Barbara Durham's Fonts Studio - Free Gif's for Your Web Pages

Member of the Internet Link Exchange	Free Home Pages at GeoCities
I do not endorse the contents of any of the above random websites and I probably didn't create these banners.

GLOSSARY OF TYPOGRAPHY

Alphanumeric		All the letters, numbers, and special characters (comma, etc.) of the alphabet.
Alignment		The art of placing text lines in a column or on a page.
Ampersands		A Latin typographic character or symbol which means "and".
Antiqua		Serif fonts whose shape comes from Roman style capital letters. The uppercase letters are borrowed from Roman Script. The lowercase letters come from Carolingian miniscule. An alternating stroke weight including the serifs is a typical characteristic.
Art Deco		A style of art popular in the early 1920's featuring geometric shape and form.
Art Nouveau		A style of art featuring curling, decorative lines inspired by nature.
Ascender		Portion of a letter which rises above the X-Height. The letters b, d, f, h, k, l, and t have ascenders.
Base Font		Font and point size of the main text of printed material.
Baseline		The imaginary line that forms the bottom of letters. Some letters have strokes called descenders which fall below the baseline.
Bauhaus		A German school of design which existed between 1919 and 1933. It pioneered a highly ordered style with emphasis on function in both architecture and the applied arts.
Body		Smaller type sizes of 4 point up to 12 point which can be used for paragraphs of copy, captions, notes, instructions, etc. Also known as text.
Bold or Boldface Type		Type with a heavier weight than normal type.
Caps Height		Height of a font's uppercase letters, measured by the letter H.
Character		A letter, number, punctuation mark, space or special symbol that would require a keystroke.
Condensed Type		A narrow or slender version of a font.
Counter		The space within a letter. An example is the hole in the center of the letter "o". This space can be narrow or wide and influences the readability of the font.
cpi		The abbreviation for characters per inch. This is a measurement of the density of characters per inch on print media. Another name for this is pitch. A 12 pitch give you 12 character per inch.
Cursive		Flowing or connecting script type that resembles handwriting.
Descender		Portion of a letter which falls below the baseline. The letters g, j, p, q, and y have descenders.
Display Type		Type used for titles and headlines. They are usually used larger than 12-point.
dpi		The abbreviation for dots per inch. This is the measurement used for printer resolution. A 300 dpi printer means that 90,000 dots are printable in one square inch. This is calculated by multiply 300 x 300.
Em		The width of the uppercase "M". This size varies from font to font and within the different sizes of a font. The term em now refers to a unit of measurement exactly as wide and high as the point size being set.
Em Dash		A dash "-" the exact size of an em.
En		The width of the uppercase "N". This size varies from font to font and within the different sizes of a font. The term en now refers to a unit of measurement half as wide as an em.
En Dash		A dash "-" the exact size of an en.
Ex-Height		See X-Height
Expanded Type		A style of type with wider than normal characters.
Family (of Type)		All the variations of the same typeface or font.
Flush		The even vertical alignment of set lines of type (left or right).
Font		All the character of one typeface and size. Example: Helvetica Medium including upper and lower case, numerials, punctuation marks, swash characters and special symbols. It is also the name given a typesetting master.
Headline		A caption set off by type larger, bolder or more prominent than the text or body type.
Italic		Type in which the characters slant to the right. Roman and cursive styles that are slanted are called italic and sans serif types are called oblique. Normal angle is about 11-1/2 degrees. Double italic is 23 degrees. Italic type can save space because the characters are redesigned narrower and set closer without loss of readability.
Justified		Lines of type set flush on both sides, left and right.
Justify		To space out type set copy so that each line is equal or flush.
Kerning		To selectively reduce the space between individual letters.
Leading		Pronounced "led". See linespacing.
Letterspacing or Tracking		A typesetters term for the space between each letter or character. Good letter spacing has equal volume between each character. Normal is best for body copy or text. Tight letter spacing is common for headlines.
