The settings nobody touches
Tabular numerals, optical sizing, negative tracking on display type, and the two properties that stop a heading breaking with one word on the last line.
font-variant-numeric: tabular-nums makes every digit the same width, which is what stops a column of prices jittering and a timer visibly reflowing every second. Proportional figures are correct in running prose and wrong in every table anyone has ever built.
Tracking is size-dependent. Display sizes need it tightened, usually a few hundredths of an em negative, because letter spacing designed for body text looks loose at 48px. Small caps and all-caps labels need it opened up. Setting one letter-spacing value globally is worse than setting none.
text-wrap: balance evens out the lines of a short heading; text-wrap: pretty prevents a single-word last line in a paragraph. Two declarations, near-zero cost, and they remove the most visible amateur artefact in a page of otherwise decent type.
You should now be able to
- Use tabular figures where numbers align in a column
- Apply tracking appropriately at display and caption sizes
- Prevent orphans and ragged headings with text-wrap
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