Terminology Flashcards
Aesc
The aesc (pronounced “ash”) is a ligature of the letters a and e. Archaic in English it is representative of a dipthong vowel sound in certain languages.
Agate
The agate is a unit of measurement that has been traditionally used to measure the vertical space (gutter) between columns in a newspaper. Fourteen agates is approximately the equivalent of one inch.
Aldine
In reference to the publishing house operated by Aldus Manutius (ItalianManuzio) in Venice between 1494 and 1515. Also types used by Manuzio and in most instances cut by Francesco Griffo de Bologna.
Metal, digital and optical revivals resembling the types of Aldus and Griffo are sometimes known as Aldines.
Alphabet
A set of symbols (specifically letters) that are used to signify language in written form. Ideally, each letter or grapheme corresponds to a specific sound orphoneme; this is not always the case. Each language typically has its own alphabet that is tailored to its specific needs in terms of representation of the language in written form.
Amberlith
Amberlith is an orange gel adhered to clear acetate. It was used as a way to knock out or separate areas of camera ready art for different color or screen treatments. The orange film was cut and stripped away with a knife or swivel knife. The orange was clear enough to be seen through for cutting purposes but opaque to light from the lithographic film it was exposed to.
Ampersand
The ampersand is a punctuation character evolved from the Latin word et, meaning and. The visual evolution of the word et into a ligature and then into the common form we use today. Many contemporary typefaces offer alternate ampersands with the old form.
Analphabetic
Noun - analphabetic - an illiterate person who does not know/understand the alphabet, or having no knowledge of the alphabet.
Adjective - analphabetic - relating to/expressed by a writing system which is not alphabetic.
an example of an analphabetic writing system is Jesperson’s system of phonetic transcription.
Aperture
An “aperture” is a constricted opening of a glyph. For example, the lowercase “e” has an aperture at 4 o’clock. This aperture is relatively small in some fonts (such as Avant Garde) and much larger (or more open) in others (such as Frutiger). It is widely believed that a relatively large aperture helps readability.
Apostrophe
A punctuation mark and sometimes a diacritic mark, in Latin fonts and languages. In English it has two main functions: it marks omissions, and it assists in marking the possessives of all nouns and many pronouns.
The apostrophe differs from the closing single quotation mark, often rendered identically but serving a different purpose. In limited casesit is allowed to assist in marking plurals, but most authorities now disapprove of such usage.
Arm
The projecting horizontal stroke on such letters as T, E.
Ascender
The part of a lower-case letter which projects above the mean-line, as in b, d, h,k, l etc.
Asterisk
A typographic symbol in the form of a star*, occupying space between the baselineand ascender height, used as a reference mark for a footnote or endnote, as illustrated by this example for the word “star” in the first line of text.
* usually five-pointed or six-pointed
at
@
Axis
The oblique stress of a font. A Humanist typeface has a left-leaning axis, while a Rationalist typeface has a vertical axis.
Ball Terminal
A circle-shaped device used to terminate a stroke, for example on the end of the arm on r, or the tail tip of y. Ball terminals are a prominent feature of so-called “modern roman” types which came into existence in the second half of the 18th century with the appearance of Didones and types used by the Fourniers as well asGiambattista Bodoni. Ball terminals are typically drawn in a strict geometric form of a pure circle. Some types however, principally Baskerville’s roman type, feature organically-shaped ball terminals.
Ball Terminals join the stroke at an angle, as opposed to Lachrymal Terminals which taper into the stroke.
Baseline
The imaginary line on which the base of capital letters rests.
