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Typography rules and terms every designer must know By Creative Bloq Staff

Source: http://www.creativebloq.com/typography/what-is-typography-123652

March 08, 2016

We explain the fundamental concepts and terminology of typography in words you can understand.

Key typography rules

Typography is, quite simply, the art and technique of arranging type. It's central to the skills of a designer and is about much more than making the words legible. Your choice of typeface and how you make it work with your layout, grid, colour scheme, design theme and so on will make the difference between a good, bad and great design.

There are lots of typography tutorials around to help you master the discipline. But good typography is often down to creative intuition. Once you're comfortable with the basics, visit some typography resources to investigate font families and discover some font pairings that are made for each other.

Choosing a font

There's an astonishing array of paid-for and free fonts to choose from online. But with great power comes great responsibility. Just because you can choose from a vast library doesn't mean you have to; there's something to be said for painting with a limited palette, and tried and tested fonts like Helvetica continue to serve us well.

There is a vast selection of typefaces for you to choose from

A typeface, like any form of design, is created by craftsmen over a substantial period of time, using the talent they've been honing for many years. And the benefits of a professionally designed font – various weights and styles to form a complete family, carefully considered kerning pairs, multi-language support with international characters, expressive alternate glyphs to add character and variety to type-setting – are not always found in a font available for free.

Here are some of the most important typographic considerations the professional designers needs to take into account.

01. Size

All typefaces are not created equally. Some are fat and wide; some are thin and narrow. So words set in different typefaces can take up a very different amount of space on the page.

The height of each character is known as its 'x-height' (quite simply because it's based on the letter 'x'). When pairing typefaces – such as when using a different face to denote an area of attention – it's generally wise to use those that share a similar x-height. The width of each character is known as the 'set width', which spans the body of the letter plus a space that acts as a buffer with other letter.

The most common method used to measure type is the point system, which dates back to the 18th century. One point is 1/72 inch. 12 points make one pica, a unit used to measure column widths. Type sizes can also be measured in inches, millimetres, or pixels.

02. Leading

Leading describes the vertical space between each line of type. It's called this because strips of lead were originally used to separate lines of type in the days of metal typesetting.

For legible body text that's comfortable to read, a general rule is that your leading value should be greater than the font size; anywhere from 1.25 to 1.5 times.

03. Tracking and kerning

Kerning describes the act of adjusting the space between characters to create a harmonious pairing. For example, where an uppercase 'A' meets an uppercase 'V', their diagonal strokes are usually kerned so that the top left of the 'V' sits above the bottom right of the 'A'.

Kerning similar to, but not the same as, 'tracking'; this relates to the spacing of all characters and is applied evenly.

04. Measure

The term 'measure' describes the width of a text block. If you're seeking to achieve the optimum reading experience, it's clearly an important consideration.

05. Hierarchy and scale

If all type was the same size, it would be difficult to know which was the most important information on the page. In order to guide the reader, then, headings are usually large, sub-headings are smaller, and body type is smaller still.

Size is not the only way to define hierarchy – it can also be achieved with colour, spacing and weight.

Next page: Glossary of typography A-D

The glossary (A-D)

A visual guide to some common typography terms - see key below

Key to image: 1. Bowl; 2. Stem; 3. Counter; 4. Arm; 5. Ligature; 6. Terminal; 7. Spine; 8. Ascender; 9. Apex; 10. Serif; 11. Ear; 12. Descender; 13. Crossbar; 14. Finial; 15. Ascender height; 16. Cap height; 17. X-height; 18. Baseline; 19. Descender line

Aesc

Pronouced 'ash', this is a ligature of two letters – 'a' and 'e'. The aesc derives from Old English, where it represented a diphthong vowel, and has successfully migrated to other alphabets including Danish and Icelandic.

Aperture

The constricted opening of a glyph, as seen in the letter 'e'. Varying the size of the aperture has a direct effect on the legibility of a letterform and, ultimately, readability.

Apex

The point at the top of a character where the left and right strokes meet. The example shown in the header image is the top point of an uppercase 'A'.

Arm

A horizontal stroke that does not connect to a stroke or stem at one or both ends – such as the top of the capital T.

Ascender

The part of a lowercase letterform that projects above the x-height of the font. Ascenders are important for ease of prolonged reading, though the combination of too much ascender-height and not enough x-height can cause problems.

Baseline

The baseline is where the feet of your capital letters sit. Below this line are descenders and loops.

Bowl

The shapely, enclosed parts of letters such as 'p' and 'b'.

Beak

The beak-shaped terminal at the top of letters such as 'a', 'c', 'f' and 'r'.

Bicameral (as opposed to unicameral)

Bicameral refers to alphabets that have upper- and lowercase letterforms, such as Roman and Cyrillic – as opposed to the likes of Hebrew and Arabic.

Bracket

A wedge-like shape that joins a serif to the stem of a font in some typefaces.

Cap height

The height of a capital letter above the baseline.

Copyfitting

The job of adjusting point size and letter spacing in a bid to make text occupy its allotted space in a harmonious fashion.

