Concise Font Glossary

Baseline. An imaginary line representing the bottom of most
letters.

Bold. A font that is darker than Normal.

Capital Height. The height of most capital letters.

Condensed. A font with relatively narrow characters.

Cursive. A slanted style of printing that imitates handwriting.

Descender. Part of a letter which projects well below the
baseline.

Design Size. The point size a font was designed to be used at.

Display Font. A font with a Design Size of 18 points or larger.

Extrabold. A font that is darker than Bold.

Figure Height. The height of most numerals.

Fixed Width Font. A font were all the characters have the same
width.

Italic. A cursive font, esp. a companion to a Roman font.

Light. A font that is lighter than Normal.

Oblique. A font that is slanted but not cursive.

Pica. A unit of measurement approximately 1/6th of an inch.

Point. A unit of measurement approximately 1/72nd of an inch.

Point Size. The height of the type blocks of a font, measure in
points.

Proportional Width Font. A font where the characters have
variable widths.

Roman. A serif font based on the capital letters of ancient Roman
inscriptions.

Sans Serif. Without serifs.

Scalable Font. A font that can be printed at various sizes, using
optics or geometry.

Serif. A small part of a character that crosses the end of a main
stroke.

Slant. The angle of the upward strokes in a font, either upright
or slanted.

Text Font. A font with a Design Size of 14 points or smaller.

Type Block. A rectangle containing a character to be printed.

Type Face. A collection of fonts of the same design but different
sizes.

Type Family. A group of typefaces with common design properties.
Members can very be weight or widths or slant.

Type Font. A set of type blocks of the same height containing
characters of the same design.

Weight. The darkness in print of a font.

Width. The average width of the type blocks in a font.

X-Height. The height of most lowercase letters.