How do we determine the spacing between a letter?

Type anatomy

Characters

The basic typographic element is called a character, which is any individual letter, numeral, or punctuation mark. The capital letters are called caps, or uppercase (u.c.) characters. Small letters are called lowercase (l.c.) characters. Numbers are called numerals or figures.

Modern, or lining numerals are cap height.

Oldstyle numerals have ascenders and descenders.

Special characters

Pi characters are special characters used for:

Math signs	Punctuation marks
Accented characters	Reference marks

On Macintosh computers, special characters can be viewed for any font with the Key Caps utility under the apple menu.

Ligatures are character pairs which have been re-designed as optional single characters.

Standard characters set in Adobe Garamond.	Ligature characters set in Adobe Garamond Expert and Adobe Garamond Alternative.

Character components

Typographic characters have basic component parts. The easiest way to differentiate characteristics of type designs is by comparing the structure of these components. The following terms identify some of the components referred to in the next chapter.

Bracket A curved line connecting the serif to the stroke.

Bracketed serifs with cupped bases

Bracketed serifs with flat bases

Unbracketed serifs

ContrastThe amount of variation in between thic and thin strokes.

Minimum contrast

Extreme contrast

StressThe direction in which a curved stroke changes weight.

Oblique, or angled, stress

Semi-oblique stress

Vertical stress

X-heightThe height of the body, minus ascenders and descenders, which is equal to the height of the lowercase ‘x’.

Avant Garde	Melior	Goudy Oldstyle
X-heights vary among typefaces in the same point size and strongly effect readability and gray vaule of text blocks.

• Aperture

  Opening at the end of an open counter.

• Arm

  A horizontal stroke not connected on one or both ends.

• Ascender

  An upward vertical stroke found on lowercase letters that extends above the typeface’s x-height.

• Baseline

  The invisible line where letters sit.

• Bowl

  A curved stroke that encloses a letter’s counter.

• Counter

  Fully or partially enclosed space within a letter.

• Crossbar

  A horizontal stroke.

• Descender

  A downward vertical stroke found on lowercase letters that extends below the baseline.

• Diagonal Stroke

  An angled stroke.

• Ear

  A small stroke projecting from the upper right bowl of some lowercase g’s.

• Finial

  A tapered or curved end.

• Hairline

  The thin strokes of a serif typeface.

• Ligature

  Two or more letters are joined together to form one glyph.

• Link

  A stroke that connects the top and bottom bowls of lowercase double-story g’s.

• Loop

  The enclosed or partially enclosed counter below the baseline of a double-story g.

• Lowercase

  The smaller form of letters in a typeface.

• Serif

  “Feet” or non-structural details at the ends of some strokes.

• Shoulder

  A curved stroke originating from a stem.

• Small Caps

  Uppercase characters that appear as a smaller size than the capital height of a typeface. Short for “small capitals”.

• Spine

  The main curved stroke for a capital and lowercase s.

• Spur

  A small projection from a curved stroke.

• Stem

  Primary vertical stroke.

• Tail

  A descending stroke, often decorative.

• Terminal

  The end of a stroke that lacks a serif.

• Uppercase

  A letter or group of letters of the size and form generally used to begin sentences and proper nouns. Also known as “capital letters”.

• x-height

  The height of the main body of a lowercase letter.Kerning
• Kerning refers to the horizontal space between individual pairs of letters (a kerning pair), and is used to correct spacing problems in specific letter combinations. Well-spaced fonts need comparatively less kerning pairs. Fonts that are properly kerned appear evenly spaced without large open gaps of white space between any two characters.
  

  

• Monospaced

  A font in which every character has the same width, and no kerning pairs. This allows for neatly setting columns of text and tables, for example in programming code, accounting, etc.
  
  

  Leading

• 
  The vertical space between lines of text (baseline to baseline). Also known as linespacing.
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