Leading

For leading as a leader, see Leadership. For the legal evidentiary objection "leading", see Leading question. For other uses, see Leading (disambiguation).
"Line leading" redirects here. For the water navigation concept, see Leading lines. For other uses, see Lead line (disambiguation).
"Single space" redirects here. For single and double spaces between sentences, see Sentence spacing. For a space character, see Whitespace character.

In typography, leading (/ˈlɛdɪŋ/ LED-ing) is the space between adjacent lines of type; the exact definition varies.

In hand typesetting, leading is the thin strips of lead (or aluminium) that were inserted between lines of type in the composing stick to increase the vertical distance between them. The thickness of the strip is called leading and is equal to the difference between the size of the type and the distance from one baseline to the next. For instance, given a type size of 10 points and a distance between baselines of 12 points, the leading would be 2 points.

The term is still used in modern page-layout software such as QuarkXPress, the Affinity Suite, and Adobe InDesign. Consumer-oriented word-processing software often talks of line spacing or, more accurately, interline spacing.