QWERTY

en-noun

QWERTY (countable and uncountable, plural QWERTYs)

QWERTYs (plural)
qwerty (alternative)
Qwerty (alternative)

Christopher Latham Sholes
Henry Holt and Company

From the first six letters on one of the upper rows of such a keyboard.

It was the Monotype model D keyboard introduced in 1907 which became the standard for printers, with a "qwerty" typewriter lay and removable keybars which made the keyboard independent of the matrix case arrangement.

1978, Allen Kent, Harold Lancour, Jay E[lwood] Daily, editors, Encyclopedia of Library and Information Science, volumes 24 (Printers and Printing to Public Policy, Copyright), New York, N.Y., Basel: Marcel Dekker, →ISBN, page 109:

The older children we came to know had had a great deal of experience with written language, and they certainly had a firm grasp of the alphabetic sequence. They were annoyed with the arrangement of letters on the typewriter keyboard, which begins at the second from the top row and proceeds left to right with the letters, "Q," "W," "E," "R," "T," and "Y." Computer professionals, who refer to this arrangement as the "QWERTY keyboard," have pointed out that, although it originated in order to avoid jam-ups of frequently used keys on the manual typewriter, the QWERTY arrangement is now completely obsolete but apparently here to stay. Third and fourth graders knew only that QWERTY had no logic that they could discern, and, until they developed basic keyboard familiarity, it greatly delayed their attempts at finding the keys they needed.

1991, Marilyn Cochran-Smith, Cynthia L. Paris, Jessica L. Kahn, “Hunting, Pecking, and Checking: Learning to Write with Word Processing”, in Learning to Write Differently: Beginning Writers and Word Processing (Language and Educational Processes), Norwood, N.J.: Ablex Publishing, →ISBN, page 137:

[…] The Dvorak typewriter keyboard is, it has been claimed, ergonomically superior to the standard "Qwerty" arrangement. But having settled on the current standard keyboard, largely by historical accident, now manufacturers are supposedly reluctant to produce Dvorak keybboards so long as almost all typists are trained on Qwerty, while typists don't want to train on Dvorak when almost all keyboards are Qwerty. Even the inferior keyboard as a matched choice is superior to failing to coordinate at all.

1992, Jack Hirshleifer, John G. Riley, “Strategic Uncertainty and Equilibrium Concepts”, in The Analytics of Uncertainty and Information (Cambridge Surveys of Economic Literature), Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, published 2002, →ISBN, section 9.1 (Nash Equilibrium), page 330:

The ‘QWERTY’ layout of keyboards is also a cause for concern. The design means that the fingers of the left hand (the less dominant hand for most Westerners) do 57 per cent of the work in typing English text. RSI symptoms are often found to be more intense in the left hand of keyboard users.

1993 September 11, John Ballard, “RSI on Trial: More People Suffering from Repetitive Strain Injury are Seeking Compensation in Court as Fresh Evidence Comes to Light about the Symptoms and Causes of this Crippling Disorder”, in New Scientist, London: New Scientist Ltd., →ISSN, →OCLC, archived from the original on 2016-04-13:

The typewriter using separate characters on type bars striking on a cylinder soon dominated the market. Because adjacent striking bars tended to jam when struck rapidly, manufacturers abandoned the alphabetical placement of letters on the keyboard in favor of the left-to-right "qwerty" disposition that takes into account the frequency and sequence of letters in English.

1994, Henri-Jean Martin, “Beyond Writing”, in Lydia G. Cochrane, transl., The History and Power of Writing, Chicago, Ill., London: University of Chicago Press, →ISBN, page 465:

(uncountable, computing, typography, chiefly attributive) A standard layout of keys on a keyboard for typing, in which the leftmost keys of the top lettered row are Q-W-E-R-T-Y.

كويرتي

If you need to get a grip on a remote workstation, remote-control software can put your fingers on the pearly white QWERTYs of any computer, even half a world away.

