Font & Typography

The word ‘typography’ has its origins in Greek the words ‘typos’ (form) and ‘graphe’ (writing). It’s the art and technique that consists of arranging type with the purpose of making language more visible. it involves a good understanding of elements such as typeface, font and characteristics, alignment, line length, leading (line spacing) and tracking (adjusting space between groups of letters).

Terms related to Typography

 

Key to image: 1. Bowl; 2. Stem; 3. Counter; 4. Arm; 5. Ligature; 6. Terminal; 7. Spine; 8. Ascender; 9. Apex; 10. Serif; 11. Ear; 12. Descender; 13. Crossbar; 14. Finial; 15. Ascender height; 16. Cap height; 17. X-height; 18. Baseline; 19. Descender line
 

Aesc
A ligature of two letters – 'a' and 'e'. The aesc derives from Old English, where it represented a diphthong vowel, and has successfully migrated to other alphabets including Danish and Icelandic.
Aperture
The constricted opening of a glyph, as seen in the letter 'e'. Varying the size of the aperture has a direct effect on the legibility of a letterform and, ultimately, readability.
Apex
The point at the top of a character where the left and right strokes meet. The example shown here is the top point of an uppercase a.
Arm
A horizontal stroke that does not connect to a stroke or stem at one or both ends – such as the top of the capital T.
Ascender
The part of a lower case letter form that projects above the x-height of the font. Ascenders are important for ease of prolonged reading, though the combination of too much ascender-height and not enough x-height can cause problems.

Baseline
The baseline is where the feet of your capital letters sit. Below this line are descenders and loops.
Bowl
The shapely, enclosed parts of letters such as 'p' and 'b'.
Beak
The beak-shaped terminal at the top of letters such as 'a', 'c', 'f' and 'r'.
Bracket
A wedge-like shape that joins a serif to the stem of a font in some typefaces.
Cap height
The height of a capital letter above the baseline.
Copyfitting
The job of adjusting point size and letter spacing in a bid to make text occupy its allotted space in a harmonious fashion.
Counter
The enclosed – or partially enclosed – portion of letterforms such as 'c', the lower part of 'e' and 'g'; easy to get mixed up with the bowl.
Crossbar
The crossbar connects two strokes, as in 'H'. Not to be confused with the crossstroke that cuts through the stem of letterforms such as 't'.
Cursive
These are typefaces that imitate handwriting. Ever popular with Joe Public, the design community is often less than thrilled by these sometimes flowery fonts.
Descender
The part of the letterform that falls below the baseline. In lowercase terms, this means 'p', 'y' and 'q', and sometimes applies to uppercase 'J' and 'Q'.
Display Font

Display is usually a typeface used with large sizes, usually 20 or above. Dingbat

Once known as printer's flowers, dingbats are decorative elements that can vary from simple bullets to delicate fauna and flora often formed into themed collections.

Dingbat are decorative elements such as bullets

Display fonts
Any typeface intended to be used in short bursts can be defined as a display font. They're often created just for use at large point sizes, as with headlines and titles.
Ear
A small stroke extending from the upper-right side of the bowl of lowercase g, as shown in the example. It can also appear in a lowercase r.
Ethel
A ligature of the letters 'o' and 'e'.
Em
Often referred to as 'Mutton' to distinguish it from the very similar-sounding En, Em is a horizontal space equal to the current point size of text.
En
'Nut' to its friends, the En is a horizontal measure one half the size of an Em. That being the case, 'lamb' might have been more appropriate.
Eye
The eye is similar to a counter, but instead refers specifically to the enclosed part of the letter 'e'.
Fleuron
A subcategory of, or the precursor to, the dingbat. Fleurons are floral marks dreamed up by printers of the past to help decorate text.
Glyph
Any singular mark that makes part of a font, whether a letter, number, punctuation mark or even a dingbat. Glyphs are the building blocks of typography.

Glyphs are the singular parts that make up a font
Gutter
The spaces between facing pages of, and very often columns of text.
Justified
In a paragraph of justified text, the contents are arranged so that there is no white space at the end of a line: each begins flush left and finishes flush right.
Kerning

The art of adjusting the proximity of adjacent letters to optimise their visual appeal and readability.For example, where an uppercase 'A' meets an uppercase 'V', their diagonal strokes are usually kerned so that the top left of the 'V' sits above the bottom right of the 'A'.

Loop
The lower part of the letter 'g' is known as its loop or lobe. Sometimes called the tail – a term that also takes in the lower portion of letter 'y'.

The lower part of the letters 'g' and 'y' are known as the loop or lobe
Logotype
The lettered part of any marque or identity. The logotype can be taken separately from its graphic companion.
Ligature
The conjoined but non-identical twins of the typographic universe. Ligatures pull two forms together to produce a new glyph. 

Manicule

Also known as the bishop's fist (stop sniggering at the back), the pointing hand symbol is a popular dingbat.
Monospace
Fonts in which every letterform occupies the same horizontal space.
OpenType
Designed by Microsoft and Adobe, OpenType supplanted and improved upon TrueType and PostScript fonts.
Oblique
To be distinguished from italics, in which the letterforms are purposefully drawn to be different to their upright cousins. Oblique letters are merely slanted versions of the standard roman form, often arrived at by mechanical means.
Pica
One sixth of an inch in length, the pica is associated with line-length and column width. There are 12 points or 16 pixels in one pica.

A standard typographical measurement equal to 1/12 of a pica or 1/72 of an inch.
Pilcrow
The paragraph symbol, it now marks the presence of a carriage return but at one time is thought to have denoted a change of theme in flowing text.
Script
Script is a typeface based on the appearance of handwritten letters and symbols.  
Serif & Sans Serif

In typography, a serif is a small line attached to the end of a stroke in a letter or symbol. A typeface with serifs is called a serif typeface. A typeface without serifs is called sans serif or sans-serif
Sidebearing
The horizontal space to either side of a letterform, separating it from other letters.
Spine
The main curved stroke of a lowercase or capital S.
Squoosh
This is the inadvisable process of squashing or expanding a typeface digitally either to fit a space or for visual effect. 

Tracking

Tracking is the amount of space between letters in a complete word or sentence. It's more of a computer term that is traditionally known as letter-spacing. "This shouldn't be confused with kerning, which is the space between two individual letters in a word,"whereas Leading describes the vertical space between each line of type.