Terminology Flashcards

Question

Bracketed

Answer 1

A serif that transitions smoothly into the stem or bar. Contrast to square or slab serif.

Answer 2

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**.

Answer 3

Calligraphy is a sort of Lettering that is hand made, using some kind of writing instrument for assistance.

Answer 4

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.

Answer 5

The height of capital letters, as measured from the baseline to the top of a majuscule character.

Answer 6

## Footnote The imaginary line which rules along the top of capital letters.

Answer 7

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.

Answer 8

The effect of the arm/hand/pen system on letterforms. From the Greek root "*chiro*," meaning "of the hand."

Answer 9

Originally devised by François Ambroise Didot, the cicero is a linear unit of measurement that is approximately equal to 12 points or: 4. 512 millimeters 0. 1776 inches 1. 07 picas 1. 066 picas (PostScript) 17. 12 pixels

Answer 10

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.

Answer 11

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.

Answer 12

The enclosed parts of a letter, such as lowercase **p**, **q**.

Answer 13

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".

Answer 14

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.

Answer 15

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.

Answer 16

The part of such letters as **g**, **j**, **p**, **q**, **y** that descends below the baseline.

Answer 17

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.

Answer 18

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.

Answer 19

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.

Answer 20

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.

Answer 21

**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.

Answer 22

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.

Answer 23

The projecting stroke on the bowl of the **g**.

Answer 24

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.

Answer 25

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.....

Answer 26

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.”

Answer 27

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.

Answer 28

A typographic emptiness equal in width to the point size. Used to indent paragraphs.

Answer 29

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.

Answer 30

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.

Answer 31

A space one en in width---half of an em space.

Answer 32

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.

Answer 33

The ethel character is a ligature of o and e.

Answer 34

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.

Answer 35

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**.

Answer 36

The enclosed part of the lowercase **e**.

Answer 37

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.

Answer 38

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.

Answer 39

A kind of terminal at the end of a stroke or arm.

Answer 40

A pointing hand dingbat, also referred to as an "index" or "manicule".

Answer 41

The "fit" of a font describes how the individual letters fit together alongside each other. A *loosely* fitted font has relatively large gaps between the individual letters; a *closely* fitted font has narrow gaps. The fit of a font makes quite a substantial difference to its general appearance. When type was, one way or another, little metal blocks, with each letter placed on its block (save in the few cases where there was a kern) fitting was a matter of adjusting the amount of spare metal to the left and right of the actual letter (thesidebearing). Only rarely, through the use of ligatures, did the designer adjust the space between particular pairs of letters. With digital typography, getting the side bearings "right" remains important; but it is also possible to make small adjustments for particular pairs of letters to move them a little closer or a little further apart than their sidebearings would indicate. This requires a careful eye and good judgment: it can easily be overdone. Fit is also often adjusted by a designer if s/he is making a font for use at a particularly small size or large size: generally speaking fonts designed for smaller sizes have been more loosely fitted, and fonts designed for larger sizes have been more tightly fitted. It was always possible to make manual adjustments to fit: tiny spaces could be inserted to make the fit looser; type could be filed down to make it tighter. But in practice the labour involved made this practical only for short texts in long sizes. Software makes it relatively easy for everyone to fiddle to their own satisfaction--but it is commonly held that since fitting is a difficult art, it is in most cases (and in all cases of doubt) best left to the designer. Opinions differ on whether "automated" fitting by software (such as InDesign's optical spacing feature) improves fit: it probably depends on the font, whether it was well-fitted to start with, and the particular task.

Answer 42

A fixation is the time between saccades where the eye remains relatively motionless. It is during a fixation that the eye processes the information being viewed through either a word based or shape based (often referred to as Boumaon Typophile) recognition process or part based letter recognition process. This information is processed in the fovea of the eye.

Answer 43

There are two types, or *flavors*, of OpenType fonts (OTFs): PostScript flavored OTFs and TrueType flavored OTFs. Those with PostScript outlines are of theCompact Font Format (CFF) variety and are designated by the ".otf" suffix. Technically, all Windows TrueType fonts can be considered OpenType fonts and are cross-platform and may be designated by either the ".ttf" or ".otf" suffix. TrueType flavored OTFs are thus backwards compatible on Windows operating systems as long as they are designated with the ".ttf" suffix. However, TrueType fonts do not appear with the OpenType icon unless they are digitally signed by the font foundry.

Answer 44

A typographic ornament usually in the shape of a flower or a leaf.

Answer 45

Metal type: A complete set of type of one size and face. Digital: A software file which contains a set of encoded glyph shapes that may be used by a layout application to create typography.

Answer 46

The fovea is the central two degrees of vision in which information is processed during a fixation. The parafovea is the five degrees of vision either side of the fovea, and the peripheral is the remaining vision either side of the parafovea. The majority of the information processed is done so in the fovea. Only low level information is able to be garnered by the parafovea and the peripheral.

Answer 47

In German, the word *Fraktur* seems to imply a sense of broken-ness. All Blackletter types in German are referred to as "Broken Types" (*gebrochene Schriften*). Frakturs are the most decorative of the main Blackletter categories, as well as the most used, and the most quintessentially German (see German Nationalism), even though they were also used in Scandinavia and the Netherlands, which are non-German speaking areas of Europe. The Fraktur style of type was invented around 1517 at the court of the Holy Roman Emperor Maximilian I in Nuremberg. Many artists and designers were involved in the process, including Albrecht Duerer and Johann Neudoerffer the Elder. Fraktur quickly overcame Textura and Schwabacher as the main style of type used within the empire. The style got a boost after Martin Luther's first full-translation of the Bible into German appeared on the market—set in Fraktur. For a while, Fraktur was regarded as a "protestant" type. But it managed to be used by the southern Catholics, too. After the Napoleonic-era, Fraktur slowly began to loose ground against Antiqua, as the Germans called Roman type. It disappeared during the 1800s from the Netherlands, Sweden, and the Czech lands altogether. By 1900, almost all books sold in Germany that were translated from foreign languages, as well as most scientific books, were set in Antiqua. By 1930, only about half of all books sold were in Fraktur. After the Nazi ban on Blackletter type in 1941, the type slowly disappeared out the of public eye. The German Democratic Republic (East Germany) managed to print a few books a year in Fraktur, but in the West (and today's Germany) Fraktur is usually only used in the following contexts: Typographic Games, History, Beer Labels, Gastronomy, Art Books, Heavy Metal, and Neo Nazi paraphernalia. Some of the most famous historical Fraktur typefaces have been digitized, and are available in digital form.

