An ink trap is a feature of certain typefaces where the corners or details are removed from the letterforms. When the type is printed, ink naturally spreads into the removed area. Without ink traps, the excess ink would blob and ruin the crisp edge.

Ink traps are only needed for small point sizes and are usually only found on typefaces designed for printing on newsprint. Despite this, a digital font with ink traps will scale the ink traps to whatever size the font is being used.