Tuesday, November 12, 2013

Type Anatomy Vocabulary



Baseline- The line that letters sit on.


Meanline- Another imaginary line that lies on top of lower-case letters.


X-height- The height of the lower-case letters. The distance between the baseline and meanline.


Cap height- The distance between the baseline and the top of upper-case letters.


Ascender- The part of a letter that goes over the meanline and past the x-height.


Descender- The part of a letter that goes below the baseline.


Serifs- The little “feet,” or extra stroke at the bottom of character.


Stem- The Body or main lines of a letter.


Bar- Horizontal or diagonal lines of a letter that are not the stem. They are open on one side.


Bowl- The closed circular part of a letter.


Overhang- The part of a letter that goes over the baseline because of it’s curve


Ligature- When two or more letters are combined


Finial- The tapered end of a letter.


Terminal- The end of a stroke.


Spine- The middle connecting part of an “S.”


Apex- The point or top of a letter.


Superscript- Characters that are higher than the other characters


Subscript- Characters that are lower than the other characters.


Diacritic mark- Marks that are added to letters like accents.


Counter- The space that is enclosed by a letter.


Small capital- A capital letter that is the same height and size of a lowercase letter


Proportional oldstyle numerals- Having the majority of the number on the baseline.


Uppercase- BIG LETTERS THAT ARE CAPITALIZED


lowercase- small letters that are not capitalized

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