Answer 48

Late Old Style type style of the baroque period. Like the Venetian types, this style is based on calligraphic principles, including modulated stroke, oblique axis,adnate serifs and modeled terminals, and moderate aperture. The Garalde italicsare closely associated with their corresponding roman fonts and are designed to be used together with them in a subordinate role.

Answer 49

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.

Answer 50

This term comes from the German *grotesk*, a term for Sans Serif. The word has been anglicized as grotesque.

Answer 51

The hairline stroke usually refers to any portion of a letter or other element that measures less than 1/2 (.5) points in width.

Answer 52

Hedera n. Latin, meaning ivy. One of the earliest punctuation marks in Greek and Roman inscriptions and writing. Later it became a typographic ornament in book publishing.

Answer 53

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.

Answer 54

Term coined by Si Daniels to describe designer hysteria regarding logos featuring three dimensional balls, such as the AT&T and Xerox re-brands.

Answer 55

A decorative typeface with a second stroke inset within the main outline. The **inline** stroke is typically much thinner than the main type outline. Sub-types of inline include centered stroke and offset stroke.

Answer 56

A seldom-used bit of 20th-century punctuation that combines the question markand the exclamation point.

Answer 57

Italic is another style of letter, akin to Roman, but with a more humanist nature. Italic is not the opposite of Roman, though. It is the opposite of Oblique. Oblique styles may also be called Sloped Roman, and they are mostly the same letterforms found in a Roman face, with a mechanical slant applied (See Oblique). "True" Italic letterforms have been drawn so that they are more formally differentiated from upright Roman letters, the inclination or "cursiveness" (Cursive) is natural to Italics, as it has been conserved from its origins (See Aldus Manutius). Also some formal aspects such as the particular glyphs used to represent letters are characteristic of Italics. The lowercase "a" for instance, is not the humanist lowercase "a" (As in Helvetica), but the much more rounded "a" similiar to the one seen in Avant Garde for example. Another character that makes Italics easy to distinguish is the lowercase "f" which extends below the baseline. Both Oblique and Italic are used for similar proposes within texts, sometimes for emphasizing or to make a citation evident, even though whole texts can be writing in Obliques or Italics. Fonts may include Obliques or Italics, Adrian Frutiger'sFrutiger uses obliques but Frutiger Next has Italics, for example. In the last years more and more attention is being put unto this difference, and fonts with Italics are gaining value for their aesthetic gain (seen as positive diversity). The new Sans bundled with Windows Vista for example, have all specially designed Italics.

Answer 58

Noun -- The part of a type that overhangs the body. Verb -- To kern is to adjust the spacing between characters for visual spacing. For example an upper case A and a lowercase v, Av can be kerned, or spaced more tightly, to be optically correct.

Answer 59

Teardrop shaped terminal of a letter. Lachrymal Terminals taper into the stroke, as opposed to Ball Terminals, which join the stroke at an angle.

Answer 60

Pronounced, "ledding" (not leeding). The space between lines of type. When setting type by hand thin strips of lead could be placed between the lines of type when making up the typeblock, opening up space between the lines. Type without lead was said to be "set solid". With mechanical composition, it was generally easier to cast, for example, 12pt type on a 13pt body. This had the same effect as leading, opening up some extra space between the lines. Hence the common terminology e.g: 12 on 13pt (or 12 x 13), persists. Note that in hand composition this would be equivalent to adding 1pt leads between lines, not 13pt leads! With photographic and digital composition there is no lead in the type, and no lead between the type, but the expression "leading", generally used loosely for "spacing between baselines", has stuck. Appropriate leading is a matter of judgment, and partly of personal preference and the prevailing fashion for leading of the times. Typographers generally agree (1) that type of a given nominal size which has a relatively small x-height "requires" less leading than type with a large x-height. (1) because the perceived gap between the lines of type is larger anyway. (2) long lines of type require extra leading to prevent doubling and line skip (3) other aspects of the design of the type (e.g: very condensed or expanded type) may require extra leading.

Answer 61

The stroke of capital R projecting downwards from the bowl. Also found on capital K, lower case k. Legs vary in form, from straight lines to spine-like structures with curled tips.

Answer 62

“Legibility” is based on the ease with which one letter can be told from the other. “Readability” is the ease with which the eye can absorb the message and move along the line. —from ‘Types of Typefaces,’ by J. Ben Lieberman, 1967 Whether this distinction reflects an underlying difference in reality is controversial.

Answer 63

The spacing between a series of characters in a line or paragraph of set text; also known as tracking. Spacing can be tight or loose. Note: letter spacing is different from kerning.

Answer 64

The combined structure and style of a letter or glyph, its physical form. Basic Latin letterforms consist of the letters a to z, and A to Z, and the Arabic/Indiannumerals 0 (zero) to 9. Letterform is analogous to letter structure. Letterforms are represented by sub-types. For example, capital Latin A letterform is a triangular structure mirrored by its gothic counterpart letterform, the straight-sided loop top A. In roman types, the triangular lowercase v letterform has an alternate cursive v letterform. Each is treated as a ditinct letter form or structure.

Answer 65

The craft of drawing or otherwise creating letterforms by hand for one specific use, e.g. for signs, illustration, logos, etc. Related to type design but a separate discipline; a good letterer does not necessarily make a good designer of type, and vice versa.

Answer 66

The connecting link between two letters that are joined together. Also, two or more characters that are combined into one glyph, generally comprising such characters as **ﬁ**, **ﬂ**, **ﬀ**, **ﬃ**, **ﬄ** etc. When type was made of metal, ligatures were a physical necessity to stop one piece of metal clashing with another: it was physically impossible for strokes to overlap. Not so with digital strokes: so nowadays, ligatures have primarily aesthetic benefits. Some ligatures, such as the common ﬁ may merely prevent the collision of two glyphs, but others such as the OO ligature provide a decorative, ornamental quality.

Answer 67

Lining figures, or ranging figures, are numerals which share a common height. Lining figures are often titling figures, however they may be smaller and lighter than titling figures. Unfortunately, lining figures are the default figure style in most digital fonts where text figures would be more appropriate. However, this problem can be remedied in OpenType fonts which may offer several sets of figures to be used in different types of settings. Sometimes indicated as LF in the font's name.

