ANATOMY

OF A
LETTER
BY ANDREW J. PEREZ

ASCENDER
An ascender is the part of
a lowercase letter that
extends above the midline.

DESCENDER
A descender is the part of
a letter that hangs below
the baseline.

SERIF
A slight dash or line at the
tips of a letter used to make
the letter look more formal.

COUNTER
The counter is the empty
area in the center of letters
like a, b, d, o, p etc.

BASELINE
A baseline is the sometimes
invisible line that the letters
sit on.

CAP HEIGHT
The height of all flat capital
letters.

X-HEIGHT
The x-height is the height
of the lower case letters.

SANS SERIF
Sans means without, so
sans serif means without
serifs.

SLAB SERIF
A style of font that uses
bold block letters and serifs.

BLACKLETTER
A font style that uses bold
gothic looking letters.

SCRIPT
A font style that looks like
handwriting.

LEADING
Leading is the amount of
space between lines of
type.

TRACKING
Tracking is the even
spacing between a set of
letters.

KERNING
Kerning is the amount of
individual spacing between
each individual letters.