typography

A shortened form of a word or phrase, from Dr. to NASA, with its own typographic conventions and an expansion assistive tech can speak.

Text set entirely in capitals, which reads slower than mixed case because the word's outline shape disappears.

The partly enclosed opening in a letter, such as the gap where the two terminals of a c stop or the mouth at the bottom of an e.

The part of a lowercase letter such as b, d, or h that rises above the x-height.

The invisible line that most letters sit on, and the line every other vertical type metric is measured from.

Text mixing a right-to-left script with left-to-right runs such as numbers or Latin words, where each run keeps its own direction.

A passage quoted from another source and set off from the running text as its own block, carrying the attribution with it.

The height of a capital letter measured from the baseline, and the edge designers usually mean when they say text should line up flush.

A CSS length equal to the advance width of the digit zero in the current font, used to set column widths in characters rather than pixels.

A font whose glyphs carry their own colors, gradients, or layers, with a palette the page can override rather than a single ink.

Substitute letterforms a font swaps in automatically based on the neighbouring characters, so joins and repeats look natural.

The fully enclosed white space inside a letterform, the ring of an o or the bowl of a b: letter anatomy, not a character count or a CSS counter.

The short summary line set between a headline and the body, larger than body text and written to sell the article.

The part of a letter such as g, j, p, or y that drops below the baseline.

An oversized opening letter set into the first lines of a paragraph, marking where the reading starts.

A platform feature that scales interface text to a size the reader chose in system settings, with layouts expected to reflow around it.

A relative unit equal to the current font size, historically the width of the square the letter m was cast on.

The longest common dash, about the width of the letter m, used to set off an abrupt break or an aside inside a sentence.

Whether a character that can be either a symbol or an emoji renders as flat text or as a colour emoji, selected by a variation selector or by CSS.

A dash about the width of the letter n, used for ranges of numbers and for connections between two things.

A short line of text above a heading that says what category or series the content belongs to.

The typeface actually used when the preferred one is missing or has not loaded, either for the whole run of text or for characters it lacks.

A bold or italic the browser fakes by smearing or shearing the regular weight, because the real style was never loaded.

Indenting the opening line of a paragraph so the start of each paragraph is visible without a blank line between them.

Type sizes that scale continuously with the viewport between a minimum and a maximum, rather than jumping at breakpoints.

A loading strategy that shows the roman weight as soon as it arrives and lets the remaining styles swap in afterwards, so the swap happens in stages.

The blank period when a browser hides text entirely rather than show it in a fallback face while the web font loads.

Reshaping a fallback font's size and vertical metrics in CSS so it occupies the same space as the web font and the swap shifts nothing.

Choosing two or more typefaces that work together, usually one expressive and one neutral, with enough contrast to read as a deliberate choice.

How a device softens the edges of letterforms, either by shading whole pixels grey or by lighting a pixel's colored subpixels separately.

The ordered list of typefaces a rule names, each tried in turn until one is available, ending in a generic family.

Shipping only the characters a page actually needs, cutting the font file down and letting the browser fetch ranges on demand.

How thick a typeface's strokes are, named in steps from thin to black and numbered from 100 to 900 on the web.

The visible swap when a page first paints text in a fallback face and then re-renders it once the web font arrives.

A single drawn shape in a font, which may be one character, a variant of one, or several characters fused together.

A variable font axis that thickens or thins strokes without changing any character's width, so text can get darker without reflowing.

The empty space a browser splits evenly above and below a line of text when line height exceeds the font's own height, which is why text boxes never sit flush.

A paragraph whose first line starts further left than the rest, so the following lines are indented under it.

Letting quotes, hyphens, and other light marks sit outside the text column so the edge of the text reads as straight to the eye.

A short line of type that names the section under it and, by its size and weight, says how far down the outline that section sits.

Instructions inside a font that nudge its outlines onto the pixel grid at small sizes so stems stay crisp and even.

Breaking a word across two lines at a syllable boundary so lines fill more evenly, marked with a hyphen at the break.

Three or more consecutive lines ending in a hyphen, which builds a visible staircase down the right edge of a column.

A font whose glyphs are icons rather than letters, addressed by code point or by a ligature so an icon can be styled like text.

A notch cut out of a letter's inside corners so spreading ink or blurring pixels do not fill the joint solid.

A companion style with letterforms redrawn on a cursive model, not merely slanted, used for emphasis and titles.

Text set so both edges of the column are flush, achieved by stretching or squeezing the spaces between words on each line.

The adjustment of space between two particular letters so the pair reads evenly.

Type animated over time, where letters and words move, scale, stagger, or morph so the setting carries tone and emphasis a static line cannot.

The vertical distance from one baseline of type to the next, which sets how a paragraph holds together as a block.

How easily one letter can be told apart from another, a property of the typeface's drawing rather than of how the text is set.

A single glyph that replaces two or more letters whose shapes would otherwise collide, such as the f and i pair.

Cutting a block of text off after a fixed number of lines, with an ellipsis at the end of the last one.

Numerals all drawn to cap height so they line up evenly with capitals and with each other.

Scrambled pseudo-Latin placeholder text used so a layout can be judged on its shape and texture before the real copy exists.

The width of a column of text, judged in characters per line, with roughly 45 to 75 treated as the comfortable range for reading.

A type scale generated by multiplying a base size by a fixed ratio, so every step is proportionally related to the one before it.

A typeface in which every character occupies the same horizontal width, so characters stack into columns down the page.

