Do you know the difference between a dingbat and
a diphthong? Do you reach for the Rogaine when
the conversation turns to hairlines? Are you convinced
that ems and ens melt in your mouth, not in
your hand?
If you’re new to the design world, you may still
be absorbing an abundance of type-related terms.
And if you’ve been in the game for a while, you know
how important it is to stay current with industry
jargon. “Designers, clients, art directors, and foundries
need to have a common language to talk about
visual messages,” says Ilene Strizver, a typographic
consultant, designer, and founder of The Type Studio. “Designers need to learn
to be more verbal. You have to be able to talk about
type, justify your choices, and educate clients so they
can appreciate what you do—and why you do it.”
Allan Haley, director of Words and Letters at
Monotype Imaging (and regular DG contributor),
agrees. “It’s the vocabulary designers use for the business
that they’re in. If you don’t have a strong grasp
of this language, it becomes difficult to communicate—
especially when you deal with others who work
with type and fonts.”
Whether you’re wondering about the meaning
of a particular term or just want to brush up on
general jargon, this glossary will help fine-tune your
type vocabulary. Who knows? Being able to spout off
a few of the more obscure terms may even make you
a winner the next time your typographic knowledge
is challenged.
Character anatomy
At first glance a letterform may look simple, but
there’s more to each stroke than meets the eye.
“It’s important to be familiar with characteristics of
a typeface because being aware of details and conversing
[with other professionals] go hand in hand,”
Strizver notes.
Apex – point at the top of a character where two
strokes meet (e.g., the top of the A)
Arm – horizontal stroke that does not connect
to a stroke or stem on one or both ends (e.g.,T, E, F)
Ascender – portion of a lowercase character
extending above the height of a lowercase x
(e.g., b, d, f, h, k, l)
Bar – horizontal stroke in e, f, t, A, H, and T
Baseline – imaginary line upon which all characters
sit
Bowl – the fully closed, rounded part of a character
(e.g., d, q, P, R); also called Loop
Counter – open space in a fully or partly closed
portion of a letter (e.g., q, Q, d, D)
Cross stroke – horizontal stroke that intersects
the stem of a lowercase t or f
Crossbar – horizontal stroke that connects two
strokes in capital letters such as A or H
Crotch – acute angle where two strokes meet
(e.g., V, A, W); see also Vertex
Descender – portion of a letter that falls below
the baseline (e.g., g, j, p, q, y)
Ear – small stroke extending from the upper-right
side of the bowl of lowercase g; also appears in
the angled or curved lowercase r
Hairline – the thinnest stroke in a typeface that
demonstrates varying stroke widths
Leg – short, descending portion of a letter (e.g.,
y, R)
Ligature – two or more letters combined to form
one character (fi, fl)
Mean line – imaginary line running along the top
of non-ascending, lowercase letters; see also
X-height
Sans serif – category of type that does not
incorporate serifs
Serif – line that crosses the end of a main character
stroke
Shoulder – curved stroke aiming downward from
a stem (h, m, n)
Spine – main stroke in the letter s
Spur – small stroke at the base of a stem (occurs
in some designs of G)
Stem – vertical, full-length stroke in upright characters
like T or L; also called Main stroke
Stroke – main portion of a character
Swash – ornamental additions to some letters
Tail – short, downward stroke in K, Q, and R
Terminal – the end of a stroke that does not
include a serif
Vertex – the point at the bottom or top of a
character where two strokes meet (V, A, W);
see also Crotch
X-height – height which lowercase letters reach
based on height of lowercase x; does not
include ascenders or descenders
Symbols
Type designer Jill Bell gives a
nod to technology for familiarizing the general public with symbols. “Digital fonts have helped people
learn what pound signs and asterisks are,” she says.
“E-mail has also changed a lot of things, like the at
symbol (@) and the greater than or less than signs
(> <) that you’ll find in addresses.” And for designers,
the ability to talk in detail about other commonly
used symbols can help establish credibility in
both coworkers’ and clients’ eyes.
