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---
title: "Leading - Glossary | MDN"
chunk: 1/3
source: "https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Leading"
category: "reference"
tags: "web, html, css, javascript, documentation"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T05:36:35.111107+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---
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1. [Glossary](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary)
2. [Leading](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Leading)
# Leading
In typography, **leading** is an amount of space included above and below text to provide spacing between lines. Historically, in physical typesetting, pieces of actual [lead](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lead) were used to implement this spacing, which is where the name comes from.
In CSS, typographic leading is the difference between the content height and the line-height, generally set by the [`line-height`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/Properties/line-height) property. Leading set via `line-height` provides spacing between lines, which can be negative. The space is distributed equally above and below the text, which is referred to as **half-leading**.
The area of a font above the cap baseline is referred to as the _over edge_. The area below the [alphabetic baseline](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Baseline/Typography) is referred to as the _under edge_. Likewise, the half-leading above and below a line is referred to as the _over leading_ and _under leading_ , respectively.
The half-leading can be trimmed from the block-start edge and block-end edge of a text element's block container using the [`text-box`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/Properties/text-box) properties.
## In this article
* [See also](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Leading#see_also)
## [See also](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Glossary/Leading#see_also)
* [`line-height`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/Properties/line-height)
* [`text-box`](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Reference/Properties/text-box)
* [CSS inline layout](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/Guides/Inline_layout) module
* [Leading](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leading) on Wikipedia
* [The Thing With Lead­ing in CSS](https://matthiasott.com/notes/the-thing-with-leading-in-css) on matthiasott.com (2022)
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