Typography

Summary

The type system: 14px base with a 20px line (1.42857), AUI 5.4's exact heading scale and vertical rhythm, and styled inline semantics (code, kbd, cite, abbr, …). No classes needed: plain HTML elements are styled directly. The font family is a token: --neura-font-family defaults to Arial for AUI visual parity; override it (see Design tokens) to retheme.

Type scale

ElementStyle
body14px / 20px line, --neura-color-text.
h124px, normal weight, 30px top margin.
h220px, normal weight, 30px top margin.
h316px, bold, 30px top margin.
h414px, bold, 20px top margin.
h512px, uppercase, gray, 20px top margin.
h612px, gray, 20px top margin.
small12px, gray.

Examples

Headings

Heading 1 - 24px

Heading 2 - 20px

Heading 3 - 16px

Heading 4 - 14px

Heading 5 - 12px uppercase
Heading 6 - 12px

Body text and lists

A paragraph of body copy at the 14px base size with the 20px line. Block elements in flowing content share a 10px top-margin rhythm. Small text renders at 12px in the mid gray.

  • Unordered list item
  • Another item
    • Nested item
  1. Ordered list item
  2. Second item
Definition term
Definition description.

Quotes and citations

A blockquote gets a start-side border, gray text, and indentation. Source of the quote

An inline quote gets locale quote marks and gray text; a citation like The Nsys Handbook is italic with a leading em-dash; an abbreviation like CSS is dotted-underlined with a help cursor; a variable like hostname and a definition like flatpack render italic.

Code and keys

Inline code and keyboard keys like Ctrl+C use the mono stack (--neura-font-family-mono). Preformatted blocks keep the 10px rhythm.

Links

Links render in the brand link color with no underline until hover/focus; visited links use the visited token. Both follow the active theme.

Vertical rhythm

Every block element in flowing content (p, lists, headings, blockquote, pre, and opt-in components like forms, tables, tabs, panels, groups) carries a uniform 10px top margin (except headings, which use their own 30px/20px from the scale). Two adjustments keep things tight: the first child of any container drops its top margin, and a heading directly followed by the next heading level (h1 + h2, h2 + h3, …) closes up to 10px. Bottom margins are never used; spacing always comes from the element below.

HTML

Semantic elements

<p>Body copy with <small>small print</small>,
  <code>inline code</code>, and <kbd>Esc</kbd>.</p>

<blockquote>
  Quoted content.
  <cite>Source</cite>
</blockquote>

<p>A <abbr title="Cascading Style Sheets">CSS</abbr>
  reference, a <var>variable</var>, and a
  <dfn>definition</dfn>.</p>

Changing the font

/* your application stylesheet - swap in a system stack */
:root {
  --neura-font-family: -apple-system, BlinkMacSystemFont, "Segoe UI",
    Roboto, Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;
}

AUI compatibility

The scale, margins, and rhythm rules are ported verbatim from AUI 5.4's page typography, and the default Arial stack matches it exactly; flowing content renders pixel-identically under the drop-in. Element-level styling means legacy markup needs no classes at all.