Answer 68

Specifically, a logotype is defined as only the typographical portion of any unique or logo, although confusion amongst the definition of this term is rather prominent today. The logotype can be presented as a separate entity from its accompanying mark, and may function independently from a graphic or pictogram. A prominent example of this term would be that of the FedEx logotype, which serves as the main vehicle for branding and advertising for FedEx.

Answer 69

## Footnote The lower part of **g**, also called the tail.

Answer 70

Lowercase characters evolved from several hand written or cursive letterforms. Some of the most notable are various uncial forms and those of the carolingian minuscule. As the handwritten characters evolved, they developed ascenders anddescenders that extended beyond the baseline and x-height. Larger characters, often differing in form from the smaller characters, were used to demarcate important names or the beginnings of pages or sections. These larger characters were often based on lapidary forms. The name *lowercase* is derived from the practice of placing the printing case of miniscule characters below the case of caps.

Answer 71

Latin capital letters.

Answer 72

The pointing finger symbol ☛ commonly used in printing, advertising, and signage—called the manicule, printer's fist, mutton-fist, bishop’s fist, index, indicator, digit, pointer, director, etc, etc.

Answer 73

``` The meteg (ga'ya) is one of the most common accents in the Hebrew Bible, and it serves two functions: phonetical & musical. It indicates a secondary accent. We said 'accent', but it is not really an accent. ``` The meteg is marked by a short vertical stroke under the word, and generally before the stress syllable. It resembles the siluk, but has different functions (both are uni05BD). Grammatically(1) there are ten different kinds of metegs. (1). If the phonetical & musical functions are under one umbrella.

Answer 74

Mid-capitals (also called medium capitals) are a larger form of small capitals. By strict definition small capitals (or small caps) come to the top of the x-height of their roman counterparts. Designers' aim with mid-capitals is to make the small caps slightly larger so that the overall difference between the small caps and the roman, in a given setting, is more subtle and therefore more unified. Mid-caps then simply refers to striking a balance somewhere between the x-height and thecap height. The term mid-capitals could be the nitpick of purists to simply put a name on slightly enlarged small caps to run more cohesively in text. Some would argue that it is therefore appropriate (and more practical) to refer to what might technically be mid-capitals as a variant on small capitals. In recent years mid-capitals are becoming more common, especially for types that are geared toward use at smaller sizes. Some designers believe that at smaller sizes a less noticeable difference between the roman and the small capitals is desirable. The OpenType specification admits the small caps feature smcp,c2sc and a petite caps feature pcap,c2pc. Fonts providing both often have petite caps that match thex-height while the small caps are somewhat larger, thus filling the mid-caps role.

Answer 75

The small or lowercase letters of an alphabet.

Answer 76

The variation in thickness and symmetry of a type's stroke or outlines. Degree of modulation covers a very wide range, from zero modulation (monolinear) to the subtle variation of a stressed linear type, and strokes so erratic they are classified as fractured. Modulation is related to the cursive property, or condition of being cursive.

Answer 77

In sans serif and linear types, a stroke and stem of constant width. Strict monolinear fonts have identical horizontal and vertical stroke width. Practical monolinear fonts have a vertical stroke slightly wider than their horizontal stroke width. The best-known example of a monolinear type is Futura designed by Paul Renner. Also Century and Avenir.

Answer 78

Typography refers to the practice of producing texts from a standard, mechanical system. Before the late 20th Century, typopgraphy had been made by physically piecing together bits of pre-made letters, which were usually blocks of wood or metal that could be printed. These things are called Movable Type, as they were literal pieces of type that could be moved. While Johann Gutenberg normally gets the credit in the West for having invented movable type, he was not the first to reach such an invention (although most likely that he still reached his invention without any knowledge of earlier and/or foreign methods). What are some "pre-modern" examples of movable type? Well, it is rather certain that Koreans were printing books with movable metal letters during the 1100s. The Chinese had most likely been doing the same with blocks of wood or ivory before them. Also during the 1100s, at least one Bavarian monastary was making monumental lettering by pressing stock, premade letters into a clay surface (the same "stamp-letter" were clearly used throuoght the piece, but since only the letter impressions remain in situ, we do not know what the letter stamps themselves looked like). Don't believe this crazy Bavarian story? Here is a link (in German):typeforum.de/news\_308.htm. Gutenberg invented a system by which small pieces of lead type could be manuafactured, and then succesfully made the first latin font acceptable to readers as type. Later that century, harder punches (which Gutenberg had none of), and hand held type molds (most likely invented in France or the low countries), allowed the technology to spread and flourish. Because all subsequent type-producing systems are based off of this system--including mechanical alternatives like the Linotype Machine or the Monotype Machine--Gutenberg's method could be called the beginning of "modern" movable type. An example of non-modern movable type is Letterpress printing from polymer plates. Polymer plates have an impression on them that comes from photofraphic or digital output. The plates do not move (they are one whole element), but they are still type, as they can have lots of digital type outputted onto them. Whether photo- or digital fonts can really be called movable type is another question all together. There are certainly still individuals who print from movable type (contemporary letterpress users, for instance). But if the above-mentioned technologies do not fall under the range of movable type, then it might be said that its days have come to an end.

Answer 79

Notan is about the relationship of light and dark shapes. That relationship is not always one of balance, although the balance of light and dark obviously has resonance in Asian philosophy, expressed in the balanced opposition of yin and yang in Taoism for instance. The relationship is often one of tension, in which there is a deliberate imbalance, or in which the formal dominance of the light or dark is countered with the spacial dominance of the other, e.g a strong black shape in a large white field. It is also important to observe that in Japanese aesthetics notan is not limited to black and white, but is expressed in terms of light and dark. In the sumi-e style of painting, for instance, there may be no pure black or white at all, only shades of grey composed in areas of light and dark. In this context the notion of ‘good notan’ is obviously much more complex than mere balance. The original Chinese characters, pronounced ‘nóng dàn’ in Chinese or ‘no-tan’ in Japanese refer to how dense the ink is you use in an ink watercolor painting. The solid ink is mixed with water, and can mixed either more dense and dark (nóng) or more dilute and light (dàn). How a painter handles ‘notan’ in an ink painting refers in the first place to how they handle the more and less dilute ink—the shades of grey—in the strokes themselves. But by extension the white is included in consideration of ‘notan’, and not just the strokes, as it is the most light or ‘dilute’ part of the painting. (A clear as opposed to dark sky is also described as ‘dàn’. It also refers to thin or weak soup or tea.) The meaning and relevance of notan to type design is under increasing discussion, but many outstanding type designers, including Frutiger, have emphasized the importance of "designing the whites." Some of the people who have written about Notan as it relates to Type design on Typophile include : Hrant Papazian, William Berkson and Eben Sorkin.