Counter

The enclosed – or partially enclosed – portion of letterforms such as 'c', the lower part of 'e' and 'g'; easy to get mixed up with the bowl.

Crossbar

The crossbar connects two strokes, as in 'H'. Not to be confused with the crossstroke that cuts through the stem of letterforms such as 't'.

Cursive

These are typefaces that imitate handwriting. Ever popular with Joe Public, the design community is often less than thrilled by these sometimes flowery fonts.

Descender

The part of the letterform that falls below the baseline. In lowercase terms, this means 'p', 'y' and 'q', and sometimes applies to uppercase 'J' and 'Q'.

Diacritical

Is it so critical that you might die? No. Diacriticals refer to accents applied to letterforms by languages including French, Czech and German in a bid to enhance the function of the glyph.

Dingbat

Dingbat are decorative elements such as bullets

Once known as printer's flowers, dingbats are decorative elements that can vary from simple bullets to delicate fauna and flora, often formed into themed collections.

Display fonts

Any typeface intended to be used in short bursts can be defined as a display font. They're often created just for use at large point sizes, as with headlines and titles.

Drop cap

An oversized capital letter often used at the start of a paragraph that 'drops' into two or more lines of text, but can also climb upwards.

Next page: Glossary of typography E-L

Ear

A small stroke extending from the upper-right side of the bowl of lowercase g, as shown in the example. It can also appear in a lowercase r.

Ethel

A ligature of the letters 'o' and 'e'.

Em dash

There are many different types of 'dashes'

Often referred to as 'Mutton' to distinguish it from the very similar-sounding En, Em is a horizontal space equal to the current point size of text.

En dash

'Nut' to its friends, the En is a horizontal measure one half the size of an Em. That being the case, 'lamb' might have been more appropriate.

Eye

The eye is similar to a counter, but instead refers specifically to the enclosed part of the letter 'e'.

Finial

A tapered or curved end, which appears on letters such as e and c.

Fleuron

A subcategory of, or the precursor to, the dingbat. Fleurons are floral marks dreamed up by printers of the past to help decorate text.

<font-face>

The HTML5 tag that brings typography to the internet with typefaces directly embedded in web pages.

Glyph

Glyphs are the singular parts that make up a font

Any singular mark that makes part of a font, whether a letter, number, punctuation mark or even a dingbat. Glyphs are the building blocks of typography.

Grapheme

Very similar to glyph, but possibly a bit broader. A grapheme is a fundamental unit of language, such as a Chinese pictogram, an exclamation mark or a letterform. Still with us in our guide to what is typography? Great! Because we've got more terms coming your way!

Gutter

The spaces between facing pages of, and very often columns of text.

Justified

In a paragraph of justified text, when the contents are arranged so that there is no white space at the end of a line: each begins flush left and finishes flush right.

Kerning

Designers adjust – or 'kern' – letterforms to improve their readability

The art of adjusting the proximity of adjacent letters to optimise their visual appeal and readability.

Leading

Leading describes the vertical space between each line of type

Leading describes the vertical space between each line of type. In olden times actual strips of lead were used to separate lines of text vertically; the naming convention persists.

Legibility

The ease with which one letterform can be distinguished from the next. It feeds into but is not the same as readability.

Loop

The lower part of the letters 'g' and 'y' are known as the loop or lobe

The lower part of the letter 'g' is known as its loop or lobe. Sometimes called the tail – a term that also takes in the lower portion of letter 'y'.

Logotype

The lettered part of any marque or identity. The logotype can be taken separately from its graphic companion.

Ligature

The conjoined but non-identical twins of the typographic universe. Ligatures pull two forms together to produce a new glyph.

Next page: Glossary of typography M-Z

Manicule

Also known as the bishop's fist (stop sniggering at the back), the pointing hand symbol is a popular dingbat.

Monospace

Fonts in which every letterform occupies the same horizontal space.

OpenType

Oblique or sloped roman

To be distinguished from italics, in which the letterforms are purposefully drawn to be different to their upright cousins. Oblique letters are merely slanted versions of the standard roman form, often arrived at by mechanical means.

Orphan

The first line of a new paragraph stranded at the bottom of a page. This is considered to be as bad as the name suggests.

Pica

One sixth of an inch in length, the pica is associated with line-length and column width. There are 12 points or 16 pixels in one pica.

Pilcrow

The paragraph symbol, it now marks the presence of a carriage return but at one time is thought to have denoted a change of theme in flowing text.

Point

A standard typographical measurement equal to 1/12 of a pica or 1/72 of an inch.

Readability

Readability refers to the ease with which a block of text can be scanned by eye.

Serif

A flare or terminating flourish at the end of a letterform's strokes believed to originate with the Roman tendency to paint letters onto marble before chiselling them out.

Sidebearing

The horizontal space to either side of a letterform, separating it from other letters.

Spine

The main curved stroke of a lowercase or capital S.

Squoosh

Squoosh is the process of squashing or expanding a typeface digitally

This is the inadvisable process of squashing or expanding a typeface digitally either to fit a space or for visual effect. If you do it, make sure you keep it to yourself.