Font Glossary
| Alignment: | |
| The way in which a text is placed in a column or on a page, for instance, flush left and right, etc. | |
| Alphabet: | |
| All letters of a language. The English language alphabet has 26 letters. | |
| Alternates: | |
| Several fonts include additional ligatured forms, alternate lowercase letters, and lowercase within uppercase combined forms. The alternate forms were designed to give words a slightly more animated and informal appearance and to lend more interest to type composition. Because of their decorative quality, they are best used in moderation. | |
| Ampersand: | |
| The ligature & was developed by scribes as a shortcut combining the letterforms e and t, the word et meaning ‘and’ in Latin. | |
| Anti-Aliasing: | |
| Bitmap rendering (of type or any other graphic object) in which pixels are rendered solid (i.e. on) or negative (i.e. off) or a number of shades between these two extremes. Anti-aliasing (also called ‘greyscaling’) has the effect of visually smoothing the edges of objects, making the bitmap rendering appear to be of a higher resolution than it actually is. Anti-aliasing also makes it possible to render more complex shapes that would otherwise not be legible. | |
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| Antiqua: | |
| The ’round’ faces of the Latin alphabet, as opposed to broken letters. The capital letters are based on ancient Roman letter forms, the lower case letters on the Caroline minuscule. | |
| Apex: | |
| The juncture of two converging strokes at the highest point of a letter. For example: A, M, W. | |
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| Arabic numerals: | |
| The numerals, 1, 2, 3, we usually use. | |
| Arm: | |
| Short horizontal or oblique stroke that is free at one or both ends, as in E, F, K, L, T. | |
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| Ascender: | |
| The part of certain lowercase letters that extends above the x-height as in b, d, f, h, k, and l. | |
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| Ascender Line: | |
| A guideline indicating where the tops of ascenders appear to align. | |
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