Answer 80

Oblique or Sloped Roman letterforms are sometimes incorrectly called italic. Like italics, obliques are used to offset, or give emphasis to, certain parts of a text otherwise set in upright roman type. Oblique styles may also be called slanted roman since they are the same letterforms found in the roman face but have been slanted. In some instances they are mechanically slanted (where a slant is created by the font software) or hand-drawn slanted by the designer. ``` Italic letterforms (sometimes called "true italics" to further distinguish from obliques) have been drawn so that they are more formally differentiated from upright roman letters. Adrian Frutiger’s Frutiger uses obliques in lieu of Italics. But Frutiger Next (fromLinotype) has italics, for example. ``` There are various schools of thought about whether obliques or italics are more proper for the emphasizing of text. Stanley Morison was briefly in favor of sloping letters instead of true italics. The divide may have begun at that time. Most desktop publishing and word processing applications will slant the roman on the fly if the italic or oblique style of a given font is not available. It is considered incorrect in professional design and publishing circles to use artificial obliques in this way. Many sans faces have accompanying obliques rather than italics. For example,Univers, Helvetica, Futura and Gotham. Some modern sans faces are being designed with custom drawn italics, such as Nexus Sans, Trebuchet MS, Myriad, etc. For more about the visual characteristics of italics, see the wiki entry for italic.

Answer 81

**About OpenType** OpenType is a type format designed by Microsoft and Adobe which attempts to resolve the limitations of the two dominant outline font technologies (Adobe'sType 1 PostScript fonts, and Apple and Microsoft's TrueType fonts), as well as serving the needs of its two creators. From Microsoft it gets its focus on global language support: OpenType uses as its basis Unicode, and does away the complicated system of code pages found in older digital font formats. Something like OpenType's advanced typographic features are needed for even basic support of certain languages. From Adobe OpenType gets its emphasis on advanced typographical controls for western and East Asian languages, providing support within a font for such features as alternate character forms, discretionary ligatures, variant figures (tabular and proportional, lining and old style), and small caps. In this OpenType benefits from the work done by Apple on TrueType GX (lately known as Apple Advanced Typography or AAT), which had a similar model for advanced typographical features. **Limitations** As a technology, OpenType suffers from some unfortunate compromises, as well as benefiting from the concentrated wisdom of two of the computer industry's two most experienced implementors of typographic technology. Both Adobe and Microsoft had their own technologies for encoding and rendering fonts, and instead of hammering out a new rendering technology to match the new format, they instead decided to allow OpenType fonts to contain either Type 1 or TrueType outlines, resulting in two types or flavors of OpenType fonts. Also, they opted to use as a basis for the file format TrueType, which uses a binary encoding that is much more opaque that Type 1's relatively easy to parse textual representation. This has made support for OpenType in type designers' tools (such as FontLab) slow to develop, and has also impeded the adoption of some of OpenType's more sophisticated (and useful) typographic features by software developers in general. Even Microsoft and Adobe's flagship applications do not support all of the registered OpenType features (which would in any case be difficult, as new features continue to be registered). **Advantages** The benefits of OpenType to end users (whether graphic designers or not) are immediately apparent: users of non-Latin scripts are able, sometimes for the first time, to have their native scripts represented properly on the computer. Languages with flowing scripts (such as Arabic and Devanagari) and ideographic glyphs (such as the Chinese-derived languages of East Asia) are much better supported by OpenType, with its many features for proper positioning, reading flow (right-to-left versus top-to-bottom, right-to-left versus left-to-right), and glyph substitution. OpenType fonts can also replace the complicated system ofexpert fonts, swash fonts, small caps fonts, and fonts containing old style figureswith a single file, and makes it much easier to use the complicated sets of ligatures found in fonts such as Mrs Eaves. Glyph substitution and character positioning are as useful for flowing scripts in English as in non-Latin languages, as seen in the somewhat unnerving Zapfino Extra Pro and Bickham Script Pro, which simulate the appearance of handwritten calligraphy through a complex and sophisticated set of substitutions. For font developers, OpenType has had several key benefits. Several of these are the same things that some people think of as limitations. For example, the fact that fonts with outlines in either of the previous main formats (TrueType and Type 1) are easily converted to OpenType without loss of outline fidelity or hinting is seen as an advantage to them, even while purists complain about the "dual formats." Similarly, adopting the "sfnt" table-based binary file format of TrueType requires that fonts be compiled from source and decompiled to edit, but also makes them much more compact. It also makes the OpenType format highly extensible, but in a modular way which can be more easily backwards compatible. Finally, because the "sfnt" format has been publicly documented for about 15 years, there are many tools for working with it. Finally, although Apple's competing AAT/GX format is slightly more capable in some areas, programming the state tables needed for AAT/GX typographic features is considerably more complicated than the simple declarative nature of OpenType layout. Adobe's early decision to license both tools and source code at no charge for OpenType layout has also helped OpenType development considerably, although one might wish that the visual approach of Microsoft's VOLT software was more widely used. **The Future of OpenType** Even though OpenType has been a finished standard for several years as of the time of this writing, adoption is still in progress. The natural conservatism and healthy caution of the printing industry, combined with the reluctance with which OpenType has been embraced by software vendors, has slowed adoption. However, as it has been embraced by virtually all major font developers, as well as both the Mac and Windows operating systems, and the most critical software developers (Adobe, Quark, Microsoft, Apple), it is likely to become the de facto standard technology for digital fonts, and remain such for some time.

Answer 82