Ampersand – a stylized character of the Latin et
used to represent the word and (&)
Asterisk – star-like symbol indicating a footnote
or other additional information (*)
Braces – symbols used to enclose words meant
to be grouped together {}
Brackets – symbols used to enclose groups of
related words, often within parentheses []
Dingbats – utility characters that include icons,
symbols, fleurons, and ornaments
Diphthong – a single glyph that represents two
vowels (oe)
Em dash – a solid, wide dash used to indicate a
break in thought (—)
En dash – relative measurement equal to onehalf
of an em; often used to represent a range
between two items (e.g., 1995–2005, pages
3–30)
Leader – series of repeated characters (usually
dots) used to connect type on opposite column
margins or pages (e.g., tables of contents,
menus, etc)
Prime – symbol denoting inches (12") and feet (1')
Smart – quotes quotation marks that curve or
angle inward (“Hi.”); also called Curly quotes
Underscore – line appearing on the baseline
beneath a word or phrase notating italic type
(e.g., “Dynamic Graphics magazine”); now more
commonly used in e-mail addresses
Virgule – alternate term for the slash symbol (/)
General terms
It’s not uncommon for some of the following terms
to come up regularly in conversations with clients,
coworkers, or typesetters. “I talk about basic parts
of type all the time with both laymen and art directors,”
Bell explains. “We might discuss whether to
adjust letter spacing, word spacing, or line spacing.”
James Montalbano, founder of Terminal Design, notes that he converses
regularly with traffic engineers and sign manufacturers
when he creates type for highway and interstate
signage. “I talk to clients about type on a daily
basis,” he says, adding that educating clients is a
large part of his job. While it’s not necessary for the
client to be familiar with technical terms, “the more
information the designer has, the more intelligent he
sounds—and the more he can communicate.”
Alternate font – complements a text font; includes
alternate characters such as fractions,
small capitals, old-style numbers, etc.; also
called an Expert-set font
Anti-aliasing – smoothing out images (in this
context, glyphs) by shading pixels at the character
edges
Baseline shift – typesetting control; allows
characters to be raised or lowered according
to the baseline
Bitmap – an image composed of pixels with a
fixed resolution
Cap height – the height of capital letters in a
specific typeface
Display type – large type (14 pt. and up) often
used for titles, headings, subheads, etc.
Drop cap – an oversized, first letter in a paragraph
(or article) whose baseline hangs below
the normal baseline
Encapsulated PostScript (EPS) – PostScript
language file format containing vector and
sometimes bitmap info with encapsulated bitmap
preview
Font – a member of a specific typeface family
Glyph – any special character, punctuation, or
symbol in a font
Gutter – vertical band of white space separating
two or more columns of text
Kerning – the addition or subtraction of space
between two characters
Leading – distance from the baseline of one line
of type to the baseline of the line of type before
it; space inserted between two lines of type
Letterpress printing – relief printing process
where raised inked surfaces are pressed
against paper to transfer images; this process is
reversed, or “wrong-reading”
Logotype – two or more characters combined to
form a single unit (e.g., ellipsis: …)
Offset printing – printing process where plates
are inked and an image is offset on a roller before
transferring the ink to the paper; the text is
“right-reading,” meaning the image of the page
appears as printed, not reverse
OpenType – new cross-platform font format
developed jointly by Adobe and Microsoft that
accommodates TrueType or PostScript Type 1
data; OpenType supports widely expanded
character sets and layout features, and allows
for a greater number of characters (about
65,000) to be included in a single font
Pixel – a single rectangular point in a larger
graphic image that is composed of many rectangular
points
PostScript – language used by many image
setters to create printed versions of electronically
composed pages; all marks are treated
as graphics
Rasterize – process of converting a vector
image to a bitmap (a raster-based or pixelbased
image)
Tracking – addition or subtraction of space
between characters in a block (usually a line)
of text
TrueType – digital font file format (developed by
Apple) designed to work with most PostScript
interpreters; contains outlines that Windows
and Mac operating systems automatically use to
rasterize images for onscreen viewing
Typeface – a collection or family of characters,
numbers, and symbols that share common
design elements
Weight – measurement of the thickness of a
stroke (e.g., extra light, light, medium, heavy)
Vector – resolution-independent graphics
defined by mathematical statements; vector
images are assigned individual properties such
as color, fill, and outline
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