1995 February 20, “Windows remote-control software: Reaching beyond your grasp”, Product Comparison, in InfoWorld, volume 17, number 8, San Mateo, Calif.: InfoWorld Publishing Company, →ISSN, page 66:

(countable, computing, typography) A keyboard with such a layout.


run-in

en-adj

run-in (not generally comparable, comparative more run-in, superlative most run-in)

more run-in (comparative)
most run-in (superlative)

These headings are of the run-in type because a free-hanging style would just be a waste of column inches.

participial adjective
participial adjective

(participial adjective; editing, typography) (not comparable) Having been run in before or behind previous text.


rotunda

rotundas (plural)
rotundae (plural)
Rotunda (alternative)

Learned borrowing from Latin rotunda, from rotundus (“round”). In the architectural sense, from Sancta Maria Rotunda (the name for a church in the Pantheon).

(typography, frequently capitalized) A Gothic typeface used in early printed books in Northern Italy, based on a rounded script developed in the 13th cent.; the manuscript hand on which this typeface was based.

rotunda

typography: Gothic typeface based on a 13th-C. rounded script


hinting

en-noun

hinting (countable and uncountable, plural hintings)

(typography) The process of adding hints to a computer-based font in order to align the glyphs to a rasterized grid at specific sizes in a visually appealing manner.


extended

en-adj

extended (comparative more extended, superlative most extended)

more extended (comparative)
most extended (superlative)

(typography, of a typeface) Wider than usual.


embolden

en-verb

embolden (third-person singular simple present emboldens, present participle emboldening, simple past and past participle emboldened)

emboldens (present singular third-person)
emboldening (participle present)
emboldened (participle past)
emboldened (past)
embolden (infinitive)
embolden (first-person present singular)
emboldened (first-person past singular)
embolden (present second-person singular)
emboldenest (archaic present second-person singular)
emboldened (past second-person singular)
emboldenedst (archaic past second-person singular)
emboldens (present singular third-person)
emboldeneth (archaic present singular third-person)
emboldened (past singular third-person)
embolden (plural present)
emboldened (past plural)
embolden (present subjunctive)
emboldened (past subjunctive)
embolden (imperative present)
emboldening (participle present)
emboldened (participle past)
imbolden (alternative)

From bold (adjective) + em- -en (variant of en- -en (circumfix forming transitive verbs denoting an increase in, or intensification of, the quality denoted by the enclosed word)). Compare Middle English embolden, enbolden (“to make bold, encourage”) (modern English embold, enbold, imbold (obsolete)), and inboldysshen (“to embolden, encourage”).

This note introduces several additional features of LATEX: […] ▪ The use of text style commands, including the \emph command to emphasize text, the \textbf command to embolden text, and the \texttt command to produce typewriter style text.

1999, George [A.] Grätzer, “Typing Text”, in First Steps in LATEX, Boston, Mass.: Birkhäuser; New York, N.Y.: Springer, →ISBN, page 8:

The [HTML] tags

 indicate paragraphs breaks, and we have included some basic text formatting:  for emphasis (typically italics),  for underline and  to embolden text.

2004, Jason Whittaker, “Web Design”, in The Cyberspace Handbook, London; New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, part III (Reading/Writing Cyberspace), page 216:

Embolden the company name. Balance-wise, the company name could do with standing out more.

2007, Craig Grannell, “Getting User Feedback”, in The Essential Guide to HTML5 and CSS3 Web Design, Berkeley, Calif.: Friends of ED, Apress, →ISBN, page 339:

(typography) To format (text) in boldface.


ascender

Catherine had a paperback called Graphology: The Mind in the Hand, which gave her all sorts of warnings about people’s tendencies and repressions (“Artist or Madman?” “Pet or Brute?”). “It's those enormous ascenders, darling,” she said: “I see a lot of ego.”

2004, Alan Hollinghurst, chapter 1, in The Line of Beauty […], London: Picador, →ISBN:

(typography, graphology) The portion of a lowercase letter that extends above the midline.

(typography, uncommon) A lowercase letter that has such a portion, such as d or h.


ligature

en-noun

ligature (countable and uncountable, plural ligatures)

From Middle English ligature, from Middle French ligature, from Late Latin ligātūra, from Latin ligātus, past participle of ligāre (“to tie, bind”).

Meronym: ligand

typographic ligature
typographic ligature

(countable, typography) A character that visually combines multiple letters, such as æ, œ, ß or ĳ; also logotype. Sometimes called a typographic ligature.

ὑφέν

typography: character that combines multiple letters


leading

From Middle English leedynge, equivalent to lead (chemical element) + -ing; so named because in metal typesetting (letterpress and hot metal typesetting), pieces of lead (slugs, strips, blocks, etc) were often the mechanical means of producing the gap.

