Typography Glossary

Typography Glossary

{Purpose: To help understand the anatomy of a letter}

Aperture: The distance between the two opening strokes of an unenclosed counter.

Arm: The horizontal stroke that does not connect to a stroke or stem at one or both ends (crossbar connects, arm does not).

Ascender: The upward vertical stem that extends above the x-height. Found on lowercase letters, such as ‘h’ and ‘b'.

Axis: An imaginary line drawn from top to the bottom of a glyph, bisecting the upper and lower strokes is the axis

Baseline: The imaginary line upon which the letters in a font appear to rest.

Bowl: The curved part of the character.

Bracket: A curved or wedge-like connection between the stem and serif.

Cap Height: The height from the baseline to the top of the upper case letter “S”, not the diacritics.

Counter: Any negative space.

Cross Bar: The (usually) horizontal stroke across the middle of uppercase ‘A’ and ‘H’.

Descender: Any part in a lowercase letter that extends below the baseline

Ear: Found on the lower case ‘g’, an ear is a decorative flourish on the upper right side of the bowl.

Eye: A counter—it refers specifically to the enclosed space in a lowercase ‘e’.

Finial: A tapered curved terminal. It can be found on letters such as the bottom of C or e or the top of a double story a.

Ligature: Two or more letters combined into one character make a ligature. Available in extended characters sets or special expert sets of fonts.

Link/neck: The stroke, often curved, that connects the bowl and loop of a double-storey ‘g’.

Loop/Lobe: enclosed or partially enclosed counter below the baseline on a double story ‘g’.

Mean line: The middle line which dictates the height of all lower case, determined by “x”

Serif: An extra stroke found at the end of main strokes of a letterform

Shoulder: Where the arm of the r joins the stem is the shoulder. It can also be found on an n, m, h, and u.

Spine: is the main left to right curving stroke in S and s.

Stem: The main vertical stroke of a letterform, excluding serifs.

Stress: The widest part of the curved part of a letter.

Stroke: The main diagonal portion of a letterform; such as in N, M, or Y is the stroke. The stroke is secondary to the main stem(s).

Tail: A decorative descending stroke found on the letter ‘Q’, or the descending, often curved diagonal stroke on ‘K’ or ‘R’ is the tail.

Terminal: The end (straight or curved) of any stroke that doesn’t include a serif.

x-height: The distance between the baseline and mean-line, determined by height of lower case “x”

(Definitions from my notes from Kari Schuerchk PowerPoint Presentation)