Typography Terms

ascender
An ascender is the part of characters that extend above the x-height line, such as the top of the lower-case d or b.

baseline
The imaginary line upon which characters appear to rest. In reality, the bottoms of curved letters like c, o, u, and s extend slightly below the baseline. Other characters like the lower-case g, j and p have descenders that extend below the baseline by significant amounts.

bold
A style of a font that is heavier than its regular, normal or roman style.

black
A style of a font that is heavier than bold. Synonyms include heavy and extra bold.

compressed
A compressed style of a font is one in which the width of each character in the font is less than its regular or normal style. In other words, the aspect ratio of the font appears to be more vertical, allowing you to fit more text on a line. Also known as condensed or narrow in some font families.

condensed
A condensed style of a font is one in which the width of each character in the font is less than its regular or normal style. In other words the aspect ratio of the font appears to be more vertical, allowing you to fit more text on a line. Also known as compressed or narrow in some font families.

descender
The part of a character that extends below the baseline of a font, such as the extensions of the lower-case p, g or j.

family
A font family is a group of fonts of the same design. For example, the family Times contains Times-Plain, Times-Bold, Times-Italic, etc.

foundry
The foundry is the name of the organization that created or published the font. A font’s foundry often appears in the name of the font, such as Adobe Caslon Pro.

glyph
An individual letter, number, or symbol in a font’s character set. For example, G, 9, and @ are glyphs. The term character is often used as a synonym for glyph.

italic
Style of a font that is slanted from a font’s normal or regular style, though some fonts have only an italic style. Also known as slanted or oblique in some font families.

kerning
The amount of space between characters. Graphic designers sometimes adjust kerning to change how light or dense text appears or to make the text fit into a specific space. Fonts usually contain kerning pairs, which define how close specific letter combinations should appear when rendered.

leading
The amount of space between successive lines in a block or paragraph of text. Unlike kerning, leading is not part of a font’s metadata, but is instead specified and controlled by the application rendering the font.

license
A font license details the usage rights that purchasers of fonts must abide by when they license fonts from type designers and foundries.

light
A style of a font that is uses a thinner stroke weight than the font’s normal weight. Also known as thin style in some font families.

narrow
The style of a font in which the width of each character in the font is less than its regular or normal style. Therefore, the aspect ratio of the font is more vertical, allowing you to fit more text on a line. Also known as compressed or condensed in some font families.

normal
The base style of a font that is not italicized, bolded nor condensed. Also known as regular or roman in some font families.

oblique
An oblique style of a font is slanted from the font’s normal or regular style. Also known as italic or slanted in some font families.

regular
The regular style of a font is not italicized, bolded nor condensed. Also known as roman or normal in some font families.

roman
The roman style of a font is not italicized, bolded nor condensed. Also known as regular or normal in some font families.

sans serif
A font design that does not include small lines or projections at the end of strokes in a character. Also known as grotesque style fonts. Examples of sans serif fonts including Helvetica, Arial and Futura.

serif
A font design that includes small lines or projections that finish strokes in a character. Also known as roman style fonts. Examples of serif fonts include Times Roman, Garamond and Palatino.

slanted
A slanted style of a font is slanted from the font’s normal or regular style. Also known as italic or oblique in some font families.

style
A style is a single font that describes a specific variant of a font family such as Myriad Semibold Italic or Arial Bold.

thin
A style of a font that is uses a lighter stroke weight than the font’s normal weight. Also known as light style in some font families.

x-height
The x-height of a font is the vertical distance between the baseline of a font and the top of the lower-case-x glyph (as well as the u, v, w and z glyphs) expressed as a percentage of the overall height of the font. Therefore, a higher x-height means that upper- and lower-case glyphs are closer in height.

Font File Terms

dfont
Same type of font format as a TrueType font except the information is stored in the Mac data fork instead of the resource fork. You can find dfonts in system font folders in macOS, but they are incompatible with Windows.

font format
Font files are stored in various file formats. Modern Windows operating systems support Windows TrueType and OpenType format fonts.

OpenType
OpenType is a modern file format for fonts. An OpenType font can contain many more glyphs (characters) than older font file formats. They can also contain Type 1 PostScript and TrueType font outlines for Mac and Windows, making OpenType a powerful cross-platform format.

PostScript Type 1
An old font format that is no longer available for purchase from font vendors. The components of a PostScript font are split across various files, making it easy for the components to become separated and unusable. Type 1 fonts are specific to Mac or Windows and cannot be used on both platforms. Support for these old fonts is spotty at best and using them is not recommended.

printer font
A printer font is an outline font file, or, more accurately, a PostScript Type 1 file. These files are used to render the font on a printer, but not a computer display.

screen font
A screen font is a collection of bitmap files used by PostScript Type 1 fonts to display the font on a computer display, but not on a printer.

TrueType
TrueType fonts use a single .ttf file to store data that represents fonts as mathematical outlines. Windows computers support Windows TrueType fonts, but not Mac TrueType fonts. Windows also supports TrueType Collection (.ttc) files, but Macs do not.

Type 1 font
See PostScript Type 1 above.

Font Management Terms

activation
Activating a font makes the font available for use. By activating only the fonts you need, you improve system performance, save system resources, and preserve the usability of Font menus in applications.

auto-activation
Automatic activation of fonts that occurs when you open a document containing the fonts. FontAgent can auto-activate fonts in modern applications and Adobe InDesign, Illustrator and Photoshop.

cache
As operating systems and applications run, they make copies of fonts and cache or store them in various folder locations. These font caches can fall out of sync with newly installed or modified versions of font files, causing screen and print output to appear incorrectly.

comments
FontAgent allows you to enter and search descriptions for fonts and how they are used in your projects.

import
The ingestion of font files by a font management application that makes the font’s outlines and metadata available for searching, previewing and activation.

nested sets
Sets that contain other subsets, allowing users to organize fonts in a hierarchy.

preview
Display of a text string in the native glyph outlines of a selected font. FontAgent clients let you preview fonts in your choice of text, colors and sizes.

rating
A one- to- five-star rating given to a font by users of FontAgent clients so they can find their favorite fonts easily.

set
Logical associations of fonts used to organize your fonts based on customer, project, font style, foundry, or anything else that helps your workflow.

shared font
In FontAgent Sync and Connected Editions, a font that has been uploaded to the server and made available to other FontAgent users.

smart set
Dynamic collection of fonts that match one or more rules that you specify. Updates automatically as you add and delete fonts from your FontAgent database.

startup set
A set whose fonts activate when FontAgent launches.

subset
A font set that is contained inside a parent set, creating a hierarchical relationship.

system fonts
Fonts used by an operating system that are therefore required to be available at all times.

tag
Descriptive, sharable keywords that you associate with a font. Examples include keywords that describe projects, classification, topics or design uses.

view or viewer
A window or pane in a font management application that displays font outlines or metadata in a specific form or appearance.

waterfall
Custom text in the Player View. Displays the same line of text in increasingly larger type sizes.