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C O N N E

Typographers Glossary
L E T T E R F O R M

A N A T O M Y

TYPED IN HOME DISPLAY

S E R I F

Serif: Serif's are semi-structural details on the ends of some of

the strokes that make up letters and symbols. A typeface that
has serifs is called a serif typeface (or seriffed typeface). Some
of the main classifications of Serif type are: Blackletter,
Venetian, Garalde, Modern, Slab Serif, Transitional, and Informal.
Fonts in each classfication share certain similiar characteristics
including the shape or appearance of their serifs. Serif fonts are
widely used in traditional printed material such as books and
newspapers. Show all Serif

T Y P E

C L A S S I F I C A T I O N

Didone is a typeface classification characterized by slab-like

serifs without brackets; vertical orientation of weight axes. (The
vertical parts of letters are thick.); strong contrast between thick
and thin lines. (Horizontal parts of letters are thin in comparison
to the vertical parts.); an unornamented, "modern" appearance.
Examples include the slightly condensed, unbracketed serif
typefaces such as De Archie and Monday. The classification is
also known as modern. This style emerged in the late 18th
century. Show all Didone

Geralde: Geralde is the baroque group of Old Style typefaces. It

was originally a style developed by Renaissance typographers
to replace the Blackletter style of type. Based on ancient Roman
inscriptions, Old Style fonts are generally characterized by low
contrast between thick and thin strokes, bracketed serifs, and a
left-leaning axis or stress. Show all Geralde

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Modern: A style of typeface developed in the late 18th century

that continued through much of the 19th century. Characterized
by high contrast between thick and thin strokes and flat serifs,
Modern fonts are harder to read than previous and later
typestyles. Some later variations of Modern include the Slab
Serifs with bolder, square serifs (often considered a separate
style altogether) and the related Clarendon style with less
contrast and softer, rounded shapes. Also Known As: Didone |
New Antiqua. Show all Playtype Serif

Venetian: The Renaissance (vs. baroque) group of Old Style

typefaces. It was a style developed by Renaissance
typographers to replace the Blackletter style of type. Based on
ancient Roman inscriptions, Venetian style fonts are generally
characterized by low contrast between thick and thin strokes,
bracketed serifs, and a left-leaning axis or stress. Show all
Venetian

Display: Display typography is a potent element in graphic

design, where there is less concern for readability and more
potential for using type in an artistic manner. A display typeface
is designed for the use of type at large sizes, perhaps 30 points
or larger. The misuse of the term display typeface as a synonym
for ornamental type has become widespread; properly speaking,
ornamental typefaces are a subcategory of display typefaces.
Show all Freestyle Serif

Text: The bulk of what we read is body text. It's the novels,
magazine articles, newspaper stories, contracts, and Web
pages we read day after day. Body type or body text fonts are
the typefaces used for body copy. Body copy requires legible,
easy to read body text fonts. In general (with many exceptions)
consider serif faces for a subdued, formal, or serious look. And
(with exceptions) consider a sans serif body text fonts for a
crisper, bolder, or more informal tone. Show all Text Serif

Stencil: A typeface with breaks in the face to give it the

appearance of the stenciled alphabets used on boxes and
crates. A stencil is a thin sheet of material, such as paper,
plastic, or metal, with letters or a design cut from it, used to
produce the letters or design on an underlying surface by
applying pigment through the cut-out holes in the material. The
key advantage of a stencil is that it can be reused to repeatedly
and rapidly produce the same letters or design. Show all Stencil
Serif

Decorative: Also known as ornamental typefaces are used

exclusively for decorative purposes, and are not suitable for
body text. They have the most distinctive designs of all fonts,
and may even incorporate pictures of objects, animals, etc. into
the character designs. They usually have very specific
characteristics (e.g., evoking the Wild West, Christmas, horror
films, etc.) and hence very limited uses. Show all Decorative
Serif

Square: The new contemporary style of typography. It is

developed through the past decade to replace the more round
geometric style in font design. Show all Square Serif