Bastarda
Bastarda, or Hybrida is an amalgam of textualis and cursiva scripts, used in France and Germany in the 14th and 15th century. Its development (1475-77) is attributed to Parisian printer Pasquier Bonhomme
Beak
A beak or beak terminal is an angular spur-shaped terminating device occuring on some characters, typically a c f and r. Typically found in 20th century Romansand italics such as Perpetua and Pontifex.
bezier curves
Bezier curves are mathematical expressions used to describe curves in two or three dimensions. All fonts, excluding bitmap fonts, use bezier curves to describe the character shapes. Because the curves are mathematical they have the advantage of being infinitely scaleable. Therefore, a character described in bezier curves can be resized to any size without losing quality. Bezier curves are sometimes referred to a “vector graphics”, contrasting with bitmaps which are called “raster graphics”. Some software that authors vector graphics are the following: Adobe Illustrator, Macromedia Freehand, Macromedia Flash, Deneba Canvas, Corel Draw, Fontographer and FontLab.
Bezier curves consist of two anchor points and any number of control points. Curves with one control point are called quadratic curves because the forumla used to calculate them is based on a quadratic equation. Curves with two control points are referred to as cubic curves. TrueType fonts use quadratic curves, whileType 1 fonts use cubic curves. While curves may use more control points, they are not used commonly in type rendering technology. Because quadratic curves are more difficult to work with (mostly because it’s harder to make circles), most vector authoring software uses cubic curves with two control points. What’s more, it is a simple operation to convert cubic curves to quadratic. However, it is not possible to convert quadratic curves to cubic without some approximation.
Bicameral
In typography, the term bicameral refers to Alphabets which are made up of anupper and lower case. These alphabets include the Greek, Roman, Armenian and Cyrillic alphabets.
Bitmap
Bitmaps are used to describe graphics on computers. They consist of a grid of colored squares. Each of these squares is called a Pixel from ‘picture element’. The simplest bitmaps consist of pixels that are either black or white. Bitmap graphics are also called Raster graphics.
A bitmap font is a font comprised of characters rendered with bitmaps. While most bitmap fonts are designed with black and white pixels, some contain grey pixels or are full color. Full color bitmap fonts are also called Photofonts. The application Bitfonter is designed specifically for authoring bitmap fonts.
bold
A weight variation of a typeface which is heavier than the regular (often calledroman) weight of a typeface. A bold typeface is often used to emphasize portions of text instead of italics.
Bouma
Bouma: a hypothesized visual-syntactic atom of immersive reading; almost always the blurry notan of a string of letters; usually the blurry outline of a single word in the parafovea. The term is a simplification of “Bouma-shape” as used byInsup Taylor and/or Paul Saenger, derived from Herman Bouma, a [retired] Dutch scientist.
Most cognitive psychologists reject this hypothesized importance of the bouma in reading, immersive or otherwise. The dominant reading model in cognitive psychology is the parallel letterwise recognition model. Research experiments which would have different predicted outcomes for the two different theories have supported parallel letterwise recognition over the bouma theory.
Bowl
The rounded part of such letters as P, B and the upper part of g to distinguish it from the lower part known as the loop or tail.
Bracketed
A serif that transitions smoothly into the stem or bar. Contrast to square or slab serif.
Branching
Term used by type designers and calligraphers to describe the area where a stroke splits or branches off from a stem. The prime example of branching occurs on the lower case h, and in most typeface designs is repeated, often with variation on n m u.
Etymology: “branching” is most likely borrowed from biology, and is analogous to the split form of branches on the trunk or stem of a plant.
Some typographers and type designers prefer the term join or joint.
Calligraphy
Calligraphy is a sort of Lettering that is hand made, using some kind of writing instrument for assistance.
Cantillation Marks
The cantillation marks are divided into two groups: disjunctive (separating) and conjunctive (connecting). They serve three functions: musical, syntactical, and phonetical. The Poetical Books (Psalms, Job, and Proverbs) have a different system of cantillation marks than the Prose Books or 21 Books.
Cap Height
The height of capital letters, as measured from the baseline to the top of a majuscule character.
Cap-line
The imaginary line which rules along the top of capital letters.
