Serif - A short line or finishing stroke that crosses or projects from stems or strokes in a character. Serifs have many shapes, including hairline, bracketed, wedge, and slab. Fonts without serifs are called “sans serifs.

Grotesk - The common German name for sans serif faces, as opposed to “Antiqua” which means serif face (a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts.

Midline - The imaginary line that rests on top of the body of the lowercase letters, disregarding ascenders. The distance between the baseline and the midline is the x-height.