S A N S

S E R I F

T Y P E

C L A S S I F I C A T I O N

Sans Serif: In typography, a sans serif or sans-serif typeface

is one that does not have the small projecting features called
"serifs" at the end of strokes. The term comes from the French
word sans, meaning "without". In print, sans-serif fonts are
more typically used for headlines than for body text, while sansserif fonts have become the de facto standard for body text onscreen, especially online. Show all Sans Serif

Geometric: Geometric sans-serif typefaces are based on

geometric shapes. Note the optically circular letter "O" and the
simple, single-story construction of the lowercase letter "a".
Geometric sans-serif fonts have a very modern look and feel. Of
these four sans-serif categories, geometric fonts tend to be the
least useful for body text. Show all Geometric

Humanist: Is the most calligraphic of the sans-serif typefaces,

with some variation in line width and more legibility than other
sans-serif fonts. Show all Humanist

Gothic/Grotesque: Is frequently used as a synonym with sans

serif. At other times, it is used (along with "Neo-Grotesque",
"Humanist", "Lineal", and "Geometric") to describe a particular
style or subset of sans-serif typefaces. The first sans-serif
typeface called grotesque was also the first sans-serif
typeface containing actual lowercase letters. Show all
Grotesque/Gothic

Neo-Grotesque: Also known as Transitional or Realist. These

are the most common sans-serif typefaces. They are relatively
straight in appearance and have less line width variation than
Humanist sans-serif typefaces. Transitional sans-serif is
sometimes called "anonymous sans-serif" due to its relatively
plain appearance. Show all Neo-Grotesque

Sans Stencil: Is a typeface with breaks in the face to give it the

appearance of the stenciled alphabets used on boxes and
crates. A stencil is a thin sheet of material, such as paper,
plastic, or metal, with letters or a design cut from it, used to
produce the letters or design on an underlying surface by
applying pigment through the cut-out holes in the material. The
key advantage of a stencil is that it can be reused to repeatedly
and rapidly produce the same letters or design. Show all Sans
Stencil

Sans Square: The Square style is the new contemporary style

of typography. It is developed through the past decade to
replace the more round geometric style in font design. Show all
Sans Square

Monospaced: A fixed-pitch or non-proportional font.

Monospaced means that every glyph is the same width (as
opposed to variable-width fonts, where the w and m are wider
than most letters, and the i is narrower). The first monospaced
typefaces were designed for typewriters, which could only

Display: Display typography is a potent element in graphic

design, where there is less concern for readability and more
potential for using type in an artistic manner. A display typeface
is designed for the use of type at large sizes, perhaps 30 points
or larger. The misuse of the term display typeface as a synonym
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move the same distance forward with each letter typed. Show
all Sans Monospaced

for ornamental type has become widespread; properly speaking,

ornamental typefaces are a subcategory of display typefaces.
Show all Sans Display

Round: A rounded typeface means that all finishes; terminals,

overshoots and finials are rounded. It means no sharp corners.
The rounded finish creates a warmth making the font more
accessible and sympathetic. With many recent Web 2.0 startups there is a clear trend in using rounded typefaces in logos
and visual identities. A rounded typeface can be both slab and
sans serif varying in different styles from humanist to square.
Show all Sans Round

S L A B

S E R I F

T Y P E

C L A S S I F I C A T I O N

Slab Serif: A type of serif typeface characterized by thick,

block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular,
or rounded. Slab serif typefaces generally have no bracket
(feature connecting the strokes to the serifs). Some consider
slab serifs to be a subset of modern serif typefaces including
Clarendon, Typewriter, and Slab Serif (a separate sub-category
of Slab Serif) styles. Show all Slab Serif

Humanist: Lineale typefaces based on the proportions of

inscriptional Roman capitals and Humanist or Geralde lowercase, rather than on early grotesques. They have some stroke
contrast, with two-story (double-story) a and g.These are the
most calligraphic of the sans-serif typefaces, with some
variation in line width and more legibility than other sans-serif
fonts. Show all Humanist

