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Participant
May 21, 2022
Answered

Why is there extra whitespace at the bottom of the text bounding box?

  • May 21, 2022
  • 2 replies
  • 5582 views

Hey all,

Curious to know why does Illustrator add a semingly random amount of whitespace to the bottom of a text box? This is really frustrating when you want to properly space out/mesaure items against one another.

In the example attached my font in 72pts and i've manually moved the  bounding box to the bottom of the text's baseline, but there still persists this annoying whitespace shown when you highlight it (black box). I could understand if it was leading but my leading is set to the same size, 72pts as the line of text.

Any ideas how I can change this?

Correct answer Mylenium

It's not random or arbitrary at all. Every glyph in a font has an em box and by definition this includes all extensions to the top and bottom for letters lik g and d or caps, including diacrits. Since it's used for calculating lien spacing and all that, it's natural that a font selection will show it all.

 

Mylenium

2 replies

Mylenium
MyleniumCorrect answer
Legend
May 22, 2022

It's not random or arbitrary at all. Every glyph in a font has an em box and by definition this includes all extensions to the top and bottom for letters lik g and d or caps, including diacrits. Since it's used for calculating lien spacing and all that, it's natural that a font selection will show it all.

 

Mylenium

Ton Frederiks
Community Expert
Community Expert
May 21, 2022

You could apply the Effect > Path > Outline Object and turn on Use Preview Bounds (in the Preferences or from the Align Panel)