(typography) Vertical space added between lines; line spacing.


sidebar

The tables in the sidebar can be used to determine “average” height and weight, and to provide a slight random variation if desired.

2004 "Height and Weight", GURPS Basic Set 3rd Edition 6th printing page 15

(typography) A block of information placed at the side of a printed page.


starburst

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-starburst.wav

(typography) A symbol similar to an asterisk, but with additional rays: ✺.


diacritical mark

diacritical mark (plural diacritical marks)

(orthography, typography) A symbol in writing used with a letter to indicate a different pronunciation, stress, tone, or meaning.


pilcrow

Probably an alteration of Middle English pylcrafte, modification of Late Latin paragraphus.

(typography) A symbol designating a paragraph break.

The symbol ¶.
A symbol designating a paragraph break.


modulation

modulation (countable and uncountable, plural modulations)

/ˌmɑd͡ʒəˈleɪʃən/

From Late Middle English modulacion, modulacioun (“act of making music or singing; harmony; melody, song”), from Middle French modulation (modern French modulation), and directly from its etymon Latin modulātiō (“regular or rhythmical measure, modulation; inflection of tone; (architecture) calculation of measurements from a standard unit; (Late Latin) act of making music or singing; melody, song”), from modulātus (“modulated”) + -iō (suffix forming abstract nouns from verbs). Modulātus is a perfect participle of modulor (“to beat time; to make music or sing; to measure; etc.”), from modulus (“rhythmical measure, interval; rhythm; small interval or measure, etc.”) + -or (suffix forming certain inflections of verbs); and modulus is from modus (“measure; method; etc.”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *med- (“to measure; etc.”)) + -ulus (diminutive suffix). By surface analysis, modulat(e) + -ion (suffix denoting an action or process, or its result).

listen/core

Modulation vocal music example duple.mid

изменение

modification or regulation of something to achieve an appropriate measure or proportion; an instance of this

(uncountable) Modification or regulation of something to achieve an appropriate measure or proportion; (countable) an instance of this.

(typography, countable) The contrast between the thick and thin parts of the strokes of a typeface.


nonpareil

en-noun

nonpareil (countable and uncountable, plural nonpareils)

nonpareils (plural)
non-pareil (alternative)
nonparella (alternative)
nonpareillo (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-nonpareil.wav

/ˌnɑnpəˈɹɛl/

From Late Middle English non-parail (“unparalleled, nonpareil”) [and other forms], from Middle French nonpareille, nonpareil (“unparalleled”) (obsolete), from non- (prefix meaning ‘not’) + pareil (“alike, like, same”). Pareil is derived from Old French pareil, from Late Latin pāriculus (“equal; like; of a number: even”), from Latin pār (“equal; like; of a number: even; suitable”) + -culus (a variant of -ulus (suffix forming diminutives)). Doublet of umpire.
Noun sense 4 (size of type standardized at 6-point) is usually taken to derive from the attractive type cut by the brothers Giovanni and Gregorio De Gregori (fl. 1482–1503 and 1496–1527 respectively) for their 1498 edition of the divine offices in Venice; it was for a long time the smallest-sized type in use.

nb...

nonparaille, nonpareyl, nounparalle, nowimparaile

der

I believe that letters which are less than a millimetre and a half (1/17 inch) high, will finally prove injurious to the eye. How little attention has hitherto been paid to this important subject is exemplified in the fact that even oculistic journals and books frequently contain nonpareil, or letters only a millimetre (1/25 inch) high.

1881 May 19, Hermann Cohn, “Eyes and School-Books”, in Popular Science Monthly:

A Handbook of Astronomy (cover, brown leather, detached, 5 plates, antique letterpress long primer, author’s footnotes nonpareil, marginal clues brevier, captions small pica).

1922 February, James Joyce, “[17]”, in Ulysses, Paris: Shakespeare and Company, […], →OCLC:

(uncountable, typography, chiefly historical) A size of type between ruby and emerald (or, in the United States, between agate and minion), standardized as 6-point; (countable) a slug of this size.

nonparej

size of type standardized at 6-point; slug of this size


displayed

en-adj

displayed (comparative more displayed, superlative most displayed)

more displayed (comparative)
most displayed (superlative)

(typography) Set with lines of prominent type interspersed, to catch the eye.


combining form

As far as possible this specification uses non-combining characters, however, in the cases tdot, TripleDot and DotDot Unicode only has combining forms of the accents, and so the entity replacement text starts with a space, to avoid the possibility that the expansion of the entity combines with preceding text.