Square: The new contemporary style of typography. It is

developed through the past decade to replace the more round
geometric style in font design. Show all Square

Typewriter: Just as the name suggests, these are slab serif

fonts that mimic the look of type from both manual and electric
typewriters. They are typically monospaced although they can
also be proportionally spaced fonts. Some typewriter fonts are
designed to be slightly distressed or grungy like the sometimes
messy type from an old manual typewriter. Show all Typewriter

Neo-Grotesque: The Neo-grotesque style is currently among

the most popular types of slab serif styles. Neo-grotesque have
no bracketing and evenly weighted stems and serifs. The
letterforms are similar to neo-grotesque or realist sans-serif
fonts Show all Slab Neo-Grotesque

Display: Display typography is a potent element in graphic

design, where there is less concern for readability and more
potential for using type in an artistic manner. A display typeface
is designed for the use of type at large sizes, perhaps 30 points
or larger. The misuse of the term display typeface as a synonym
for ornamental type has become widespread; properly speaking,
ornamental typefaces are a subcategory of display typefaces.
Show all Slab Display

Round: A rounded typeface means that all finishes; terminals,

overshoots and finials are rounded. It means no sharp corners.
The rounded finish creates a warmth making the font more
accessible and sympathetic. With many recent Web 2.0 startups there is a clear trend in using rounded typefaces in logos
and visual identities. A rounded typeface can be both slab- and
sans-serif varying in different substyles from humanist to
square. Show all Slab Round

F R E E S T Y L E

Freestyle: A freestyle typeface is a potent element in graphic

design, where there is less concern for readability and more
potential for using type in an artistic manner. The typeface is
combined with negative space, graphic elements and pictures,
forming relationships and dialog between words and images.

T Y P E

C L A S S I F I C A T I O N

Display: Display typography is a potent element in graphic

design, where there is less concern for readability and more
potential for using type in an artistic manner. A display typeface
is designed for the use of type at large sizes, perhaps 30 points
or larger. The misuse of the term display typeface as a synonym

Stencil: Is a typeface with breaks in the face giving it the

appearance of the stenciled alphabets used on boxes and
crates. A stencil is a thin sheet of material, such as paper,
plastic, or metal, with letters or a design cut from it, used to
produce the letters or design on an underlying surface by

converted by Web2PDFConvert.com

Show all Freestyle

for ornamental type has become widespread; properly speaking,

ornamental typefaces are a subcategory of display typefaces.
Show all Freestyle Display

applying pigment through the cut-out holes in the material. The

key advantage of a stencil is that it can be reused to repeatedly
and rapidly produce the same letters or design. Show all
Freestyle Stencil

Dot: The style is obviously a font made of dots almost like a

stencil is made of cuts. Like any freestyle typeface the dot font
style is less concerned with readability than graphic expression.
Made for display usage. Show all Freestyle Dot

Decorative: Also known as ornamental typefaces are used

exclusively for decorative purposes, and are not suitable for
body text. They have the most distinctive designs of all fonts,
and may even incorporate pictures of objects, animals, etc. into
the character designs. They usually have very specific
characteristics (e.g., evoking the Wild West, Christmas, horror
films, etc.) and hence very limited uses. Show all Freestyle
Decorative

Dingbat:, or Symbol, typefaces consist of symbols (such as

decorative bullets, clock faces, railroad timetable symbols, CDindex, or TV-channel enclosed numbers) rather than normal text
characters. It is an ornament, character or spacer used in
typesetting. The term continues to be used in the computer
industry to describe fonts that have symbols and shapes in the
positions designated for alphabetical or numeric characters.
Show all Freestyle Dingbats