Applied to round characters and curved or rounded parts of characters which "over-shoot" a desired boundaries---typically the baseline and x-line--to compensate for the optical illusion of the curves under-shooting those boundaries. Most Os and lowercase bowl letters have an amount of overshoot in proportion to the plot of their curve. Tight curves require more overshoot than flattened and squared curves.

Answer 83

Pangrams are short passages that include all 26 characters of the alphabet. They're commonly used to help users of the font quickly assess a character set. They may also be useful to designers in the process of designing their own work but they are too compact for a more thorough assessment. Perhaps the most common pangram is The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Clever pangrams: *Boxer M. Tyson packs his bags with Jay-Z DVDs, Quik, Holyfield's ear.* -- BJ Harvey * Typophile Boxing! Papazian jousts with quaking, anonymous detractor. Fight at eleven.* -- Joe Pemberton * Abacist’s deaf dog hijacked luminous parquetry studio, avows ex-yakuza.* --Hrant Papazian (This is a rare, alphabetically ordered pangram.) * Wham! Volcano erupts fiery liquid death onto ex-jazzbo Kenny G.* -- Jonathan Hoefler

Answer 84

A unit of measurement commonly associated with line lengths and column widths. 1 pica is equal to: 12 points 16 pixels 0.9347 ciceros 4.217 millimeters 0.166 inches

Answer 85

¶ = Pilcrow A symbol used to denote the beginning of a paragraph or a section of text.

Answer 86

A standard typographic unit of measure equal to exactly 1/72nd of an inch (1/12pica). Prior to the advent of postscript the typographic point (Anglo-American) was only roughly 1/72 of an inch. Prior attempts to standardize the typographic point were put forth by Pierre Simon Fournier, Francoise-Ambroise Didot and Morris Fuller Benton which resulted in a split standard between the European Didot point and the Anglo-American point.

Answer 87

The thickest part of curved letters, like **C**, **O**, **S**, etc. (The term stress in typography generally indicates emphasis, not pressure.)

Answer 88

A page description programming language developed by Adobe founder John Warnock and others in the mid 80s. As it relates to typography, the term is used to describe fonts written in PostScript.

Answer 89

'ppem' is a measure of the number of pixels available for rasterization, derived from point-size and resolution.

Answer 90

Proportional figures are those that have advance widths that vary, based upon the relative width of each character. Proportional figures also typically incorporatekerning so that they space evenly. This figure scheme is better suited for text whereas tabular figures (those that share a common width) are better suited for setting figures in columns.

Answer 91

A punch is a tool used to make type.

Answer 92

Blackletter consists of as many sorts as a common font of Roman; ſave that the first has two different r's, one of which is called **ragged r**, and is particulary used after letters that round off behind, whether they be capitals, or lowercase sorts. Thus thes are properly put after the following capitals, viz. B, D, G, D, P, V, W; and after these lowercase letters, viz. b, d, h, o, p and w.

Answer 93

"Legibility" is based on the ease with which one letter can be told from the other. "Readability" is the ease with which the eye can absorb the message and move along the line. --from ‘Types of Typefaces,’ by J. Ben Lieberman, 1967

Answer 94

1. Having to do with the city of Rome, Italy. 2. Having to do with the Holy Roman Empire, Byzantine Empire, Roman Empire, Roman Republic, the ancient city of Rome, or its culture, history, and traditions. 3. Upright—as opposed to oblique or italic—styles. 4. Serif type. 5. A reference to the Roman Alphabet or Latin.

Answer 95

A sub-genre of blackletter scripts. Like all blackletter and humanist scripts, this evolved over the Middle Ages from Carolingian miniscules. The main characteristic is that of rounded letterforms, or rather curves that are broken os less places than other blackletters. It does not have the strict vertical stress of thetextura style of blackletter. Rotunda letters, also called *Rundgotisch* in German, were more popular in Southern Europe as printing was inaugurated, whereas the textura and thebastarda seemed to dominate Northern Europe.

Answer 96

In the days of phototypesetting, which lasted from about the second World War until 1984, letters slowly moved away from being metal type. In 1945, there were two kings of metal type, generally speaking. Lead type, sometimes called "cold metal type," has still being cast for handsetting. This was Gutenberg's method—500 years old, but still in use. Lead type was produced by amatrix. These matrices usually were made by stamping steel punches into some other sort of softer metal, sometimes copper. The other kind of metal type also used a combination of poured lead at matrices: "hot metal type," or machine casting (using Linotype, Monotype, Intertype machines, etc.). The matrices for these machines were usually not made by hand, but rather with pantographic cutters, descended from Lynn Boyd Benton's famous invention. These cutting machines used large-scale letter drawings as their guides. These drawings were still necessary after the days of metal type had past. The drawing were again used as models to cut (either by machine or by hand) a new sort of matrix: **rubylith friskets**. A rubylith frisket was a very large letter (about the size of an 8.5" x 11"—or A4—sheet of paper), on a sheet of plastic. This sheet had been covered by rubylith—which is red—and the letter shape had been cut out of it. These new matrices could then be photographically reduced to produce the lettershapes found in phototypesetting systems, all of which were different from manufacturer to manufacturer, and even from product to product.

Answer 97

Category of type where the terminals of the letters have no brackets or spurs -- otherwise known as serifs. Common sans serif typefaces are Helvetica, Verdana,Optima, Futura, Frutiger, and Gill Sans. Sans serif forms originate in ancient Greek and Etruscan chiseled inscriptions, a style later adopted by the Romans, but sans serif type was so novel upon its introduction in the 18th century that it defied any attempts at categorization. It was eventually categorized as Doric, Ionicor grotesque type, and was in common use by the end of the century by industrial letterers. The most popular early sans serif typeface was cut by Monotype asDoric, but the most prominent sans serif type known to contemporary designers is the much-imitated Akzidenz Grotesk, ancestor of Helvetica and Univers, two of the most dominant type families of the second half of the 20th century. Sans serif types underwent a flowering in the early 20th century, and started to divide into many other families. The first prominent step beyond the grotesqueindustrial types was the development of the geometric sans faces promulgated by designers influenced by the Bauhaus. These faces are built, as the name suggests, on "pure" geometric structures, and self-consciously move beyond the modulated strokes and classical proportions mimicked by the grotesques (as well as the serif faces on which grotesques were modeled). Jan Tschichold, Paul Renner, Rudolf Koch, and Jakob Erbar all developed profoundly influential geometric sans types.Paul Renner's Futura, in particular, was an early example of a type system, and continues to be a very popular, coolly stylish type family even today. The next -- or concurrent -- development in sans serif types was the humanist sans, as exemplified in Eric Gill's Gill Sans, which was in turn based on Edward Johnston's lettering for the London Underground. Humanist sans typefaces more directly mimic the forms and structures of calligraphy, and generally have somewhat eccentric, more classical shapes. Humanist