the white space between

“The distance between word and word should be as wide as an n, but the characters should not be placed together in such a way that the white space between is as large as the distance between the two verticals of the n.”

—Vincentino, 1522, on calligraphic letterspacing; quoted in The Art of Lettering; The History, Anatomy, and Aesthetics of the Roman Letter Forms, by Albert Kapr, 1983.