Typographic Illustration for Communication Vocabulary Handout Ascender – The part of lowercase letters (such as b, and d) that rise above, or ascend the x- height of the other lowercase letters. Baseline – The line on which most of the characters in a typeface rest. Body Text – The bulk of the text in a document. The body text should be set in an easy-to-read face, usually at 10- or 12-point size. Boldface – A darker typeface with thicker strokes so that it will stand out on the page typically used for headlines. Condensed – A narrower version of a font used to maximize number of characters in a given space. Copyfitting – The means of adjusting the size and spacing of type to make it fit within a defined area of the page. Descender – The part of lowercase letters (such as g and p) that fall below, or descend, the baseline of the other lowercase letters. Dingbats – Decorative typefaces that consist of symbol characters such as arrows, ampersands, and bullets. Display Font – A font that has been designed to look good at large point sizes, often for use in headlines. Face – Describes the style of a face. For example, the italic style of the Times Roman family is a face. Family – A collection of faces that were designed and intended to be used together including roman and italic styles, as well as regular, semi-bold, and bold weights. Each of the style and weight combinations is called a face. Flush Left – Text that is aligned on the left margin. Flush Right – Text which is aligned on the right margin. Font – The particular style of a typeface including one weight and width. Headline – Abbreviated, emphasized text that introduces information in the body text. Italic – A slanting version of a face. Justified – A block of text that has been spaced so that the text aligns on both the left and right margins. AAVTC: Professional Communications: Typographic Illustration for Communication Copyright © Texas Education Agency, 2012. All rights reserved. 8 Kerning – The adjustment of horizontal space between individual characters in a line of text. Leading – The amount of space between lines of text. The term originally referred to the thin lead spacers that printers used to physically increase space between lines of metal type. Margin – The space around text blocks and on the edges of a page. Pica – A unit of measure that is approximately 1/6th of an inch. A pica is equal to 12 points. Point – A unit of measure in typography with approximately 72 points to the inch. A pica is 12 points. Point Size – The common method of measuring type. Point size refers to the distance from the top of the highest ascender to the bottom of the lowest descender in points. Raised Cap – The first capital letter of a block of text is set in a large point size and aligned with the baseline of the first line of text. A raised cap is used as a design element at the beginning of a paragraph to introduce and emphasize the text. Reverse – White or light-colored text on a dark background for emphasis typically used for larger type or headlines. Roman – The upright version of a face within a font family, as compared to the italic version. Typeface – All of the characters that make up a design of type including letters, numbers, and symbols. Typefaces are chosen to enhance design and reinforce a message, giving style to the substance. Weight – The relative darkness of the characters of a type family indicated by terms such as thin, light, bold, extra-bold, and black. White Space –The blank areas where text and illustrations do not appear on the page. Good composition relies on a balance of positive (printed text or illustrations) and negative (white) space. Good use of white space on a printed page gives an elegant appearance. WYSIWYG – Acronym for What You See Is What You Get. What you see on the screen is what you will get on printed output. Macintosh, Windows, and some UNIX environments provide a WYSIWYG screen display. X-Height – The height of the body of lowercase letters in a font, not including the ascenders and descenders. AAVTC: Professional Communications: Typographic Illustration for Communication Copyright © Texas Education Agency, 2012. All rights reserved. 9 .