we originally created. That control still has a bearing on what a user sees despite their personal viewing preferences.

At the end of the day, pixel-perfect precision is not attainable at this point. There are just too many factors involved, and I, like every other designer, will have to live with it. I guess it’s much the same way that I need to live with poorly delivered and somewhat vague statements from my perfectly kerned and leaded design magazines.

How do we reconcile the two issues? I don’t want to feel like I’m forcing users into a certain box but the frustration of designing something for the user/browser to mangle is also unappealing.