Typographic Terms hen older typesetting methods gave Centered text Text placed at an equal Wway to electronic publishing, certain distance from the left and right margins. traditional terms got carried along. Today Headlines are often centered. we use a mix of old and new terminology to Character In typography, a single element describe typography. such as a letter, numeral, or mark of punctua- Alignment The positioning of text within tion. The emerging term to describe these margins. Text flush with the margins on typographic elements is glyph, which is more both sides is referred to as justified. Text is descriptive when discussing non-Roman often aligned with only one margin, either alphabet characters. the left or right and is then described as Character encoding An encoding is a table right- or left-justified, ragged left or -right, that maps character codes to the glyphs of a or flush-left or -right. font. There are 32,768 possible typographic Ascender The stem of lowercase letters (such codes in the latest font technology, OpenType, as k, b, and d) that ascends above the x-height designed to accommodate nearly any alphabet of the other lowercase letters in a typeface. system known. Backslant A typeface with a backwards slant, Condensed font A narrower version of a the opposite of italic. font that is used to get more characters into a given space. Baseline The imaginary line on which the majority of the characters in a typeface rest. Copyfitting A typographic process of adjust- ing the size and spacing of type to make it fit Body copy The main text of a document, as within a defined area or on a definite number distinct from titles and headings. of printed pages. Can be done by calculation, Boldface A typeface rendered in darker, or by successive adjustments at the computer thicker strokes so that it will stand out. until a fit is reached. Bullet A dot or other special character used Descender The part of a lowercase letter to indicate items in a list. (such as y, p, and q) that descends below the baseline. In many typefaces, the uppercase J Cap height The height from the baseline to and Q also descend below the baseline. the top of the uppercase letters in a font. This may or may not be the same as the height of Dingbats Non-alphanumeric glyphs. ascenders. Dingbat fonts consisting entirely of these characters are a source of graphic symbols— such as arrows, bullets, and dividers—and other graphic ornaments. Display type Type larger than that of the flush-right ragged-left. The term ragged- body text, used for headlines and display. left is sometimes used alone to mean the same thing. Drop cap A document style in which the first capital letter of a paragraph is set in a larger Font One style, weight, and width of a type- point size and aligned with the top of the first face. An example is Times Bold Extended. line. Used to indicate the start of a new sec- Times is a typeface family, Roman is a style, tion of text, such as a chapter. Bold is a weight, Extended is a width. The terms font and typeface tend to be used Ellipsis A punctuation character consisting interchangeably. of three dots, or periods, in a row. It indicates that a word or phrase has been omitted. In hand-set type, the term font described a single point size of a particular typeface Em, em space, em quad A common unit of design. Because digital-typesetting technol- measurement in typography. The em is the ogy enables scalable fonts, the size defining a width of the point size. For example, in 12- font is no longer applicable. point type, one em has a width of 12 points. Font contrast Font contrast refers to the Em dash A dash the length of an em used to range of thickness of the strokes used to draw indicate a break in a sentence. a font’s characters. Helvetica has low contrast, En, en space, en quad A common unit of for example, because the letters are drawn measurement in typography. The en is typi- with strokes of uniform thickness. Bodoni, on cally half the width of the point size. It is half the other hand, has high contrast. the width of an em space. Font family Also called a typeface family. A En dash A dash the length of an en is used to collection of similar fonts designed to be used indicate a range of values. Some typographers together. The Garamond family, for example, prefer it to the longer em-dash to indicate a includes roman and italic styles, several break in a sentence. weights (regular, semibold, and bold), and several widths (extended and compressed). Flush-left ragged-right Text that is aligned on the left margin is said to be flush-left. If the Galley proof A proof that is close enough to text is unaligned on the right, so that it has a final copy to permit proofreading. The tradi- ragged edge, it is said to be flush-left ragged tional galley was a small unit of machine-set right. The term ragged-right is sometimes type, which was checked before being merged used alone to mean the same thing. into a frame with other galleys. The galley proof—also called a reader’s proof—was used Flush-right ragged-left Text that is aligned to check for errors in typesetting. on the right margin is said to be flush right and, if unaligned on the left, is said to be set Typographic Terms (continued) Glyph The basic building block in typeset- Greeking Gibberish used to take the place of ting is a glyph—a letter, numeral, or symbol; real text for layout purposes. groups of glyphs together are called fonts. Hanging indent A document style in which One or more fonts sharing particular design the first line of a paragraph is aligned with the features make up a family; Adobe Myriad left margin, and the remaining lines are all Pro, for example, is the name of a type fam- indented an equal amount. An effective style ily. Myriad Pro Regular is an individual font for displaying lists of information, sometimes within that family. The Pro in the name indi- referred to as outdenting. cates that the font is an OpenType font. Italic A slanting or script-like version of a New Glyphs palettes in InDesign, Illustrator face. The upright faces are often referred to and QuarkXPress allow for the selection of as Roman. alternate characters from a palette showing all available alternate characters. Adobe now Justified In typography, text is justified if it ships all of its fonts in OpenType format, and is flush on both the left and right margins. other type foundries are offering their fonts Text that is flush-rightor flush-left,in other in this format in addition to the older Type 1 words aligned on only one margin, is some- and TrueType font formats. times described as being right-justified or left-justified. Kerning The adjustment of horizontal space between pairs of characters to create a per- ception of uniformity; critical where large typefaces are used, as in headlines. The letters Ty would require kerning to tuck the y under the wing of the T. Keyboard layout, keyboard mapping A keyboard layout or mapping is the table governing which character is generated when a particular key or combination of keys is pressed. Letterspacing Letterspacing adjustments Pica A unit of measure that is approximately are applied to a block of text as a whole, and one-sixth of an inch. A pica is equal to 12 are sometimes referred to as tracking. This is points. The traditional British and American distinct from kerning, which adjusts space pica is 0.166 inch. In PostScript devices, a pica between pairs of letters. Letterspacing is used is exactly 1/6 inch. to improve legibility and to fit more or less Point A unit of measure in typography. The text into the given space. original ANSI point was 72.27 to the inch, but Ligature Two or more letters drawn as a the PostScript era ushered-in a new point that unit. In some typefaces, certain pairs of let- is exactly 72 to the inch. ters overlap in unsightly ways if printed side Point size The common way to describe the by side. Substituting a ligature improves the size of a font. A font’s point size is the distance appearance in these cases. Examples include in points from the top of the highest ascender the fi,and flpairs. to the bottom of the lowest descender plus a Oblique A slanting version of a face. Oblique tiny gap for legibility. is similar to italic but without the script qual- Quad A typesetting term for a specified ity of a true italic. space size. For example, an em quad is the OpenType OpenType solves the problems of width of the point size, and an en quad is half previous font technologies. OpenType fonts that width. are cross-platform and can contain character Raised cap A design style in which the first sets of tens of thousands of glyphs, allow- capital letter of a paragraph is set in a large ing for typography in almost any language. point size and aligned with the baseline of the Special characters, such as small caps and first line of text. Compare to a drop cap. old-style numerals are included in OpenType fonts rather than being found in a separate Reverse type, reverse text Type that is font.