Ripped: The style (a.k.a. Grunge) is a well-known phenomenon

and genre in music, literature and other cultural spheres in the
early 90ies. Within typography the trend was also apparent.
Ripped means that the look is roughened in various degrees. It
may look like a copy of a copy or as if someone has tried to
erase it. Show all Freestyle Ripped

Script typefaces are based upon the varied and often fluid
stroke created by handwriting. They are organized into highly
regular formal types similar to cursive writing and looser, more
casual scripts. Show all Freestyle Script

C A S E

Uppercase letters: The capital letters of the alphabet are

uppercase glyphs. Uppercase letters are normally used at the
beginning of sentences and as the first letter of proper names.
The term uppercase is derived from the days of metal type
where the lesser used capital letters were kept in the harder to
reach upper case.

Lowercase letters: The little letters or non-capital letters of

the alphabet are lowercase glyphs. They make up the bulk of
written text, with uppercase or capital letters used primarily only
to start sentences or proper names.The term lowercase is
derived from the days of metal type where the more frequently
used letters were kept near at hand in the lower case. Unicase:
Type design with upper- and lowercase letter forms that share
the same height.

I T A L I C

Roman: Roman type is the "regular" or upright counterpart of an

italic or oblique typeface, regardless of whether the type design
is seriffed or a sans serif.

&

Unicase: A unicase or unicameral alphabet is one that has no

case for its letters. Tamil, Arabic, Old Hungarian, Hebrew,
Georgian and Hangul are unicase alphabets, while (modern)
Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Armenian have two cases for each
letter, e.g., B/b, /, /.

O B L I Q U E

Italics: Italic type is a cursive typeface based on a stylized form

of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from
calligraphy, such typefaces often slant slightly to the right.
Different glyph shapes from roman type are also usually used
another influence from calligraphy. It is therefore distinct from
oblique type, in which the font is merely distorted into a slanted
orientation. However, uppercase letters are often oblique type
or swash capitals rather than true italics.

Oblique: Oblique type (or slanted, sloped) is a form of type that

slants slightly to the right, used in the same manner as italic type.
Unlike italic type, however, it does not use different glyph
shapes; it uses the same glyphs as roman type, except
distorted. Oblique fonts are usually associated with sans-serif
typefaces, especially with geometric faces, as opposed to
humanist ones whose design tends to draw more on history.
Oblique and italic type are often confused.

C A P S

Regular: Most typefaces include fonts that vary between

Caps: Is the majuscule version of a letter in the modern

Small Caps: Small capitals (usually abbreviated small caps) are

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uppercases (majuscules) and lowercases (minuscules).

Regular caps (regular capitals) are, in contrast to small caps,
upper cases that have a different height and weight than the
lowercases.

alphabets (Latin, Greek, Cyrillic and Armenian). Originally

alphabets were written entirely in capital letters, spaced
between well-defined upper and lower bounds. All Caps
means that only capital letters are used.

uppercase (capital) characters set at the same height and

weight as surrounding lowercase (small) letters or text figures.

W I D T H

Width: Type is also measured in width, or set size. A line of

type is measured in ems. An em is equal to the square of the
type body. Some typefaces include fonts that vary the width of
the characters (stretch). In width, you normally operate with 4
categories: condensed, regular, wide and super wide. Most
typefaces either have proportional or monospaced letter widths.

Condensed: Narrower fonts are usually labeled compressed,

condensed or narrow. A condensed font can be further
classified by prepending extra, ultra, super or the like.

Wide: Wider fonts may be called wide, extended or expanded.

A wide font can be further classified by prepending extra, ultra,
super or the like.

Super wide: The greater width the louder the typography

speaks. Super wide is mostly used for display purposes or
statements that are relatively emphasized compared to the rest
of the text.

Regular: The Regular width of a font is the standard, the focal

point for either condensing or widening the font.

W E I G H T S

Weight: The weight of a particular font is the thickness of the

character outlines relative to their height. There are many names
used to describe the weight of a font in its name, differing
among type foundries and designers, but their relative order is
usually fixed. The terms normal, regular and plain, sometimes
also book, are being used for the standard weight font of a
typeface. Where both appear and differ, book is often lighter
than regular, but in some typefaces it is bolder.

