In this section we will talk about important terms about printing world and typography.

Continuing Typography Terms

Text type/matter Any typeface of a suitable size for printing a body of text, usually in a range of 8pt to 14pt. Also called composition sizes.

Thick space In traditional metal typesetting, a word space measuring one-third of an em. Thin space In traditional metal typesetting, a word space measuring one- fifth of an em.

Type high The depth of a piece of type or any other material such as blocks that are composed alongside it. In the U.S. and Britain, this is 0.918 inches. Type size the measurement, usually in points, of the body of a particular size of type as I would be if cast in metal.

Unit set Type measured in unit dimensions rather than pints. Unit system A type design in which character widths conform to unit measurements associated with the width of the character.

X-height The height of a lowercase character (using x or z as models), without ascenders or descenders. The invisible line defined by x-height is called the x-line or mean-line.

Antiqua A group of roman type designs based on early North Italian scripts. Also used in German to describe roman type, as distinct from fraktur, the German name for black letter type.

Arabesque A design found in decorative fonts of curing stems, leaves, and flowers, originally deriving from the Islamic ornamental depiction of the acanthus vine.

B/f (2) abb.: boldface Shorthand for the instruction to set text in a boldface 1940 bold (face).

Black letter A general term for an old style of typeface originally based on a broad-nib script, and variously called text letter, gothic (UK), Old English (US), Fraktur (Germany) and so on.
Black letter Originally, type characters cut for a wooden block and used for printing and embossing. Nowadays, the term is used to describe large gothic sans serif letterforms.

Blooming letters Large display capitals engraved in wood, characterized by strokes formed by stalk, leaf and flower motifs. As distinct from floriated initials —capitals set against a background of leaves and flowers.

Face Traditionally, a term for a particular typeface, now used to describe any font suitable for setting the text of a book.

Cameo Typefaces in which the letterforms are reversed to show white on a dark background.
Chancery italic A style of handwriting on which italic type designs are based. These formal scripts were used in the 15th and 16th centuries for official documents and letters.

CMC7 A font used for magnetic ink character recognition.
Cursive A running script —that is, lettering that is formed without raising pen from paper. This style of writing developed into a script used, up until the early 16th century, for diplomatic and administrative documents that, inurn, inspired the first italic typefaces.

Cyrillic Alphabet characters used for writing and printing the Russian and Bulgarian languages.

E13B The name of the font of numerals and symbols used for magnetic ink character recognition (MICR). Egyptian The generic term for a group of display typefaces with heavy slab serifs and little contrast in the thickness of strokes. Elephant face A bold, fat typeface.

Engraved face A typeface characterized by a pattern of lines or crosshatching. Entrelac initial A traditional decorative initial that is incorporated into a larger design of tracery and appears at the start of a chapter. Exotic A traditional term used to describe a typeface with characters of a language not based on Roman letterforms — Hebrew or Arabic.

Face Traditionally, the printing surface of any metal type character, but nowadays used a series or family name for fonts with similar characteristics, such as modern face or old face. Family A series type design such as Goudy Old Style, Goudy Catalogue. Goudy Handtooled, etc., with all the variations of weight (ligh, roman, bold, etc.) and their italic styles, as distinct from a typeface or font, which describes each single variation.

Fat face Any type design with extreme contrast in the widths of thin and thick strokes, such as Poster Dodoni. Finial letter A type character designed to be used only as the last letter in a word or line, usually incorporating some kind of decorative flourish (swash).

Floating fleurons Decorative type elements used to make up panels with a patteon or border.
Floriated/floriated initial Decorative ornaments such as a border or initial letter featuring floral designs.

Font family The complete set of characters of a typeface design in all its size and styles. A typical font family contains four individual fonts: roman, italic, bold, and bold italic. As distinc from a typeface or font. Also known as a type family.

Font/fount Originating from the word found — as in typefoundry — a font is traditionally a complete set of type scharters of the same design, style, and size. For example, 10-point Baskerville Old Style Bold Italic is a font. On a computer, however, although each font is a unique design and style, any size can be rendered from a single font file. There are two forstyle, any size can be rendered from a single font file. There are two formats: PostScript Type I, which comes in two parts — bitmapped screen fonts and outline priter fonts; and truetype, in which each font is a single file.

Font/ type series The identification of a typeface by a series number, for example, Cnivers 55.
Franktur A German black-letter type. Full shadow A type design with a heavy outline.

Glyphic A design derived from cared rather than scripted letters (from the Greek Glupho meaning carve). Graphic A type design derived from drawn rather than scripted letter forms.