sans faces have moremodulated strokes, and their italics are frequently more directly based on cursivewriting. They have always been more popular, for whatever reason, in Europe than the United States. Grotesques staged a huge comeback in the wake of World War II, with the development of type systems and Swiss typography. Max Miedinger's Helveticaand Adrian Frutiger's Univers are the most successful examples of these types. The new grotesques were designed for a new typography, where type was set to a rationalized grid system, and the "characterless" type was intended to transparently serve the text. The readability of sans serif types as text faces is hotly debated, though, and Helvetica and Univers found their greatest fame as advertising and corporate communications faces. A strange side development during this period was Hermann Zapf's more or less sui generis revival of Roman inscriptional forms with Optima, a stately sans serif that is frequently characterized as a humanist sans, although it really belongs to no category but its own. Sans serifs played an integral part in the explosion of display faces that occurred in the 1960s and 1970s. The number of typefaces and styles is innumerable, but one of the most characteristic fonts of this period was Herb Lubalin's Avant Garde, a ligature-heavy stylized geometric sans that was ubiquitous throughout the 1970s. The last twenty years of the 20th Century saw an overwhelming increase in the number of sans serif faces, of all kinds and descriptions. The kickoff to this explosion was probably the introduction of Adrian Frutiger's eponymous type family Frutiger, a sort of master thesis on the possibilities of rationalism in type and the possibilities of the restrained use of humanist techniques in the construction of sans serif type. It has been much imitated and admired. Frutiger was not content with this, and later participated in the systemization of many of his type families, first revisiting the concept of the geometric sans with Avenir, and later revising both the Univers and Avenir type systems with Linotype Univers and Avenir Next. At the same time, Hermann Zapf and Akira Kobayashirevisted Optima, producing a new version called Optima Nova that brought the typeface into line with current fashion, adding a true italic, making the face more suitable for setting text, and adding a range of weights to the face. It is cleaner and more functional but not universally loved. Meanwhile, Dutch type designers, many of them studying under the influential theorist and teacher Gerrit Noordzij, were taking the humanist sans and making it their own. Building on the legacy of Hans Eduard Meier's ahead-of-its-timeSyntax, they created a new collection of typefaces that were essentially graceful, Renaissance serif faces minus the serifs. These new sans serif families were often part of ever-larger type systems that encompassed sans serif, serif, and other typefaces, culminating in efforts like Lucas de Groot's huge Thesis family. It can sometimes be hard to tell the players without a scorecard, but careful study of the Dutch humanist sans faces will reveal their considerable subtlety and sophistication. English type designers have continued to work in the mold of Eric Gill, whose types have had a near death-grip on the English imagination. Gill Sans is everywhere in England even today, and most English sans serif designs owe it a debt of inspiration. Probably one of the best interpretations of the "English humanist sans" is Jeremy Tankard's Bliss family, which does for Gill Sans whatTheSans does for Syntax -- cleans it up, systematizes and freshens it. Because of their supposed neutrality, sans serif faces have continued to be massively popular for corporate identity and communications. This is the aspect that American designers have explored most thoroughly, with Matthew Carterleading the way with his commissioned work for Microsoft showing what can be done with small type on low-resolution screens. His Verdana and Tahomafamilies were designed for the screen and extensively hinted; they sacrifice economy for readability, a sensible decision when scrolling is cheap but pixels are scarce. Pushing things in a different direction are Hoefler & Frere-Jones, who have recently produced both Whitney and Gotham, faces designed explicitly for use in the corporate vernacular. Gotham, in particular, is based on the grotesquesans serif hand-lettering found in New York, and possesses some of the erratic energy found in that lettering. It was recently honored by being selected as the typeface used on the cornerstone for the September 11th Memorial at the World Trade Center. Many type enthusiasts are very tired of the profusely overabundant Helvetica and outraged by the ubiquitousness of Arial, a near-exact (but uglier) Helvetica clone commissioned by Microsoft for obscure reasons. Proclaiming Arial as your favorite font is likely to win you few friends on Typophile.

Answer 98

Saccades are fast, frequent and irregular eye movements which progresses the eye from one reading position to the next. Saccades have been recorded at up to 500 degrees per second. At this speed, visual input is reduced and no information is processed. A saccade is proceeded by a fixation during which information is processed in thefovea.

Answer 99

1) Script. A form or handwriting, often cursive in nature. The word script, when used in this meaning, readily brings to mind the fancy, flowery Spencerian Scriptswhich were adapted for typesetting at a fairly early date. However, there are other types of scripts ranging from the formal script to the informal, as well as many other handlettering styles. 2) Script. A specific writing system, such as Latin, Cyrillic, Arabic, Devanagari, &c. The OpenType font format uses script tags to identify which languages can be typeset using a particular font. 3) Script. A bit of computer programing. Python scripting knowledge is an advantageous skill for today's type designer. Several altruistic designers are willing to share their knowledge by sharing python scripts that they have written as well as helping others to learn to write their own scripts.

Answer 100

A post-modernist category of typeface that mixes elements of both the serif andsans serif forms.

Answer 101

A **serif** is a flare at the end of a letter terminal. Serifs first appeared in Ancient Rome, around the end of the Republican era. It is believed that Roman letterers would paint their letters with a brush onto stone before they would be cut. (Whether the letter-painter and the stone cutter were the same person has also been an object of dispute. But painted letters on stone walls were everywhere in the empire, as the ruins of Pompeii attest.) When one paints a letter with a brush, serif like flares occur naturally when pressure is applied at the end of the stroke. It is probably there from that the serif was born—the cut letter kept the form of the letter that had been set out by the brush. Another reason for the serif's preservation in the stone-cutting process was the type of marble that the Romans were using in the first place. During the late Republican era, the Romans discovered a new marble quarry, which contained much harder stone than had been previously used. This marble held fine details phenomenally—so well, in fact, that we can still see them accurately 2,000 years later. There were two different kinds of monumental lettering in stone in Ancient Rome, and both of them persevered the serifs. First was the "v-cut." Two diagonal recesses were cut into the stone; they met in the middle, forming a v-shape. Second were bronze inlays: after a letter's form was scooped out of the stone, a (pre?)cut bronze letter inlaid into the recess. There are very few surviving complete examples of the inlay method, as later civilizations often took the bronze letters out of the marble to melt them down and reuse (for things like cannons :( ). But the "empty" scooped out letters can still be seen in situ all over Rome—in the Roman Forum, for instance. Serifs would evolve drastically from 1470 through the early 1990s. The first typeface serifs were softly modulated—a smooth curve connected the stem to the serif. By Bodoni's time, he and fellow compatriots has removed modeling almost altogether—Didone serifs appear to come off of the stem at right angles. The 1800s saw several varieties of serifs, including: Slab Serif (sometimes calledEgyptian or Egyptienne, Latin Serif, Greek Serif, Tuscan Serif, Italienne, and even Sans Serif (harhar!).

