Questions

- Define and give 3 font examples: Old Style, Transitional, Modern, Slab Serif and Sans Serif.

Old Style: a typeface distinguished by irregularity and slanted ascender serifs and little contrast between light and heavy strokes. ex: Gaudy Old Style, Garamond, Minion Pro

Transitional: vertical or almost vertical stress in the bowls of lowercase letters, and greater contrast between thick and thin strokes. ex: Baskerville, Bookman, Perpetua

Modern: characterized by high contrast between thick and thin strokes and flat serifs, and completely vertical stress. ex: Bodoni, Didot, Walbaum

Slab Serif: a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs, and either blunt and angular or rounded terminals. ex: Memphis, Rockwell, Serifa

Sans Serif: any typeface without a serif. ex: Futura, Helvetica, Univers

- Define Stroke Weight


The thickness and thinness of the strokes within letterforms.

- Define Axis or Stress as it relates to font classification


The angle to which letterforms lean, primarily based upon the letter “o”. ex: diagonal stress in old style, vertical stress in modern

- Define: Small caps, Lining Figures, Non-aligning figures, Ligatures


Small Caps: typefaces which use small caps in place of lower case letters.

Lining Figures: figures of even height.

Non-aligning Figures: figures of varying height.

Ligatures: two or more letters tied into a single character.

- Define: Dashes


A line between words or thoughts, depending on the circumstance.

- Define Apostrophes (smart quotes) 

A sign used to indicate the omission of one or more letters in a word, to indicate the possessive case, or to indicate plurals of abbreviations and symbols.

- Summarize optical relationships within a font

The spaces between letters based upon their appearance rather than a set spacing.

- Summarize Type measurement


The system of measurement based upon picas.

- Be able to identify: baseline, x-height, cap height, ascender, descender, arm, leg, tail, eye, apex, crossbar, counter, bowl, link, ear, loop...


Baseline: the imaginary line defining the visual base of the letterform.

x-height: the height of lowercase x.

Cap height: the height of the upper case in a font.

Ascender: a stroke on a lowercase letter that rises above the x-height.

Descender: the stroke on a lowercase letter that falls below the baseline.

Arm: the upper stroke that reaches out of lowercase letters such as k.

Leg: the lower stroke that reaches out of lowercase letters such as k. Connects differently to the arm or stem depending on the typeface.

Tail: the stroke that defines a Q.

Eye: the enclosed area of the lowercase letter e.

Apex: the connecting area of upper case letters such as A, which can be either flat or curved depending on the typeface.

Crossbar: the stroke that connects upper case letters such as H and A.

Counter: the enclosed or partially enclosed circular area of letters such as o and e.

Bowl: the circular form that encloses the counter of letters such as o and e.

Link: the stroke that connects the top and the bottom of a two-story g.

Ear: the stroke that hangs off of some two-story g letters.

Loop: the lower circular area of a two-story g.

- Define a type house or font house (business that sells fonts). Name 6.

Businesses that put typefaces into a digital format and sell as their own. ex: Adobe, Linotype, Prototype, Monotype, Microsoft, FontHaus