Spacing is rhythm

Music is as much about the rests as the notes. A bar of silence in the right place lands harder than a chord. Spacing in typography works the same way: the gap between elements is not empty — it carries weight, sets pace, tells you how fast to read.

I have been auditing the spacing on this site. The original pass used a loose scale with too many one-off values. Tightening it to a small set of steps made the pages feel more like they were breathing at the same rate. Nothing changed visually in an obvious way. Everything felt different.

You cannot see rhythm, but you feel it when it is gone.