Grotesque A term sometimes used to collectively describe sans serif display typefaces, such as Gill and Futgura, as distinct from the typeface called Grotesque, which also falls into this group. Also known as grots.

Half-uncial A styie of letters, composed of the mixed uncial and cursive letters used in medieval Europe as a book hand. Also called semiuncial.

Historiated letters Decorative initial capital letters, incorporating miniature drawings that illustrate events or themes in the accompanying text.

Inline lettering Any type design incorporating a white line. The line follows the outline of the character and is drawn inside its shape. Also called a white-lined black letter.

Latin A term sometimes given to typefaces derived from letterforms common to Western European countries, especially those with heavy wedge-shaped serifs. Letterform Any drawn or designed alphanumeric character whether used as a typeface or as a hand-drawn script.

Magnetic ink characters Characters that are readable by an MICR machine. Missal caps Decorative black-letter capitals. Modern face A typeface characterized by vertical stress, strong stroke contrast, and thin, unbracketed serifs — BodonI and Walbaum, for example.

Monogram A design made up of interwoven characters, usually two or more. Monospaced (font) A font in which the type characters all occupy the same width space (as on a typewriter), as distinct from proportionally spaced fonts, which are more common. Courier is a monospaced font, Also called fixed-width fonts.

Old face A type design characterized by its diagonal stress and sloped, bracketed serifs, for example, Garamond. Optical (type) font Fonts used in some methods of optical character recognition, having character shapes that are both distinguishable by computers and readable by people.The most common OCR fonts are OCR-A and OCR-B.the latter designed by Adrian Frutiger.

Outline letter/outline font A type design in which the character is formed of outlines rather than a solid shape or, alternatively, a font style option in many applications that renders just the outline of a font without filling it in, usually with appalling results.

Publicity face A traditional term for display sizes of typefaces, used for advertisements, catalogs, etc.
Script A typeface designed to resemble handwriting. Shaded letter A type character filled with crosshatched lines rather than solid tone. Shadow font Characters given a 3D appearance by heavily shaded areas beside the main strokes.

Slab/square serif In certain type designs, notably egyptian, serifs that are of almost the same thickness as the uprights. Square capitals Capital letters adapted from Roman lapidary capitals, They are thick with wide, square serifs. Also known as quadrata.

Striking The method used by calligraphers to achieve an elaborate freehand embellishment without the use of underlying guidelines. Perfected in I 605 by Jan van den Velde. Also known as by command of hand.

Text letter Traditional black or gothic lettenforms. Transitional A classification of typefaces that are neither old face nor modern, such as Baskerville and Fournier.

Type Originally, an individual text character cast in metal (called a "stamp" by compositors), but latterly any letter, numeral, or ornament drawn in a huge variety of designs (each one a "typeface" belonging to a "type family"), sizes, and weights (each one a "font").

Typeface The term (based on "face" the printing surface of a metal type character) describing a type design of any size, including weight variations on that design such as light and bold. but excluding all other related designs such as italic and condensed. As distinct from a "type family" which includes all related designs, and a "font," which is one design of a single size, weight, and style,Thus Baskerville is a type family whereas Baskerville Bold is a typeface and 9pt Baskerville Bold Italic is a font.

Uncials A type design reflecting the rounded letterforms of the "majuscule" (capital) script found in medieval manuscripts.

Venetian types A style of typeface design that appeared in the 15th century, characterized by the wide set of the lowercase letters and bold serifs.

Vox classification Devised by Maximillien Vox in 1954, this is a method of classifying all typefaces, according to their visual characteristics, into ten different categories. These are: Humane, derivatives of roman letters of the 15th century, sometimes called "Venetians," such as Centaur and Cloister; Garalde. old-face designs such as Bembo and Garamond; Reale. redesigns of old-faces (called "transitionals"), such as Baskerville and Times Roman; Didone so-called modern faces such as Bodoni and Walbaum; Mecane, faces with even strokes and slab serifs, such as Rockwell and Lubalin Graph; Lineale, all sans serif faces such as Futura and Univers; Incise, faces with a chiseled effect; Scripte, calligraphic, copperplate scripts such as Shelley and Francesca; Manuaire, derivatives of manuscript letters and als obrush letters (as distinct from scripts) such as Albertus and Klang; Fracture, black letter types such as Fraktur and Old English.

white letter An early description of roman type, used to distinguish it from a black or gothic letterform. wood letter/type Individually carved letterforms, a precursor of metal-based type.