Case
In current practice, usage of the term case most likely refers to the use of uppercase (capital) or lowercase letters. See some examples below. In letterpresspractice, case refers to the physical box (case), usually wooden, that a given set of letters is stored. Capital letters were stored in the upper (top) case and lowercase letters were stored in the lower (bottom) case.
Examples:
ALL CAPS – All letters are capitalized.
Title Case – The first letter of each word is capitalized.
Sentence case – where the first character is capital and the remaining words are lowercase.
Camel Case – Also called internal caps where one or more characters in a given word (or string) has a capitalized letter. This is often used in programming languages and increasingly seen for naming or branding companies or products.
Chirography
The effect of the arm/hand/pen system on letterforms. From the Greek root “chiro,” meaning “of the hand.”
cicero
Originally devised by François Ambroise Didot, the cicero is a linear unit of measurement that is approximately equal to 12 points or:
- 512 millimeters
- 1776 inches
- 07 picas
- 066 picas (PostScript)
- 12 pixels
Color
The color of a typeface refers to the overall lightness or darkness of a set paragraph of text, and is generally thought of in terms of levels of gray.
Contrast
Relative measure between thick and thin strokes of a letterform.
Originally produced by the angle of the brush or pen nib, contrast was retained through the advent of mechanical type design and greatly exaggerated in the work of Didot and Bodoni. It was later almost completely eradicated in sans serif designs of the early twentieth century.
Counter
The enclosed parts of a letter, such as lowercase p, q.
Crossbar
The crossbar is a horizontal stroke which connects the two sides of a letterform as seen in the majuscule “A”, “H”, and the miniscule “e”, or a bisecting stroke as seen in the “F” and “t”.
Cross Stroke
Horizontal and in most instances linear stroke connecting two halves of a capital such as A, H, or that bisecting E and F. Cross strokes also occur as the projecting stroke of lower case letters f and t going across the stem horizontally, as well as the spanning stroke of e.
Cursive
Being Cursive is a property of typography and Calligraphy which implies a certain inclination or angular tilt, either positive or negative, relative to the orthogonal “y” axis.
In type, both Oblique and Italic are Cursive in the sense that they imply some sort of inclination, somehow reminiscent of written language. Other examples of Cursive may include some Script types.
Descender
The part of such letters as g, j, p, q, y that descends below the baseline.
Digital Signature
A digital signature is a way to authenticate the authorship of a file. Only OpenTypeand TrueType fonts are capable of being signed with a digital signature as the signature is stored in an OpenType Table named DSIG. In the case of TrueTypeflavored OT fonts, the digital signature is the singular key which determines whether or not the font is marked as an OpenType font with the O icon. This means that TT flavored OT fonts that are not signed will not display the O icon and TT fonts that are signed but have no other OT features will display the O icon.
Dingbat
Also known as picture fonts Small decorative elements used to embellish typeset compositions. Called printer’s flowers in previous centuries, dingbats vary in form from simple bullets and line segments, to detailed figures and illustrations.
Display Fonts
Display fonts are fonts primarily designed to be used in “display” (headlines, titles and so forth) rather than for long-distance text.
Like most categorisations of type, the category of “display” fonts is flexible. Some fonts are “display” fonts because they are flamboyant or quirky, typographical peacocks; but careful designers and foundries will often produce “display” versions of text fonts, which are likely to be just as sober as the text font, but are designed to be used at large sizes. Such versions are likely to feature adjustments to x-height, stroke weight and letterfitting which help them look and read their best at larger sizes.
As a general rule, display fonts are best used for larger settings, such as headlines and titles. They can also be used for short paragraphs where immersive or lengthy reading is not required.
For better readability, long-running copy for such things as brochures, magazines and web sites use a text font.
Dot
Small circular character used as a universal typographic element, principally in the role of a period, but also as part of an i or j. commas are often extensions of the period dot.
DPI
Dots Per Inch. Measure of the resolution or resolving power of an input device such as a scanner or trackball, or an output device such as a computer monitor (typically stated in PPI/Pixels Per Inch) or printer.
