Strip out spacing above and below the first and last lines of a text block

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What's this for?

By default text elements include vertical space based on its line-height value. The effect of that extra space may be overlooked or worked around, but when working with precise scales and layout components, there's probably no room for random spacing going around your text.

leading-trim is a JavaScript port of EightShapes's Text Crop mixin (source). It returns a CSS styles object ready to be used with any CSS-in-JS library that let's you inject styles with nested pseudo-elements.

Install

1npm install leading-trim
2
3# or
4
5yarn add leading-trim

Usage

_{Skip to the tl;dr}

leading-trim exports a set of functions:

leadingTrim

Use it when you're setting your font-family to a custom @font-face

1import { leadingTrim } from "leading-trim";
2
3leadingTrim({
4  lineHeight: 1.5,  // unitless `line-height` that you want for the text
5  reference: {      // reference numbers for the `@font-face` you'll use
6    fontSize: 40,   // `font-size` in px
7    lineHeight: 1,  // unitless `line-height`
8    topCrop: 5,     // height to remove from the top in px
9    bottomCrop: 6,  // height to remove from the bottom in px
10  },
11  correction: {     // (optional) adjust the cropping result
12    top: 1,         // a positive value shortens the crop
13    bottom: -1,     // a negative value expands the crop
14  },
15});

systemFontLeadingTrim

Use them when you're setting your font-family to a typical system font stack:

1body: {
2  fontfamily: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI", Roboto, Oxygen-Sans, Ubuntu, Cantarell, "Helvetica Neue", sans-serif;
3}

The reference numbers are already set for this one so you don't have to. Naturally different operative systems will use different fonts, so it's a close approximation, you can still use correction for your use-case:

1import { systemFontLeadingTrim } from "leading-trim";
2
3systemFontLeadingTrim({
4  lineHeight: 1.5,  // unitless `line-height` that you want for the text
5  correction: {     // (optional) adjust the cropping result
6    top: 1,         // a positive value shortens the crop
7    bottom: -1,     // a negative value expands the crop
8  },
9})

systemMonoFontReference

Same as above but for a monospace font-family stack:

1body: {
2  fontfamily: SFMono-Regular, Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace;
3}

1import { systemMonoFontReference } from "leading-trim";
2
3systemMonoFontReference({
4  lineHeight: 1.5,  // unitless `line-height` that you want for the text
5  correction: {     // (optional) adjust the cropping result
6    top: 1,         // a positive value shortens the crop
7    bottom: -1,     // a negative value expands the crop
8  },
9})

If the reference numbers were correctly matched, you probably won't need correction numbers different than -1 or 1.

The output of the above functions is a JS object ready to be used in a CSS-in-JS library of your choice:

1{
2  "display": "block",
3  "lineHeight": 1.5,
4  "&::after": {
5    "marginTop": "calc(-0.375em - 1px + -1px)",
6  },
7  "&::before": {
8    "marginBottom": "calc(-0.375em - 1px + 1px)",
9  },
10  "&::before, &::after": {
11    "content": "\\"\\"",
12    "display": "block",
13    "height": 0,
14    "paddingTop": "1px",
15    "width": 0,
16  }
17}

The code above will work with any font size automatically so it's up to you if you want to provide it along or just let the element inherit the one from the parent element.

Check the examples for a more realistic usage.

^{Disclaimer: My weapon of choice is React so the examples are only based on that, feel free to PR some other examples using other libraries.}

tl;dr

Using a custom font

1. Use the EightShapes's Text Crop mixin tool to obtain the reference numbers (I got the best results using a line height of 1 and a > 32px font size)
2. Pass your lineHeight and the reference numbers from the previous step to the leadingTrim function
3. Inject the styles object that the function outputs using your prefered CSS-in-JS library

Using a system font

Pass your lineHeight to the systemFontLeadingTrim function and inject the styles object that the function outputs using your prefered CSS-in-JS library.

FAQ

Why do I need those reference numbers?

To be able to calculate the size of the top and bottom crop for any given line-height. It's basicaly a rule of 3 so it needs something to compare.

You'll need different reference numbers for each font-family you use (not needed for different font-weights as font height is not changing in that case).

The EightShapes's Text Crop mixin tool makes it a really easy to get it working fast.

Where can I find more info about this trick?

I started learning about this technique when I saw it applied in SEEK's Braid Design System, since then I've seen other resources that may help you wrap your head around the issue:

• michaeltaranto/basekick
• Line-height Crop - a simple CSS formula to remove top space from your text
• EightShapes's Text Crop mixin intro article
• Getting to the bottom of line height in Figma
• How to Tame Line Height in CSS

Where did I hear this name before?

There's a a CSS proposal to address this natively using the leading-trim property. This is not trying to pollyfill that property proposal at all, but it does have a matching purpose:

By using leading-trim to strip out the spacing above the cap height and below the alphabetic baseline, centering the box actually centers the text; and does so reliably, regardless of what font is used to render it.

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