Answer 102

The space to the left and right of the left-most and right-most parts of the stroke of a glyph or piece of type, which in metal type determines and in digital type is the starting point for determining the space between that and the previous and succeeding letters.

Answer 103

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.

Answer 104

Within a handset typecase each compartment is considered a sort. The term is also used to describe the contents of such compartment. Trivia: When a typesetter is missing certain letters needed to finish a job they are "out of sorts."

Answer 105

A **spine** is the integral part of the common s structure in Latin types and fonts. Spines range in form from a simple diagonal line to s-shaped (including part of the upper and lower bowls), with and without stressing. The spine of some letter types such as constructivist and geometric consists of two right-angled joints joined by a horizontal crossbar. The term is borrowed from anatomical nomenclature.

Answer 106

The small beak or beard on the end of arcs, as in **G**.

Answer 107

v. transative. A term used to describe type that has been horizontally or vertically stretched or condensed using graphic design software. Glyph scaling in this manner is almost always inadvisable and is often a sure sign of amateur typography. Space is best saved by reducing the type size or using a condensed (or extended) version of the font professionally drawn by a type designer. “Squooshed™” is a trademark of Miss Tiff Industries, Inc.

Answer 108

**n**. Swash: A decorative, (and usually natural) extension of a stroke that one might perform in calligraphy. **adj**. Swash: A term used to describe a typeface that is characterized by swashes.

Answer 109

A style of numbers that are all designed on a common width so as to line up in documents that compare numerical data in columns. One drawback of this scheme of common widths is that some numbers appear to have too much space, the number one in particular. See Proportional Figures. Sometimes indicated in a font's name as TF.

Answer 110

The stroke of a glyph ends in a terminal.

Answer 111

Also called lowercase figures, or oldstyle figures, these number forms are designed to be used in running text. Text figures feature numerals that come to the x-height: 0,1,2; figures with descenders: 3,4,5,7,9; and ascending figures: 6, 8. Some varations of text figures may not fit this same scheme, but this is the norm.

Answer 112

A style of Blackletter. Also called Gothic or Gotisch. By the 1100s, scriptoriums in and around Paris had so altered Carolingian Minuscule that the lettering styles of the day no longer bore any resemblance to those of c.800. This geographic area—Paris and its environs—held the avant garde of the mid-1100s onwards. The 1140s, for instance, saw the creation of the Gothic style of architecture in St. Denis, a Parisian suburb. The name textura refers to the fabric-like quality of a page set in the script; "textura" literally means "an even effect in weaving." Textura is often said to bear a stylistic similarity to this new style of art and architecture. Together with Gothic art and architecture, Textura spread across Europe, taking hold everywhere except Italy, which did not show much appreciation for the Gothic. Two types of textura flourished simultaneously: Textura Quadrata, which features diamond-shaped heads and feet; and Textura Prescisus, which is characterized by the absence of feet and an even baseline. By 1400, virtually all books in Europe were written out in Textura hands. WhenJohann Gutenberg developed movable type, he based his forms on Textura letters. As printing spread outward from Mainz, the Textura style was quickly abandoned for Schwabacher and Antiqua. Wynken de Worde brought a Textura font of type to England in 1480. Old Englishtypes of the 19th Century are sometimes based on typefaces that developed out of his contribution.

Answer 113

Titling figures are numerals which have been designed to height and weight of thecapital letters.

Answer 114

A tittle is the dot on the i or j.

Answer 115

The three essential books that should be the basis of every type designer's/typographer's library - one of the few things that Hrant Papazian andThomas Phinney ever agreed on: The Elements of Typographic Style by Robert Bringhurst Anatomy of a Typeface by Alexander Lawson Letters of Credit by Walter Tracy

Answer 116

TrueType is a digital type technology originaly developed by Sampo Kaasila ofApple, Ink, whose remit was to create a custom technology so as to avoid paying royalty fees to use font technologies developed by other parties, as well as to solve some technical limitations of Adobe's PostScript based Type 1 font format. TrueType differs from Type 1 in that it uses quadratic as opposed to cubic bezier curves. TrueType excels at on-screen rendering due to the fact that it can support sophisticated hinting instructions. The technology was cross-licensed with aMicrosoft replacement for PostScript called TrueImage, but today only TrueType survives. A few years later the format was extended to support Unicode and more complex linguistic and typographic behaviours such as automatic ligature substitution and Indic vowel rearrangement. However the new extensions, calledAAT (Apple Advanced Typography), were not licensed to Microsoft, who then set about creating their own extensions to TrueType (along with Adobe), which they called OpenType. The two extensions are incompatible and whilst their feature sets overlap, there are many things that one can do which is impossible with the other.

Answer 117

The craft of devising new versions of alphabets for use in a font. Type designers are sometimes mistakenly called fontographers. Fontographerwas the name of a popular computer program for designing type, predominantly used during the 1990s and early 2000s. Relationship to typography. Typography is the craft of using pre-made alphabets in designs, type design is the art of crafting new alphabets. Quite often one person occupies both roles, and specializes to a greater or lesser degree in one or the other.

Answer 118

One who designs typefaces. Not to be confused with Typographer.

Answer 119

Typophile threads discussing the pros and cons of various type technologies.

Answer 120

Typeface is a collection of all typographic characters that share the same design characteristics such as weight, width, inclination, optical size, stroke modulation or treatment of serifs. Helvetica Bold is one typeface, Times Roman is another typeface, Times Bold is yet another typeface.

Answer 121

A practitioner of typography, sometimes *incorrectly* referred to as a fontographer. Not to be confused with Type Designer.

Answer 122

The art of using type. Colloquially used to describe the range of activities incorporating graphic design, typesetting, and type design. Font nerding, the favorite activity of Typophiles, is something else entirely.

Answer 123

A term, commonly atributed to Erik Spiekermann, meaning someone, who is crazy about type.

