Typography
Glossary
German – English Terms
From A to Z. English technical term in small print above the German term.
All technical terms from the course from A to Z, with the English equivalent as used in software, specimen sheets, and technical articles.
A
ROMAN, SERIF
Serif
A serif typeface with varying stroke thickness, derived from Roman inscriptions.
B
En dash
En dash
En dash without spaces for ranges: 18:00–21:00, Basel–Zurich.
JUSTIFIED
Justified text
Justified text alignment with straight left and right margins. Requires hyphenation.
Thu
ADVANCE WIDTH
Thickness
The width of a character including its left and right sidebearings.
DISPLAY TYPEFACE
Display font
A typeface designed for large sizes, such as for headlines and posters.
LEADING
Bullet wound
Additional space between lines, nowadays usually specified as line spacing.
E
SLAB SERIF
Slab serif
Slab-serif typeface with bold, rectangular serifs.
F
RAGGED RIGHT
ragged text
Left-aligned text with ragged right.
BLACKLETTER
Fracture
Blackletter, widely used in the German-speaking world until the 20th century.
G
GUILLEMETS
Guillemets
Angle quotation marks (guillemets). In Switzerland without a space: «like this» and ‹like this›.
H
HINTING
Hinting
Instructions in the font file that align letters to the pixel grid on the screen.
I
DROP CAP
Initial
Enlarged initial letter at the beginning of a text.
K
Small caps
Small caps
Capital letters at the height of lowercase letters, specially drawn.
KERNING
Kerning
Adjusting the spacing between specific pairs of letters, such as AV or Te.
L
TRACKING
Letter-spacing
The uniform spacing of all letters in a text.
Ligature
The joining of two letters into a single character, such as fi or fl, to prevent them from touching.
M
Macrotypography
Macrotypography
Layout of the entire page: format, type area, composition method, hierarchy.
OLDSTYLE FIGURES
old style figures
Figures with ascenders and descenders that blend seamlessly into running text.
MICROTYPOGRAPHY
Microtypography
Microtypographic design: characters, spacing, numerals and formatting.
punch
The enclosed space within a letter, such as in o, a, or e; open counters keep small text legible.
S
STYLE, WEIGHT
Cut
A variant within the family, such as regular, italic or bold.
SERIF
serif
Small finishing stroke at the ends of letters.
SANS-SERIF
Sans-serif
Sans-serif typeface. Often called Grotesque in German.
V
VARIABLE FONT
Variable font
Font file containing all weights and widths seamlessly in a single file.
Cap height
Cap height
The height of capital letters above the baseline.
CAPITALS
Capital letters
Capital letters. Slightly letterspaced in all caps.
LINING FIGURES
Lining figures
Cap-height figures, suitable for tables and uppercase letters.
X
X-HEIGHT
x-height
The height of lowercase letters, excluding ascenders and descenders.
Z
LINE HEIGHT
Line spacing
Distance from baseline to baseline, usually as a percentage of the font size.