Ductus
Ductus is the path the writing implement makes in forming a letter. Typefaces are formed by other tools than the (broadnibbed or flexical) pen, but the contrast patterns of the shapes that are constructed in type traditionally paraphrase the shapes formed by the stroke of the pen. Every typeface that deliberately imitates the broadnibbed pen has (or borrows) a ductal logic.
Ear
The projecting stroke on the bowl of the g.
Egyptian
A type style with slab serifs circa mid-to-late-19th century, a low contrast design of uniform stroke. So-named for the fashion for Egyptian art and artefacts in Europe when Egyptian types were designed and used. Major Egyptian examples:Memphis and Serifa. Also applied to sans serif types of the same era.
Ellipsis
In grammar - The name for the intentionally omitted words or letters from a sentence or word.
In printing terms - the name for the symbols inserted in to a sentence or word to indicate a missing **** or l*tter.
In both cases the the key is that the sentence or word is still understood. The fact that it may be that some readers insert an incorrect word or letter is irrelevant. “fish” or the letter “i” may seem the perfect choice in the previous paragraph to some people!
Also ellipsis can be used to indicate that the writers thoughts are drifting off and…..
Em
Pronounced like it is spelled, an em is a measurement equal to the current point size. An em dash is a dash the width of the given em. Because “em” and “en” sound so much alike, the em is sometimes referred to as the “mutton.”
Em Dash
A horizontal line character one em in width. Commonly use to imply a break in thought, or missing content.
Used to indicate a sudden break in thought, or to show an open range such as in numbers or dates.
Em Space
A typographic emptiness equal in width to the point size. Used to indent paragraphs.
En
Pronounced like it is spelled, an en is a measurement equal to half the em. An en dash is a dash the width of the given en. Because “em” and “en” sound so much alike, the en is often referred to as the “nut,” from which the term nut fractions is derived.
En Dash
A horizontal line character one en in width—-half of an em space. Commonly use to imply duration of time, and for creating compound adjectives.
Used to indicate a closed range or a connection between two things of almost any kind. Most commonly used in date ranges.
En Space
A space one en in width—half of an em space.
Eszett
A ligature combining a long s and a short s. Once common in English, the eszett, or sharp s, is now only used in German typesetting.
Ethel
The ethel character is a ligature of o and e.
Expert Set Font
The “Expert Set” is a character set invented by Adobe around 1990, which includes Latin small caps, oldstyle figure, a set of five f ligatures (fi, fl, ff, ffi, ffl), fractions and superiors. In the original meaning, an “Expert Set font” has exactly these characters, and supplements a “regular” character set font.
Expert Set fonts from other type foundries usually have the same standard character set, but some foundries have used the phrase to denote other specialized charater sets, which may or may not have some overlap with the standardized “expert set.”
Expert set fonts are becoming less common with advent of OpenType which allows for these extras to be included in the same font that contains the default glyphs, accessed more easily, and inserted into a layout without damaging the underlying text.
Extender
The projecting parts of letters extending from letter bodies. Most commonly, theascenders and descenders of the bowl pairs b-q and d-p, g, the descender of y, and also the ear of binocular form lower case g.
Eye
The enclosed part of the lowercase e.
Faux Formatting
Faux formatting is formatting automatically done by computers to fake styles of fonts such as bold, italic (sloped roman), small caps, or condensed from a single font that either is not linked to or does not contain true versions of these types of formatting.
Figures
Arabic numeral glyphs. Often characterized as oldstyle, lining and tabular.
The first printed books did not make use of Arabic numerals at all. None ofGutenberg’s printings contain any Arabic numerals. Ratdolt was one of the first to use printed Arabic numerals in his books – many of which were about mathematics and astronomy. His numerals left behind any traces of medieval forms and are immediately familiar to the modern eye. The zero is a perfect circle.Aldus’s zero was a perfect circle, as well as the zeros in Garamond’s typefaces.
