Font Proofing Checklist: What to Check Before Releasing a Font

Before releasing a typeface, proof it systematically across eight areas: character set completeness, spacing, kerning, diacritics, OpenType features, numerals and punctuation, family consistency, and size behavior. This page lists what to check in each area and which type of proof exposes it.

If you’re new to proofing, start with what is font proofing? for the background.

The checklist at a glance

The sections below expand each row.

1. Character set completeness

• Render every glyph in the font in a grid with baseline, x-height, cap-height, ascender, and descender lines visible
• Check for placeholder or accidentally empty glyphs
• Verify consistent overshoots on round characters (o, e, c, O, C, G)
• Confirm consistent heights: caps to cap-height, ascenders to ascender line, figures to their intended height
• Check both cases, all figures, punctuation, symbols, and currency

2. Spacing

• Set control strings around every glyph: HHxHH / OOxOO for caps, nnxnn / ooxoo for lowercase
• Read real paragraphs at body sizes (9–12pt) and look for holes and clumps
• Check spacing in ALL CAPS settings; caps usually need extra tracking or cpsp
• Verify the word space: too narrow and text clogs, too wide and lines fall apart
• Test at the smallest size the font is meant for, since display sizes hide spacing flaws

3. Kerning

• Run standard kerning strings: AV, AT, Ta, Te, To, LT, P., F., f), f], “A, ‘A, r., v., w., y.
• Check punctuation against caps and lowercase: quotes, parentheses, periods, commas, hyphens
• Look for over-kerning (pairs pulled so tight they touch) as well as missing pairs
• Verify kerning works across scripts and case combinations the font supports
• Confirm kerning between figures and currency symbols ($1, €4, 7.5)

4. Diacritics and language coverage

• Proof accented characters per language: Czech, Polish, Hungarian, Turkish, Romanian, and Vietnamese each have their own trouble spots
• Check accent placement on caps (often needs flatter or smaller accents)
• Look for collisions: accents hitting ascenders on the line above when line height is tight, or hitting each other in Vietnamese stacked accents
• Verify ogoneks attach correctly (ą, ę), cedillas sit properly (ç, ş), and the Polish kreska differs from acute
• Test locl behavior: Turkish dotless i casing, Romanian ș/ț vs cedilla forms

5. OpenType features

• Toggle every feature the font ships and confirm it actually substitutes: ligatures (liga, dlig), small caps (smcp, c2sc), stylistic sets (ss01–ss20), fractions (frac), ordinals (ordn)
• Check ligature spacing: fi, fl, and ffi should read as naturally as their components
• Verify small caps are drawn and spaced as real small caps; scaled-down capitals look too light
• Test contextual alternates (calt) with the patterns they’re designed for
• Confirm features compose: small caps + oldstyle figures, ligatures inside stylistic sets

6. Numerals and punctuation

• Set tabular figures in columns and confirm they actually align (1 is the usual offender)
• Verify the default figure style is the one you intend (lining vs oldstyle, tabular vs proportional)
• Check math operators align with figures: + − × = ÷
• Test quotes, apostrophes, dashes at body sizes in real sentences
• Confirm superiors, inferiors, and fractions are legible at text sizes

7. Family and style consistency

• Set the same text in every weight and style side by side
• Check x-height, cap-height, and overshoot consistency across the family
• Verify the weight progression is even, with no two adjacent weights sitting noticeably closer than the rest
• Confirm the italic matches the roman in color and apparent size
• For variable fonts, test intermediate instances as well as the defined masters

8. Size behavior

• Run a waterfall from 6pt to 96pt or beyond
• Look for hairlines and thin joins that disappear or break at small sizes
• Look for ink traps and tight counters that clog
• Confirm spacing still works at the extremes; many fonts are spaced for one size and suffer at others
• Review the proof in print as well as on screen. Paper shows weight and spacing problems that anti-aliasing hides.

Make the loop cheap

In practice, proofing quality tracks how cheap each iteration is. If regenerating a proof takes ten minutes of exporting and relinking, you’ll proof rarely. If it’s automatic, you’ll proof constantly.

Font Proof makes the loop nearly free on a Mac: it watches your Glyphs file and rebuilds the proof PDF the moment you save. Waterfalls, glyph grids with metric lines, style comparisons, spacing and kerning templates, and diacritic texts for 26 languages are built in, and you can save your whole proof setup as a template and drop the next font into it. The license is $100 once with a 14-day free trial. See the docs for how it works.