Font Glossary

A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X

Cap Height (capital height):
The height from the baseline to the top of capital (upper case) letters . See also “baseline” and “x-height”.
Capital:
Letters that are larger, and usually different in shape, than their corresponding lowercase forms (A, B, C, D etc.). Also known as “caps” or “uppercase”.
Cap Line:
The imaginary horizontal line along which the tops of letters within a font appear to align.
Carolingian minuscule:
A typeface designed by the monk Alkuin under commission of Charlemagne. This script had lower case letters and was introduced in Charlemagne’s territories to replace the different local scripts. It is the model of all lower case letters in later roman typefaces.
Chancery:
A style of italic letterform based on 16th-century chancery written scripts, generally distinguished by lengthened and curved extenders.
Character:
The smallest component of a written language which has semantic value. A character is the abstract idea of the letter, numeral, symbol, etc.; a glyph is the specific shape, the form that you see on the page, screen, etc.
Character fit:
Horizontal space between characters.
Character set:
All characters contained in a font. A latin font has a standard character set composed of the capital and lower case letters, numerals and punctuation marks. Some character sets also include additional characters such as country-specific letters, currency symbols, ligatures, etc. PostScript Type 1 and TrueType fonts can include up to 256 characters, Unicode based fonts (e. g., OpenType) up to 65,536 characters.
Cicero:
The continental European typographic unit of measurement equal to 4.52mm, 12 Didot points; larger than the Anglo-American pica. See also "point".
Com (OpenType Com):
The abbreviation Com stands for a minimum character set defined by Linotype for an OpenType font. 48 languages can be set with OpenType Com fonts, see “OpenType Font Character Sets”.
Condensed Type:
Narrower version of the normal width of a typeface.
Contrast:
The difference between the thick and the thin strokes of a character.
Counter:
The space that is either partially or completely enclosed by the bowl of a letterform, as in C or O.
Crossbar:
The horizontal or diagonal stroke of a letterform that usually connects two stems, as in A and H.
Cross-stroke:
This is a horizontal stroke crossing a vertical stroke.
The Know How section offers detailed background knowledge to deal with all enquiries about the use of fonts.