A specific point in a variable font's design space that the designer has given a style name, so it can be picked like an ordinary weight.

A space that renders normally but forbids a line break, gluing two words together so they never end up on separate lines.

An upright typeface slanted to the right without redrawing its letters, which is why it lacks the cursive forms a true italic has.

Numerals with varying heights, some rising and some dropping below the baseline, so numbers blend into lowercase running text.

Optional glyph substitutions and spacing rules packed inside a font file, addressed by four-letter tags and switched on from CSS.

Letting software space letter pairs by looking at their shapes, instead of using the pair values the type designer built into the font.

A font adjusting its own drawing for the size it is set at, thickening strokes and opening spacing for small text and refining both for large.

A first line of a paragraph left alone at the bottom of a column or page, with the rest of the paragraph carried over.

A sentence that uses every letter of the alphabet at least once, used to show a whole character set in one line.

Capitals drawn to exactly x-height, shorter than small caps, so they sit flush with the lowercase around them.

The paragraph mark, a reversed P with a doubled stem, used to show where a paragraph begins or as a hover anchor beside a heading.

The nominal size of type, measured in points, which describes the body the letters are drawn on rather than the height of any letter.

The slanted tick used for feet, inches, minutes, and seconds, which is a different character from either a straight quote or a curly one.

A phrase lifted out of an article and set large as a graphic element, to draw a browsing reader into the text.

The uneven edge left by unjustified text, and the thing typographers tune so that edge makes no distracting shapes down the side of a paragraph.

An oversized opening letter that sits on the first line's baseline and rises above the text, rather than sinking into it.

How comfortably a body of text can be read at length, a property of the setting: size, measure, leading, and contrast.

An accidental channel of white space running down a paragraph where word spaces on consecutive lines happen to line up.

Small guide text set beside or above a run of base text, most often to give the pronunciation of East Asian characters.

A single word left alone on the last line of a paragraph or heading.

A typeface drawn without finishing strokes on the ends of its stems, which is the default register of most interface type.

Capitalising only the first word of a label or heading, plus any proper nouns, as you would in an ordinary sentence.

The small finishing stroke at the end of a letter's stem, and by extension the class of typefaces that have them.

A texture storing each pixel's distance to a shape's edge rather than its color, so glyphs and icons rendered from it stay crisp at any scale on the GPU.

Capital letters drawn at roughly lowercase height, with weight adjusted to match, so an abbreviation does not shout inside running text.

The curved opening and closing quotation marks a typeface actually draws, as opposed to the straight vertical marks inherited from typewriters.

An invisible character placed inside a word that marks where a hyphen may appear if the word has to break, and stays hidden otherwise.

A rule drawn through the middle of text to mark it as removed, superseded, or no longer the current price.

A numbered bundle of alternate glyphs inside a font, switched on as a group to change the look of certain letters.

A type system whose serif, sans, and sometimes mono members share one skeleton, so they pair by construction rather than by taste.

Small raised characters used for footnote markers, ordinals, and exponents, ideally drawn by the font rather than shrunk by software.

A letter drawn with an ornamental flourish, usually an extended entry or exit stroke on an italic capital.

The typeface the operating system uses for its own interface, requested by keyword so each platform supplies its native face.

Numerals drawn to identical widths so digits stack into columns, and so a changing number does not shift the text around it.

Choosing line breaks so a short block of text has lines of roughly equal length instead of a long first line and a stub second one.

Cutting the leftover space above and below a line of text so the box hugs the cap height and baseline instead of the font's full ascent and descent.

Capitalising the first letter of each significant word in a heading or label, leaving short articles, conjunctions and prepositions lowercase.

The dot above a lowercase i or j.

The empty rectangle a font renders when it has no glyph for a character, named for the block of bean curd it resembles.

The uniform space added to or removed from every letter across a run of text.

Cutting text that does not fit and marking the cut, usually with an ellipsis, so the reader knows something was removed.

The fixed set of text sizes a design allows, chosen so sizes relate to each other rather than being picked one at a time.

A display of a typeface's characters, sizes, and styles made to show what the face can do rather than to communicate the text itself.

The designed set of letterforms itself, as distinct from a font, which is one particular file or instance you actually use.

The overall lightness or darkness a block of text produces when you stop reading it and look at it as a grey texture.

The ordering of text by visual weight so a reader can tell at a glance what is a title, what is body, and what is a caption.

A named bundle of type values (family, size, weight, line height, tracking) that a design system hands out instead of raw numbers.

A rule drawn under text, on the web the default marker for a link, ideally set to skip the descenders it would otherwise cross.

One font file that contains a continuous design space, so any weight, width, or other axis value between the extremes can be requested.

One dimension a variable font can move along, named by a four-letter tag: lowercase for the five registered axes, uppercase for custom ones.

Spacing every block of text by multiples of one line height so the page keeps an even beat from top to bottom.

Setting lines to run top to bottom in columns rather than left to right, as traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean typography does.

A font file downloaded by the page rather than taken from the reader's device, declared in CSS and delivered like any other asset.

A short last line of a paragraph, often a single word, stranded at the top of the next column or page.

Whether a long unbroken string is allowed to split mid-word rather than overflow its container, and where that split may happen.

The width of the gaps between words, which justification stretches and which, set too wide, opens rivers down a paragraph.

The height of a lowercase x in a typeface, measured from the baseline, which is what makes two fonts at the same point size look different sizes.

An invisible character that takes no width and adds a legal break point, letting a long string wrap without showing a hyphen.