Font
Anatomy
Ascender |
The
portion of a character that rises above the x-height. |
Baseline |
The
baseline is the invisible line on which type rests. |
Cap
Height |
The
cap height is the height of a capital letter in any given
font. |
Descender |
The
portion of a character that dips below the baseline. |
Leading |
The
space (measured in points) from baseline to baseline between
lines of type. |
Mean
Line |
The
mean line marks the height of all lowercase letters. |
X-Height |
The
x-height is the distance between the baseline and the
mean line in a letter - in other words, the height of
the lowercase letter x. X-heights vary from one typeface
to another. A general rule of thumb is, typefaces with
larger x-height are easier to read at small sizes. |
Point
Size
Font sizes are measured in points. A single point is approximately
1/72 of an inch.
Font
versus Typefaces
Most people confuse these two terms. A font is a
set of characters in a particular weight and style. A typeface
is a family of fonts. For example, Helvetica Condensed Bold
is a particular font within the Helvetica typeface.
Kerning
versus Tracking
Kerning changes the horizontal spacing between two
individual letters. Particularly when you are dealing with
large type sizes, the spacing between letters can look uneven.
This can be adjusted with kerning. Tracking alters
the space between letters in a large string of text, such
as a paragraph. Too much tracking can cause words to crunched
or spaced out and will tire the readers' eyes.
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Sans
Serif
Fonts like Helvetica and Arial have no serifs, and are
called sans serif fonts. These are often used
for display type, such as titles and headlines. |
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Serif
Serifs are the hats, or strokes, the decorative
tips of letters. Serifs are useful for setting large amounts
of small text such as a book or a manual, because individual
letters are more distintive and they help guide the reader's
eye from word to word. Times New Roman is a typical serif
font, commonly used in newspapers. |
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