Optical margin alignment
Letting quotes, commas, and some curved letters cross the margin slightly so the visible edge looks straighter than strict alignment does.
See it
What it is
Optical margin alignment adjusts glyphs at the edge of a text block so the margin looks straight to the eye. A quotation mark has little visual mass, and round letters touch a boundary at only one point, so mathematical alignment can look indented. Letting those shapes project slightly past the measure creates a firmer apparent edge.
Reach for it in books, magazines, pull quotes, and display copy with a strong column edge. Adobe InDesign exposes Optical Margin Alignment in the Story panel and calculates different overhangs for punctuation and letter shapes. On the web, hanging punctuation handles part of the job where supported.
Gotcha: this is optical correction, not a reason to move every line by the same amount. The overhang depends on the glyph, typeface, and size. A fixed negative indent that suits an opening quote will misalign a capital letter, so compare the corrected edge at the final size.
Ask AI for it
Typeset this pull quote in Adobe InDesign and enable Optical Margin Alignment in the Story panel using the quote's actual point size. Show a before-and-after pair with guides on both column edges. Let opening quotation marks and terminal punctuation overhang according to InDesign's glyph-aware calculation, but keep the text frame and paragraph measure identical. Inspect the result at 100 percent and adjust the optical margin size only if the visible edge still wobbles.