L A N G U A G E

Latin: In modern usage, the term Latin alphabet is used for any
direct derivation of the alphabet first used to write Latin. These
variants may discard letters from the classical Roman script (like

Greek: The Greek alphabet is a set of twenty-four letters that

has been used to write the Greek language since the 8th
century BC. It is still in use today. It is the first and oldest

Cyrillic: The development of Cyrillic typography passed directly

from the medieval stage to the late Baroque, without a
Renaissance phase as in Western Europe. Late Medieval Cyrillic

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the Rotokas alphabet) or add new characters to it, as from the

Danish and Norwegian alphabet. Letter shapes have changed
over the centuries, including the creation of entirely new lower
case characters.

alphabet in the narrow sense that it notes each vowel and

consonantwith a separate symbol. The letters were also used to
represent Greek numerals, beginning in the 2nd century BC.

letters (still found on many icon inscriptions even today) show a

marked tendency to be very tall and narrow; strokes are often
shared between adjacent letters.

K E R N I N G
Kerning: Also known as mortising is the process of adjusting
the spacing between characters in a proportional font (vs.
monospaced font), usually to achieve a visually pleasing result.
Kerning moves the letters closer together (negative spacing) vs.
tracking which moves the letters further apart (positive
spacing). In a well-kerned font, the two-dimensional blank
spaces between each pair of characters all have similar area.

T R A C K I N G
Tracking: Also called letter-spacing, refers to the amount of
space between a group of letters to affect density in a line or
block of text. Letter-spacing can be confused with kerning.
Letter-spacing refers to the overall spacing of a word or block
of text affecting its overall density and texture. Kerning is a term
applied specifically to the adjustment of spacing of two
particular characters to correct visually uneven spacing.

L E A D I N G
Leading: refers to the distance between the baselines of
successive lines of type. The term originated in the days of
hand-typesetting, when thin strips of lead were inserted into the
forms to increase the vertical distance between lines of type.
The term is still used by 'professionals' and in modern page
layout software. In consumer-oriented word processing
software, this concept is usually referred to as "line spacing" or
"interline spacing." As with all matters of typography, it is a fine
balance between reading comfort and aesthetics.

N U M B E R S

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Tabular lining figures: Numbers that share identical character

widths (that is, they are monospaced). Using tabular figures
enables you to set columns of numbers, and have them neatly
line up vertically. This is especially useful for tables, thus
"tabular". Tabular figures are often lining.

Proportional lining figures: Proportional figures are different

from Tabular figures in their total character width. They are
spaced to fit together more like letters. For instance, the figure 1
is very narrow like the letter l and takes up less width than the
number 6. Because their spacing appears more even, these
figures are best in texts and headings where columnar
alignment is not necessary.

Superscript and subscript: A subscript or superscript is a

number, figure, symbol, or indicator that appears smaller than
the normal line of type and is set slightly below or above it
subscripts appear at or below the baseline, while superscripts
are above. Subscripts and superscripts are perhaps best
known for their use in formulas, mathematical expressions, and
descriptions of chemical compounds or isotopes, but have many
other uses as well.

Copyright 2015

Fractions: Fractions are mostly divided into three categories:

basic, extended and arbitrary. Basic fractions are , and
a standard in most fonts in all formats. Extended fractions are
found in many, but not all fonts, and usually include 1/8, 3/8, 5/8,
7/8, and sometimes 1/3 and 2/3. Arbitrary fractions include
anything and everything else, such as 18/256.

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Oldstyle lining: Old-style figures is the other numeral form (than

lining) used by western languages, in which numerals 0, 1, and
2 are at x-height; numerals 6 and 8 have bowls within x-height,
and ascenders; numerals 3, 5, 7, and 9 have descenders from
x-height; and the numeral 4 rests along the baseline.

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