I have been wanting to write a series on typography and here is the first part wherein I will be discussing the anatomy of type.
Characters: The individual letters, punctuation, numerals, and signs.
Uppercase: The capital letters of the alphabet.
Lowercase: The small letters of the alphabet.
Baseline: An imaginary line on which the characters seem to be standing.
Meanline: An imaginary line that runs along the top of most of the lowercase letters like a, c, e, i, m, n, u, v, w, and x i.e., letters without an ascender and descender.
X-height: The distance between the baseline and the meanline.
Ascender: The part of some lowercase letters that rise above the meanline like in b, d, h.
Descender: The part of some lowercase letters that fall below the baseline like in p, y and g.
Counter: The space entirely or partially enclosed within a letter, such as the enclosed bowl of b, d, e, p.
Serif: The finishing strokes that project from the main stroke of a letter.
San serif: Letters without serif.
Small caps: Capital letters of the alphabets that are the same size as the x height.
Modern figures: Numbers that resemble caps by being uniform in height.
Old style figures: Similar to lowercase characters and may have ascenders and descenders.
Ligatures: Two or more characters joined as a single unit.
