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

Layout:
The typographic design of a page or document defining type area, pagination, titles, columns, etc.
Leader:
Line made up of a repeated character, usually a period or a dash, to lead the eye across the space between items in adjacent columns. Usually found in tables and lists.
Leading:
Pronounced “ledding.” The amount of vertical space from baseline to baseline of successive lines of text, also known as line spacing or interlinear space.
Leaf:
A single sheet of paper in a book. A page is one side of a leaf.
Legibility:
A characteristic of type that is assessed according to how recognizable the characters of a typeface are, especially at text sizes.
Letterform:
Alphabetic characters of all kinds: typed, typeset, written, carved, etc. See also character.
Letter Spacing:
Extra space inserted between letters in a word. Often used in words set in capitals to improve visual appearance. See also ‘tracking’.
Font (or) Type Library:
The collection of fonts available on a typesetting system, a collection of fonts with a specific function, or a collection brought together for marketing purposes.
Ligature:
Two or more letters combined to form a single character. In modern typography, the most common ligatures are fi, fl, ffi, ffl, and sometimes ff. Others include the vowel pairs (dipthongs) ae and oe, and (more rarely) ct, s
t, and sp.
Light Weight:
A version of a typeface lighter than the normal weight, characterized by thinner strokes.
Line Feed:
See leading.
Lining Figures:
Numerals which sit on the base line, as opposed to old style figures.
Line Spacing:
See leading.
Link:
This joins the two parts of a g, and it is sometimes a terminal.
Loop:
The area that wraps around the counter of a serif faced g. It is also a terminal.
Lowercase:
Small letters, or minuscules; a, b, c (as opposed to uppercase).
LT Com Fonts:
OpenType fonts can include one of many suffixes in their name to explain their contents to the user. Sometimes, all of these encoding terms can be confusing. When you see “Com” in a font’s name, you can be sure that it meets the highest possible standards for an office-based environment, and you can be sure that the font comes from Linotype.
Com fonts are OpenType fonts (TrueType flavoured). They have always an enhanced minimum character set which supports 48 Latin languages. Like all OpenType fonts, Com fonts are cross-platform, and therefore installable on both Windows and Macintosh Operating Systems.
Linotypes Com fonts supports the following languages: Afrikaans, Albanian, Basque, Bosnian, Breton, Catalan, Cornish, Croatian, Czech, Dutch, English, Estonian, Faroese, Finnish, French, Frisian/Eastern, Frisian/Western, Friulian, Gaelic/Irish, Gaelic/Manx, Gaelic/Scots, Gagauz (Latin), Galician, German, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Karelian, Ladin, Latvian, Lithuanian, Maltese, Modavian (Latin), Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Rheto-Romance, Romanian, Saami/Lule, Saami/Southern, Slovak, Slovenian, Sorbian/Lower, Sorbian/Upper, Spanish, Swedish, Turkish, Turkmen/Latin.