Francois Guyot was one of the first type designer (or was he the first at all?) to cut both a roman and an italic related to each other, evidently with the idea that both may be used together. He used exactly the same numerals for both the roman and the italic typeface (as one can see in the Folger type specimen of c. 1565). His zero is a perfect circle. (BTW, perfect circle actually means perfect circle - the counter in one of Granjon’s typefaces was drilled, as one can see in Fred Smeijers: ‘Counterpunch’, p 158.)
Ameet Tavernier was the first punchcutter who designed inclined numerals for an italic typeface, but he did not dare to touch the perfect circle shape of the zero, so the zero is upright and not inclined.
Approximately at the same time, Robert Granjon cut his first italic with inclined numerals, but he also slanted the zero, which therefore turned into an oval. It is very interesting to observe that Granjon, even if he abandoned the shape of the perfect circle, retained the other characteristic feature of the zero, its monolinear stroke thickness. He must have found it important to still keep the shape of the zero different, while trying to bring the design of the numerals closer to the design of the italic.
The introduction of numerals of equal width (one of the two features commonly attributed to the so-called ‘tabular figures’ as opposed to the so-called ‘old-style figures’) preceded the new design of numerals of uniform height. Already in 1764,Pierre-Simon Fournier le jeune wrote in his Manuel typographique about numerals of equal width:
‘The figures of the roman have no respective sets, but one uniform one. They are all cast to the thickness of an n-quadrate; that is to say that two of them put side by side make a square of the size of the body.’
The first numerals of equal height were cut by Richard Austin for the founderJohn Bell in 1788. It was the zero that suffered most from this treatment, since it was both squeezed into a far too narrow horizontal space and stretched to capital height at the same time.
Fleuron
A typographic ornament usually in the shape of a flower or a leaf.
Geometric
Glyph
In general terms a glyph is a symbol that has a meaning – an arrow, a letter, et cetera. In digital typography the term refers to a single, specific instantiation of a character that appears in a font; the outlines for a particular punctuation, letters or figures (numbers). For example, a given OpenType font might have three different glyphs for a lowercase “a” character: a default double-story form, an alternate single-story form, and a small cap version. In that font, lowercase “a” is one character but three glyphs.
Humanist
Generally speaking, a typeface with a left-leaning axis. More specifically, acalligraphic or Venetian font.
Optima represents one of the less-common humanist sans-serifs.
Small Capitals
Small caps have many uses, but are primarily used for initials in body copy, such as NASA, NATO or the UN. The aim of this use is to diminish the visual awkwardness of capital letters hindering the flow of a paragraph. (Text figures are also used for better flow in body text versus lining figures.)
The OpenType feature registered for small capitals is smcp, there is also a feature registered for petite caps (pcap).
From Nick Shinn:
Here are some differing strategies for “Caps with Small Caps” titling.
I don’t think any of them are ideal for this typeface.
In the designated small cap font the small cap is, as I said earlier, too wide.
You get better matched letter proportions by “faking” the display small cap with a downsized “normal” cap, but the stem widths don’t quite match.
My preference for the best match is the Regular with SemiBold, although it might be a bit heavy overall.
To demonstrate that the situation is not a fault of any particular typefaces, but rather the outcome of the general habit of creating small caps primarily in relation to lower case, I’ve created an alternate small cap for Goudy, matched to the capital.
There may be other genres of type where the caps and small caps are better matched, and some typefaces where the small cap is matched to the cap rather than the lower case, but it is my opinion that in general, old style faces are configured like Minion and Goudy, making the use of caps/small caps in titling problematic, and requiring quite discriminating typography.
Terminal
The stroke of a glyph ends in a terminal.
Versal
An ornamental capital letter, usually beginning a book section. Also known as a Drop Cap. Jessica Hische’s Daily Drop Cap is a revival of this tradition.
