They are a type of margin and arranging them properly is a crucial element of typography.
Column gutter typography.
Typographic gutters are the white spaces between two pages of a book or more generally between columns of text.
Traditionally for the screen this has manifested itself in a 12 column grid often set at 960px wide with 60px columns and 20px gutters.
Columns are most commonly used to break up large bodies of text that cannot fit in a single block of text on a page.
In typography a column is one or more vertical blocks of content positioned on a page separated by gutters vertical whitespace or rules thin lines in this case vertical.
Poorly spaced gutters can make text difficult to follow or read.
A multi column grid focuses on splitting the page into more than one vertical column with a gutter.
Typography has a massive impact on how a design is perceived.
When designing for desktop i d like to have each column be 72px wide and have a gutter of 24px or 32px.
A gutter of 24px will result in 12px on each side of the container and a gutter of 32px.
Flush left the text is aligned along the left margin or gutter also.
A column grid system is a particularly useful tool for any designer wanting to create perfectly aligned typography.
There are four basic typographic alignments.
The type alignment setting is sometimes referred to as text alignment text justification or type justification.