Typography

Typography

Used to convey a message quickly and concisely with little effort from a reader

Type Family

A series of fonts with the same design but different weights, widths, and slants of each letter

Type Face

Type family narrowed down to a specific weight and width

Type Font

Type family narrowed down to a specific weight, width, and point size

Roman

Fonts with thin and thick strokes and serifs (lines at endpoints of letters)

Sans Serif

Fonts without serifs (like the one you’re viewing!)

Square Serif

Fonts with square/block serifs

Black Letter

Imitates calligraphy (mainly old english)

Script

Fonts that simulate handwriting

Novelty

Used for decoration or special attention

Condescended

Classic fonts within a smaller space

Italic

Slanted version of a font

Bold

Thicker stroked version of a font.

Black

Even thicker and darker version of a font (more than bold)

Small Caps

Uppercase letters with a smaller size (like lowercase)

Ligatures

Two letters are joined together (fi, fl)

Glyph/Dingbat

Hieroglyph, Symbol, or Pictograph

Subscript

Letter or number BELOW the baseline

Superscript

Letter/number ABOVE a baseline

EM Space

Unit of measurement in typography/web design, 1 EM equals the height of a font

EN Space

½ of an EM space

EM Dash + EN Dash

A dash with length to match EM or EN measure (-/—)

Baseline

Line where bottom of standard letters rest

Mean line

Line at the top of most lowercase letters

Ascender

Part of a lowercase letter that extends above the mean line (b, d)

Descender

Part of a lowercase letter that extends below a baseline (p, q)

X-Height

Measure between the baseline & mean line

Leading

Measure from baseline to baseline (aka line spacing)

Kerning

Changing space between a pair of letters

Tracking

Changing space between a group of letters

Headline Type

Used for a title of a section, greater than 14 pt

Body Type

Used for the “guts” of the typesetting, at most 14 pt (no larger than 14 pt)

Subhead Type

Used for sections under a heading, greater than 14pt but less than heading size

Justified

Text lines up on left and right sides

Flush Left

Text lines up on the left and is ragged on the right side

Flush Right

Text lines up on right side and ragged on the left side

Force Justified

Last line of a text forced to stretch across a column

Widow

A word or line that starts its own column or page by itself

Orphan

A single word at the bottom of a paragraph

(_) points = 1 Pica

12

6 Picas or 72 points = ___

1 inch

Type 1 Fonts

Postscript fonts that need a display and print font, no longer supported since 2022

True Type Fonts

Display and Printer fonts all together, scalable vectors

Open Type Fonts

Similar to True Type with larger capacity