Answer 124

Function: noun 1 : addiction to Typophile.com 2 : continued excessive or compulsive use of Typophile.com 3 : a complex chronic psychological and nutritional disorder associated with excessive and usually compulsive time spent in Typophile forums

Answer 125

Uncial letters, as well as Half Uncial, evolved from Greco-Roman handwriting. during the mid to late Antique period. Uncial letters are often classified as being thoroughly Irish, but this is misleading at best, and inaccurate at worst. Like almost all Roman things, there were western (Latin) and eastern (Greek) styles and variants. These would continuously influence each other. St. Patrick and other Catholic Missionaries most likely brought Uncials to Ireland in the fifth century. Over the next four hundred years, Irish monks would copy (and re copy) virtually all of classical literature, bringing it back to an (ungrateful) continent during the 700s–800s. While the Irish monks were busy writing out old Greek and Latin books, they also wrote their own national legends down as well—in the same handwriting style, of course, and in Gaelic (or whatever exactly the were speaking at the time). Unlike the religious texts, these stayed at home when the missionaries went to Europe to go a-preaching. Around this time, Charlemange commissioned his Carolingian Minuscule, which are decidedly less decorative than uncial letterforms, yet still influenced by them. Charlemagne's court would have had a slew of Irish manuscripts at hand, but also books written in the (by now very different) Iberian uncials, Byzantine uncials, as well as any number of current Italian hands. The Viking raids may have ended the glory days of Irish monasteries and bookillumination, but they did not pull uncials (or Gaelic) away from Ireland. Gaelic text remain written in uncial styles in Ireland to this very day, including street signs.

Answer 126

Any scrpt or typeface with no distinction between upper and lower case.

Answer 127

Early Old Style of the Renaissance period, also called Humanist. Letterforms are based on calligraphic principles, including modulated stroke, humanist axis,lachrymal terminals, large aperture. The single most distinctive letter to distinguish Venetians from their cousins is the slanted crossbar in the miniscule 'e'. The Venetian italics were designed separately from roman fonts and were used independently. The archetypal Venetian font is that of Nicholas Jenson, as used in the 1470Evangelica Praeparatione by Eusebius. In fact, it is Jenson's city, Venice, that gives this family its name. The Eusebius was an absolute masterwork of printing, and is widely considered to be the first appearance of our entirely modern Roman letterforms. Many Venetian fonts are adaptations of the Eusebius, with varying levels of literalness. "Nicolas Jenson SG", (metal) Monotype Eusebius, Abrams Venetian, and Adobe Jenson are all fairly faithful adaptations. Centaur is a reinterpretation based on the calligraphic structure that Bruce Rogers saw from his study of photographic enlargements of the Eusebius. ATF Cloister falls somewhere between the literal and calligraphic categories, as does the similar Doves Pressfont. Goodchild, by Nick Shinn, and its headline companion Nicholas, is a modern update of the calligraphic approach, with a large x-height and tightletterspacing. The Zeno type of Giovanni Mardersteig can also be classified as a Venetian, and bears many similarities, while also displaying the master craftsmanship and distinctive style of Mardersteig's hand, working in collaboration with punchcutterCharles Malin. One branch of the Venetian family tree caricatures the relatively heavy serifs compared with the later movement to hairlines, culminating in the Didones. TheKelmscott Press and Golden types of William Morris are the best known examples, both exhibiting heavy slablike serifs bearing little resemblence to the Eusebius original, which was impressively refined not only for its day but for several centuries afterwards. ITC released its revival of the Golden type in 1989. ITC Italia also shows clear influence from the Golden tradition, but also mixes in elements of Souvenir and the slab serifs. In an even more radical interpretation, Monotype's Legacy Sans claims to be a sans serif based on the skeletal structure of the Eusebius. Venetian was a brilliant and highly readable advance in the design of letterforms. The Garalde style was clearly an incremental evolution of the standard set by Jenson, and its differences are primarily in small details such as the crossbar of the 'e'. Designers continue to draw inspiration from this landmark font, and new designs in the Venetian tradition are still going strong.

Answer 128

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.

Answer 129

*Vyaz'* is a decorative style of Cyrillic calligraphy characterised by tall, condensed and interlocking letters forming a dense and continous band of text. The style originated in Byzantine (Greek) books in the 11th century, and is related to the style of Greek uncial lettering employed in Orthodox icons. It spread in Russia and flourished particularly in the 16th century. Three kinds of interlocking are typically found in vyaz' lettering: stem ligation in which adjacent letters share a common stem, letters or parts of letters stacked vertically, and enclosure of smaller letters within larger ones.

Answer 130

The visual darkness or lightness of the strokes in a character: ultralight, light,book, medium, regular, semibold, bold, black, ultrablack, extrablack, etc.

Answer 131

Word shape is the overall visual impression of the outer boundary of a given word. Word shape is attributed as one of the key factors in readability and is widely considered the reason that lowercase words are more readily recognizable than their uppercase equivalent. The belief is that because uppercase words always have a rectangular word shape they are less distinct than lowercase words which have a varying word shape, given definition by ascenders and descendersthat create unique, and therefore more recognizable shapes. Word shape is believed to be one of the two probable ways that information is processed by the eye. Researchers are divided between word shape recognition and letter identification as the process by which information is processed during reading.

Answer 132

Succinctly put, the x-height is the height of the lowercase x in a given alphabet. In the past x-height was stated by some as a proportion of the cap height. In digital fonts, the x-height is specified in the font as a proportion of the Em, typically with 1000 or 2048 units to the Em. Additionally, many typographers state the x-height as a proportion of the total vertical span of the lowercase, often limited to simply the ascender height. This practice is based on the realization that lowercase letters constitute approximately 95% of text. Many regard the relative x-height of a given typeface as a factor in readability, believing that a larger x-height better accentuates the distinguishing characteristics of the lowercase letters simply because the main body of the letters are larger. For this reason it is a commonly held notion that smaller x-heights are better reserved for display type where an enlarged size compensates for diminished readability. On the other hand, because reading is quite heavily dependent on the overall shape of the word, especially the top "edge", if x-height is very big the contrast between ascenders and the body of letters tends to be reduced, making text harder to read for longer periods. (Just as lines set in all capitals are generally regarded as difficult for extended reading.) Larger x-heights may also require more leading at a given point size for good readability.