Linespacing		The spaces between lines of type measured from baseline to baseline. This is measured and specified in points. 1 or 2 point linespacing is considered normal. A common guideline is to use a linespacing equal to the width of the stems of the type face. Negative Linespacing is less than the actual point size. It is also known as leading. The term comes from the bars of lead placed between the rows of characters on the old printing machines.
Lowercase letters		The small letters of the alphabet. They are called lowercase because the small letters were traditionally stored in the bottom or lower case.
lpi		Abbreviation for Lines Per Inch which is used for the resolution of halftone images (photographs). LPI is not the same as pixels per inch (ppi), dots per inch (ppi) and characters per inch (cpi).
Outline Font		A letter without any filler.
Pica		A typographical measurement. One pica equals 12 points equal 0.166 of an inch.
Pitch		The number of characters per inch measured horizontally.
Point		The smallest unit of the typographical measuring system. Twelve points equal one pica. There are approximately 72 points in one inch.
Point Size		The size of a font measured in points and described as 12-point Helvetica or 10-point Caslon, etc.
Rag Right		Type set unjustified at the right side and Flush Left. This gives a ragged or uneven appearance on the right side.
Rivers		A series of word (white) spaces that accidentally form a pattern (rivers) of white space within the columns of type.
Roman Type		Typefaces designed with both thick and thin strokes and serifs.
Sans Serif		Sans in French means without, thus, sans serif refers to a typeface without serifs.
Script Font		The original style of writing on which our cursive writing is based. The letters can be connected like Zapf Chancery, or unconnected like Mistral.
Semi-bold Type		Faces of a font family with wider stroke weights than normal, but thinner than bold.
Serif		The small cross-lines at the end of the main letter strokes of Roman styles. They can be smooth, pointed, round, square, angled, or bracketed. Serifs emphasize the line of type and guide the eye of the reader.
Set		The width of a letter. You can expand or condense the size, so that for example a 10-point size can have a set size of 8 which gives a narrower than normal type. A 10-point size can also have a set size of 12 which gives a broader than normal type.
Slab Serif Font		Also called Square Serif or Egyptian Style, this is type designed with strokes of even thickness and square, heavy serifs.
Small Caps		Capital letters of a font set in x-height. Genuine small-capitals have stems that are of the same weight. Small capitals that are not genuine will be uppercase letters of a smaller font size. They are frequently used for cross referencing and abbreviations.
Swash Letters		Special or alternate letters with extended flowing tails (serifs) on Roman letters. They can add a feeling of romance.
Tracking		Traditionally, this was increasing the spacing between letters in text, while kerning was reducing the space between letters in text. On a computer, the two terms tend to be used interchangeably to mean changing the space to be more or less.
Type/Font Family		One typeface with all of the variations. For example, the Helvetica Family would include all the sizes such as 10-point, 12-point, 36-point, etc. and all variations of italic, bold, condensed, etc.
Typography		The art of using or designing with type to communicate a message from one individual to another.
Uppercase Letters		The capital letters. They are called uppercase because the capital letters were stored in the top or upper case.
Wordspacing		The amount of space between words. Normal wordspacing uses a the volume of space created by a lowercase "n" between words. Tight wordspacing uses a lowercase "i" between words. The word spacing is guided by the letterspacing.
X-Height		The height of the lowercase "x" in any typesize.
Z-Height or Zee Height		The height of the lowercase letters that have ascenders. This is not always the same as the Cap-Height.

| Back to Fonts Studio |

Vote for this Site for Cool Page of the Day

All you have to know is that My Address is 7343 and My Neighborhood is SoHo

You may want to write that down before going to the link. Thank you in advance for voting for me.

Sign My Guestbook

View My Guestbook

Contents of this Web Site including all graphics and text are the intellectual property of Barbara Durham
and protected by all international copyright laws and treaties. Only the images in the GIF Art Studio are
available for downloading and use. All other graphics and text are eyes only.
Besides it is not nice to steal!

This Page Updated March 28, 1997

This page hosted by Get your own Free Home Page