This page gathers the 315 dictionary entries belonging to the domain “Typography”, as labelled by Wiktionary. Each word leads to its full entry: definitions, etymology, pronunciation, examples. Page 1 of 3: from “ABC” to “free-hanging”.
- ABC noun A keyboard layout in which all keys are arranged in alphabetical order in English.
- accolade noun Synonym of curly bracket.
- adscript noun Something written or printed immediately after another character and aligned with it.
- agate noun One fourteenth of an inch.
- all caps noun Text or a font in which all letters are capitalised.
- angle bracket noun Either of a pair of symbols, ⟨ ⟩, used to enclose text in various technical contexts, and in mathematical formulas to denote an interval, a…
- angle quote noun A guillemet.
- Antiqua noun A style of typeface used to mimic styles of handwriting or calligraphy common during the 15th and 16th centuries.
- antique adj Designating a style of type.
- apex noun A diacritic in Classical Latin that resembles and gave rise to the acute.
- ascender noun The portion of a lowercase letter that extends above the midline.
- ascent noun The ascender height in a typeface.
- astonisher noun An exclamation mark, the punctuation mark “!”.
- backprime noun The ⟨‵⟩ or ⟨`⟩ symbol; a reversed prime.
- backtick noun The symbol `, resembling a reversed quotation mark and also being, or being homoglyphic to (depending on mental model), a grave accent mark…
- bar noun Any of various lines used as punctuation or diacritics, such as the pipe ⟨|⟩, fraction bar (as in 12), and strikethrough (as in Ⱥ)…
- baria noun An Ancient Greek pitch-marking diacritic: ⟨ ` ⟩; written atop vowels, it denotes normal or low pitch.
- baseline noun A line used as the basis for the alignment of glyphs.
- beardline noun The line below the baseline where the descending letters, such as ⟨p⟩ or ⟨q⟩, sit.
- bicameral adj Of a script or typeface: having two cases, upper case and lower case.
- black adj Said of a symbol or character that is solid, filled with color.
- black letter noun A Northern European style of type based on the script, with contrasting thick-and-thin, angular strokes forming upright letterforms, and…
- blackface noun Synonym of boldface.
- body line noun The mean line; the level of the top of the main lower-case letters (without ascenders).
- bold adj Having thicker strokes than the ordinary form of the typeface.
- boldface noun A font that is dark, having a high ratio of ink to white space, written or drawn with thick strong lines.
- boldfaced adj Of text emphasized by being set in a font having thicker strokes, yielding a heavier or darker appearance.
- boldness noun The relative weight of a font; the thickness of its strokes.
- bowl noun A rounded portion of a glyph that encloses empty space, as in the letters d and o.
- brace noun A curved, pointed line, also known as "curly bracket": { or } connecting two or more words or lines, which are to be considered together…
- bracket noun The small curved or angular corner formed by a serif and a stroke in a letter.
- bullet noun A printed symbol in the form of a solid circle ⟨•⟩, often used to mark items in a list.
- caesura noun The caesura mark ‖ or ||.
- callout noun A pull quote: an excerpt from an article (such as in a news magazine) that is duplicated in a large font alongside the article so as to…
- camel case noun Especially in computer programming, and in the names of brands and organizations: a style of typography in which several words are…
- camelback noun Synonym of camel case
- camerality noun The number of cases in a writing system.
- cap up verb To modify (the initial letter of a word) to be a capital letter.
- capitulum noun The symbol ⸿. It was used to mark chapters or paragraphs, and is the ancestor of the pilcrow (¶).
- caps and small caps noun Formatting of text that leaves uppercase letters as they are but converts lowercase letters to small caps.
- caption noun The descriptive heading or title, of a document or part thereof.
- case noun The nature of a piece of alphabetic type, whether a “capital” (upper case) or “small” (lower case) letter.
- caseman noun A compositor; a typesetter.
- characters per inch noun A unit of measurement of the number of typographic characters that fit on a one inch line of printed type. This unit is mainly used to…
- cicero noun The Continental equivalent of the English pica: a measure of 12 Didot points (4.51368 mm or about 0.178 in.) or a body of type in this size.
- color noun The relative lightness or darkness of a mass of written or printed text on a page. (See type color on Wikipedia.Wikipedia )
- combining form noun A character encoded with a sequence of other characters instead of a precomposed character.
- comma noun The punctuation mark ⟨,⟩ used to indicate a set of parts of a sentence or between elements of a list.
- compound point noun An obsolete typographical construction made up of more than one punctuation mark, such as the comma dash (,—) or semicolon dash (;—).
- copy noun The text (words, content) that is to be typeset or similarly prepared and published.
