CorporateType

Old style figures (abbr. OsF): standard character set that includes medieval numerals (with ascenders and descenders) the size of lower case letters instead of capital numerals (the size of capital letters).


Upper-case, old style and lower-case numerals


Overlay: Optimizing a font under typographic and aesthetic aspects

Point size: measurement of the size of a character with the ’point’ as the unit of measurement. The point size is not an objective measurement of the absolute size of a character as there is no predefined relationship between the point size and a measurable size like the height of a capital or lower-case letter. Therefore, different fonts with the same point size can display different letter heights. Therefore, to set two fonts as though the capital letters appear the same size, may require two different point sizes.


Different character sizes in the same point size

Small caps (abbr. SC): capital letters with the same height and proportions as the lower case letters of the same font. Small caps are often contained in separate small caps fonts and are designated with an SC after the font name. They contain the normal capitals and small caps instead of the lower case letters. Small caps have their own forms and proportions and, unlike false small caps, are not simply the capital letters at a reduced size. False small caps are recognizable by stroke thickness which seems too thin – the weights are scaled when the size is reduced – and characters which appear too light in comparison to the lower case letters.


False small caps (Linotype Syntax Regular, false small caps created by the application)

Ligature: connection of two letters into one character figure, for example, fi, fl. Ligatures improve the legibility of a text by helping the reader better recognize word structures.


Typographically correct setting wih true small caps (Small Caps Linotype Syntax SC Regular)

TrueType: standard font format for the operating systems Mac OS and Windows in wich the information about display on printers and screens is contained in a single file.

Type 1: PostScript font format. A Post-Script font is composed of a printer font for the output on a printer or image developer and at least one screen font for the on-screen display of different point sizes. Without additional software some operating systems will only allow the on-screen display of PostScript fonts in the point sizes contained in the screen font.