Typography

Stroke

Graphic design

Stroke - Any single linear element in a character

other typography terms
Apex
Graphic design

Apex - The point at the top of a letter where two strokes meet, for example in the capital ‘A’.

Arc
Graphic design

Arc - Any curved contour of a letter.

Diacritics
Graphic design

Diacritics - A diacritic is an ancillary mark or sign added to a letter. Accents are one type of diacritics. In the Latin alphabet their function is to change the sound value of the letters to which they are added; in other alphabetical systems like Arabic or Hebrew they may indicate sounds (vowels and tones) which are not conveyed by the basic alphabet. Examples of diacritics:

Gadzook
Graphic design

Gadzook - An embellishment that connects the letters in a ligature but is not originally part of either letter.

Glyph
Graphic design

Glyph - Every character in a typeface, (e.g: G, $, ?, and 7), is represented by a glyph. One single type design may contain more than one glyph for each character. These are usually referred to as alternates. The tilde — the wavy line in the letter ñ, as in the word señorita — is an example of a glyph

Grotesk
Graphic design

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.

Kerning
Graphic design

Kerning -The built-in spacing of a typeface is intended to produce an even texture in any letter combination. Certain combinations, like LT, VA or To tend to look gappy and loose with the default built-in spacing. Kerning is an additional adjustment to those problem pairs that corrects the excess or inadequate space.

Master size
Graphic design

Master size - Traditionally, the size of a typeface from which other sizes are generated. With most digital type, one master is used by the composing system and software to generate all type sizes. For improved legibility and aesthetics, however, a few manufacturers of digital and phototype create a number of different masters, each recommended for the generation of a different range of sizes. In metal type for hand setting (foundry type), where each character design was first cut on a metal punch, each size had a separate master; with machine-cut punches, several point sizes often shared one master.

Midline
Graphic design

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.

Numeral
Graphic design

Numeral - A character that represents a number. The Arabic numerals are the figures 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, and 9. They are named Arabic because of their historical origin in Middle Eastern cultures, although they are different from the set of numerals now used in the Middle East that are designed to harmonize with Arabic typefaces. In computer coding systems, they are often known as digits.

Pixel
Graphic design

Pixel - Originally, this word was short for the term “picture element”. A pixel is a single rectangular point in a larger graphic image composed of many rectangular points. Computer monitors can display pictures because the screen is divided into millions of pixels arranged in rows and columns. Pixels are so close together that from a distance they appear to be connected.

Serif
Graphic design

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.

Typeface
Graphic design

Typeface - An artistic interpretation, or design, of a collection of alphanumeric symbols. A typeface may include letters, numerals, punctuation, various symbols, and more — often for multiple languages.