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In typography, rivers, or rivers of white, are visually unattractive gaps appearing to run down a paragraph of text. They can occur with any spacing, though they are most noticeable with wide inter-word spaces caused by either full text justification or monospaced fonts.
A common cause of rivers is due to a combination of the x-height of the type face (whether the type appears broad or skinny), the values assigned to the widths of various characters (eg. l, m, n) and the degree of control over character spacing and word spacing. Broader type faces are more prone to show rivers as are less sophisticated typesetting programs that give less spacing control. The more sophisticated typesetting programs slice individual characters into larger numbers, giving more numerical control. They also utilize libraries of "kerning pairs" that tell how much space to allow between all the possible combination of letter pairs.
Typographers would test for rivers by turning a proof sheet upside down (top to bottom) and looking at the text. Seen from this perspective, the human eye does not as easily fasten on familiar letter combinations and create recognizable words and the type can be viewed more readily as a pattern.
A less-frequently-used term is a lake, which refers to a cluster of adjacent or intertwined rivers that create a lighter area in the midst of a block of type.
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