Typography Terms

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Typography

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The art of using fonts and font styles to produce professional looking publications.

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Alignment

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The placement of text or graphics relative to the margins.

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Ascender

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The lowercase letter that extends above the x-height as in the characters b, d, f, h, k, and l.

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Baseline

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An imaginary horizontal line on which the bottom of all uppercase characters and the base of all lowercase characters fall or rest.

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Descenders

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The lowercase letters that fall below the baseline, as in characters g, j, p, and q.

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Drop Cap

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A design element in which a letter (usually the first letter of a paragraph) is much larger font size and embedded into the surrounding text.

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Font

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Categories of text such as Arial, Garamond, Script, and Franklin Font family: Fonts are grouped into families and given a name such as Arial, Garamond, Comic, and Times. 

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Kerning

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The process of “fine-tuning” spacing by adjusting the space between characters.

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Leaders

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Dots, dashes or characters that proceed text or an align tab setting.

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Leading

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The vertical distance between the baselines of type.