CSS3 & Telugu: Letter Spacing

CSS has a property called letter-spacing, which allows web authors to style thier text such that letters can be spaced out. E.g.:

C R O S S R O A D S

Things get interesting for Telugu. A character or letter from the the user’s perspective can actually contain multiple Unicode code points. For example, “స్త్రీ” is one character/letter. Similarly, “స్ట్రాంగ్” has two characters.

When letter spacing is applied to Telugu text, web browsers need to add additional space between characters. What matters is what is considered a letter by each browser might vary.

I tried to test this in few web browsers. It worked properly in Mozilla Firefox and Google Chrome browsers. However, IE 11 has issues. Here is an image showing rendering across these browsers at the time of this post:

Rendering Telugu text with letter-spacing applied in major web browsers

Here is a test page for you to see how your web browser shows it. I didn’t have access to Microsoft Edge browser. If you are using Windows 10, please post a screenshot of that test page from Edge browser.

5 thoughts on “CSS3 & Telugu: Letter Spacing

  1. how to do you get script in using Telugu, I want to write in telugu, lekhini does not save the file and continue later, how do I edit later once copied and pasted in whatsapp or skype, I want formats like MS office how do I get

  2. Sir in Unicode fonts apple keyboard layout lo. ్ Taruvata next letter kalavakunda yela type cheyyalo cheppandi sir please…
    Ex: ఎన్ వలప్ ila type cheyyalanukuntunnanu sir kaani pollu taruvata letter dhani krindhaku vachestunnadhi ila ఎన్వ్లప్.

  3. Sir your service is appreciated . plz can you help me to convert lekhini telugu into ANU telugu ?

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