- corner bracket noun Either of a pair of symbols, 「 」, used as quotation marks in some languages.
- counter noun The enclosed or partly closed negative space of a glyph.
- cpi noun The measure of a number of typeset font characterss per inch used or supported by a digital display device
- crotch noun The open counter (negative space) formed by two downward strokes that meet at an internal acute angle, potentially above a vertex, as in…
- curly adj Curling in a direction, as opposed to straight (quotation marks or apostrophes)
- curly quote noun A shaped opening or closing quotation mark, as distinguished from a straight quote. In English: “ ”. In some other languages: ” ”, „ ” or „…
- dagger noun The typographical mark †.
- dash noun Any of the following symbols: ‒ (figure dash), – (en dash), — (em dash), or ― (horizontal bar).
- decimal comma noun A comma used to set off the decimal or fractional part of a number, traditionally widely used in some countries but not others.
- decimal point noun A period/full stop ⟨.⟩ or middot ⟨·⟩ used to set off the decimal or fractional part of a number, traditionally widely used in some…
- descender noun The part of a letter or number that is drawn below the baseline (the bottom of most lowercase letters).
- diacritical mark noun A symbol in writing used with a letter to indicate a different pronunciation, stress, tone, or meaning.
- diagonal noun Synonym of slash ⟨/⟩.
- diagonal mark noun Synonym of slash as the forward slash ⟨/⟩ and sometimes also its proscribed sense inclusive of the backslash ⟨\⟩.
- dingbat noun A special ornamental typographical symbol, such as a bullet, an arrow, a pointing hand etc.
- dinkus noun A small ornament, usually a line of three asterisks (* * *), especially for the purpose of breaking up sections of a chapter, article, or…
- displayed adj Set with lines of prominent type interspersed, to catch the eye.
- dissolve verb To separate a ligature into its component letters.
- dots per inch noun The measure of a number of pixels per inch used in a graphic or supported by a digital display device, used to specify type or image…
- double space verb To format (a document) so that every other line is left blank, leaving sufficient whitespace for annotation (e.g. a teacher's corrections).
- double-spaced adj Formatted so that there is a full blank line between each line of text; the style of formatting required by many entities inside business…
- downstyle adj Which only capitalizes words (e.g. in headers) that would be capitalized in a normal sentence: which is styled in sentence case.
- drive noun An impression or matrix formed by a punch drift.
- drop cap noun A large initial letter that drops below the first line of a paragraph, usually used at the beginning of a section or chapter of a book.
- drop letter noun A large letter at the beginning of a line of text, positioned in a decorative way below the baseline of the rest of the type.
- duospace adj Of a typeface, having characters of only two widths, where the narrower width is typically half that of the wider width.
- Dvorak adj Describing an optimized keyboard layout for the English language, in which the alphabet is arranged in the order PYFGCRL on the top row…
- elite noun A typeface with 12 characters per inch.
- ellipsis noun A mark consisting of multiple full stops (with or without spaces), used to indicate omitted, missing, or illegible words; or (in…
- em noun A unit of measurement equal to the height of the type in use.
- em dash noun The symbol (—) (used to demarcate a parenthetical thought or to indicate a break, or for emphasis); a one-em or long dash.
- embolden verb To format (text) in boldface.
- emphasis noun The use of boldface, italics, or other such formatting to highlight text.
- en noun A unit of measurement equal to half an em (half the height of the type in use).
- end mark noun A typographic element that signals the end of an article. Often they are simple bullets, but they can also be intricate symbols.
- eraser dust noun A font that simulates wide hand-drawn letters with a slightly mottled appearance and irregular edges.
- extended adj Wider than usual.
- extralight adj Lighter than a typical light typeface.
- eye noun The enclosed counter (“negative space”) of the lower-case letter e.
- fac noun A factotum letter, or a similar kind of ornamentally bordered letter formerly used at the start of a chapter or section of a book.
- face noun A typeface.
- fatface noun A very bold typeface.
- figure space noun In fonts whose digits are of uniform width, a space of non-variable width: ⊣ ⊢ equal to the width of a digit.
- fleuron noun A decorative typographic element, used to separate passages or simply for decoration. Often doubled, e.g. 🙚 🙘 or 🙘🙚, or combined with other…
- flush adj Ellipsis of flush left and right: a body of text aligned with both its left and right margins.
- font noun In metal typesetting, a set of type sorts in one size.
- font name noun Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see font, name: the name of a font (typeface).
- forced justified adj The alignment of all lines of text, regardless of length, where they stretch across from margin to margin.
- fraktur noun A style of black letter type, used especially in German-speaking countries from the 16th century until World War II.
- free-hanging adj Not run in; on a separate line (or multiple separate lines) defined by hard returns.