Typography Vocab

SMALL CAPS: a set of capital letters having the same height as the lowercase x-height, frequently used for cross-reference and abbreviations. The difference between small caps and ALL-CAPS is that all caps goes clear up to the cap height Serifa does not have small caps, only all caps. However, here is a picture of Times New Roman's small caps:

LIGATURES: two or more characters linked together as one unit, such as ff. The ampersand is a ligature originating as a letter combination for the French for et ("and") in medieval manuscripts. Ligatures are used to create a smoother transition or connection between characters by connecting crossbars, removing dots over the i, or otherwise altering the shape of the characters. Ligatures should not be used, if it will harm readability. Here are some common ligatures:

Serifa does not have ligurates; however, Myriad Pro does. 


THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN A FOOT MARK AND AN APOSTROPHE is a foot mark is used to show measurements such as 4'and an apostrophe is used to show possession such as Amy's keyboard.

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN AN INCH MARK AND A QUOTE MARK is the same thing. An inch mark is used to show measurements, and quotation marks are used when there is verbiage in text. 

A HYPHEN is used to conjoin words like single-thought adjectives or breaking words in half when it hits the end of a line. An en dash is used to show how many things like "pages 3-15," and an em dash is used to show emphasis. Below is the correct usage of these three things:




I had never watched Helvetica before, and I'm glad I did. Although Adrian Futiger was not featured in the movie, I still learned quite a bit about the history of fonts, and different fonts' unique characteristics.