Key Terms

Baseline: the line upon which the capital letters rest.

Capline: the line that touches the tops of the capital letters.

Meanline: the invisible line that defines the tops of the lower case letters.

x-height: the height between the baseline and the meanline. Usually corresponds to the size of the lowercase letters. It is easily measured on the lowercase x

Ascender: Stroke of a lowercase letter that rises above the meanline

Descender: The stroke of a lowercse letter that is drawn below the baseline

Serifs: Short decoarative strokes that extend at an agnle from the main strokes of a letter

Kerning: The spacial relationship between two letters. Can be adjusted to create a uniform appearance between two letters.

Tracking: The process of adjusting the distance between letters

Leading: The distance between two consecutive baselines