projecteducate  presents: ABCs of Text Art & Typography.
Today:  #1 //  I - R.

Read and enjoy   And maybe even learn something

I

Initial
Stands at the beginning of a copytext; a chapter or a paragraph. It is considerably bigger than the rest of the copy, usually several lines high. It can be a simple letter or an decorated character.
A fine example of creating initials is the Daily Drop Cap Blog by Jessica Hische.

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Italic
Is a cursive font style based on handwriting. The typeface is usually slanting to the right, on serif fonts serifs and vertical lines may become rounder and curvy; on sans serif fonts occasionally serifs are added on the italic style.
It is supposed to be the handwritten version of the typeface in use, therefore it is curvier and slanted.

J

Justificatiion
Describes the alignment of text in a column or text field, that is neither left or right aligned or centered, but forms straight lines at the left and right of the column or text field. Using this can lead to disturbing gaps in the text, which has to be adjustet by changing the properties of kerning and ratio of the letters. The last line of a paragraph is not stretched to the whole width of the column, it can be left or right aligned or centered, depending on the writing system.

K

Kerning
Defines the space between 2 letters. When creating a font you define that space character pair by character pair, and it is added to the font file. You can adjust it in any graphic program manually, to get better or wanted results. Kerned character pairs are: AV  WA  LV LT YJ where the negative space around each letter is overlapping the other one's.

L

Letterpress
Is the well-known synonym for Relief Printing. The type is on a surface, standing out from it, in its mirrored form. Basically
iInk is added to the relief and then the paper is pressed on it. Starting on plates and using vertical pressure, nowadays the relief is attached to drums using rubber and the paper is moving through them.
The letterpress technique was developed by Johannes Guttenberg in the 15th century. It marks the beginning of a new era of history, colliding with the Renaissance, the discovery of America and the Reformation.  

Ligature
A combination of 2 characters from a typeface. Related to Glyphs, a ligature is only a letter combination. Some languages contain ligatures per defintion, for example æ œ ü ä ß & (nordic languages).

Lorem Ipsum
The most famous placeholder text. It is derived from latin, but has been transformed in order to make it meaningless. You use it when you either havent received a copy text yet or the main focus in on the design and layout and not on the text.

M

Mean Line
Mean Line, Midline or Median defines the top end of lowercase letters in the structure of a typeface. The letter to measure this line is the "x". Round letters end slightly above this line, because it is more pleasing to the eye. If that would not be done, rounded letters would appea smaller then non rounded ones.

Microtypography
Is the technical term for improving the readability of texts. Especially justified texts need manual adjustment to avoid typographical or aesthetical mistakes. You can change many features of a text to improve it: Kerning, hanging punctuation, hyphenation or tracking are the most useful points of adjustement.

N

New or Neue
If you find a typeface that contains New or Neue (German) in its name, it usually indicates a new, modified and possibly improved version of a font.

Negative Space
This can both refer to the "empty space" on a page or the space around letters. Usually you refer to it when white type is displayed on colored backgrounds. In printing you do not print white on black, simply because it is impossible, but the white is left out from printing. The smaller the type, the higher the chances for ink to run into the type; so typographers try to avoid using it in Microtypography.
However each character of a typeface has a typical Negative Space. If you take the A and imagine a rectangle around it, you get Negative Space at the top corners of that rectangle. At the V it would be the bottom corners. The Negative Spaces of A and V can overlap if their Kerning is adjusted.

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O

Open Type
Is font format used for computer fonts. It has been developed by Apple and licensed by Microsoft. You recognise a Open Type by its .otf or .ttf ending. Open Type fonts can be used on most computer systems.

P

Pagination
Simply is the numbering of pages. Traditionally it is added to the outside bottom corners of pages.

Pangram
A Pangram is a sentence that contains all letters from an alphabet. They are used to display the contents of a font.

Famous pangrams are:
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog (english; 26 letters)
Victor jagt zwölf Boxkämpfer quer über den Sylter Deich (german; 26 letters + umlaute)

Q

Quotation Marks
Are punctuation marks to indicate speech or highlight a word or phrase. They are also called inverted commas and they come single or as pair.

‘…’   “…”

In most typefaces the opening mark is shaped like a 6 and the closing one like a 9. In the english language both are aligned at the top; for example French uses Guillemets « … » while German uses Anführugnszeichen „…“ , where the opening marks are 9-shaped and aligned at the bottom and the closing marks are 6-shaped and top aligned. You can find an  overview of quotation marks at wikipedia.com.

R

Roman Type
The name derives from ancient Rome and inscripted type. One of the main features of Roman Type are Serifs. Famous fonts are: Bembo, Baskerville, Caslon, Bodoni, Times New Roman and Garamond.