2014 April 10, “XML Entity Definitions for Characters (2nd Edition)”, in David Carlisle, Patrick Ion, editors, w3.org, World Wide Web Consortium, retrieved 2015-03-22:

(computing, typography) A character encoded from a sequence of other characters instead of a precomposed character.


boldness

en-noun

boldness (usually uncountable, plural boldnesses)

From Middle English boldnesse, equivalent to bold + -ness. Cognate with Scots baldness, bauldness (“boldness”).

(typography) The relative weight of a font; the thickness of its strokes.


Arial

Derived from the word aerial, introduced as a trademark by Monotype.

(typography) A sans serif typeface designed by Monotype as a clone of Helvetica. Notably a default Windows font.


tittle

From Middle English tytle, titel, titele, from Anglo-Norman titil, titule and Medieval Latin titulus (“small stroke, diacritical mark, accent”), from Latin titulus (“title”). Doublet of tilde, titer/titre, title, titlo, and titulus.

doublet

The foure pricks or tittles are these. The first is a full prick or period. The second is a comma or crooked tittle.

1590, Bales, The Arte of Brachygraphie (quoted in Daid King's 2001 'The Ciphers of the Monks')

The words "jot" and "tittle" in this passage refer to diacritic marks, that is, dashes, dots, or commas added to a letter to accentuate the pronunciation.

1965, P. A. Marijnen, The Encyclopedia of the Bible:

(the page calls both "a superscript sign (hooklike)" and also a diacritical abbreviation of "er" (er) "tittles")

1987, Andrea van Arkel-De Leeuw van Weenen, Möðruvallabók, AM 132 Fol: Index and concordance, page xii

A tittle is more or less the same thing (the dot over an i, for instance), except that it can be traced back to Medieval Latin for a little mark over or under a letter, such as an accent ague or a cedilla. I don't know whether an umlaut is one or two tittles. Maybe it's a jot and a tittle side by side.

2008, Roy Blount, Alphabet juice: the energies, gists, and spirits of letters:

(typography) Any small dot, stroke, or diacritical mark, especially if part of a letter, or of a letter-like abbreviation; in particular, the dots over the Latin letters i and j.


Courier

en-proper noun

Courier (countable and uncountable, plural Couriers)

(uncountable, typography) A monospace font that resembles the characters produced by a typewriter.


superscript

en-noun

superscript (countable and uncountable, plural superscripts)

From Middle French superscript, from Latin superscriptus (“written above”). By surface analysis, super- + script.

In x², the 2 written in superscript means “to the power of two”.

(typography) A type of lettering form that appears as a number, figure, or symbol above the normal line of type, located at the right or left of another symbol or text.


superscript

en-verb

superscript (third-person singular simple present superscripts, present participle superscripting, simple past and past participle superscripted)

superscripts (present singular third-person)
superscripting (participle present)
superscripted (participle past)
superscripted (past)

The ambient or unsaturated value of a variable is superscripted with a "*".

1987, Pragasen Pillay, “Permanent magnet synchronous motor drives and brushless DC motor drives for servo applications”, Conference Record of the 1987 IEEE Industry Applications Society Annual Meeting (Part I), IEEE, page 387

(mathematics, sciences, typography, transitive, of a variable) To provide with a superscript.

Select the number or letter you want to superscript and, in the Font dialog box, enter an Offset percentage to tell PowerPoint how high to raise the number or letter.

2011, Peter Weverka, PowerPoint 2007 All-in-One Desk Reference For Dummies:

(typography, transitive, of a text) To convert to a superscript form.


slant

Late Middle English, from a variant of the earlier form dialectical slent, from Old Norse or another North Germanic source, cognate with Old Norse slent, Swedish slinta (“to slip”), Norwegian slenta (“to fall on the side”), from Proto-Germanic *slintaną. Probably influenced by aslant.

kalteva lokero

depression with sloping bottom to hold watercolors

Initial inquiries among professional typists uncover names like slant, slant line, slash, and slash mark. Examination of typing instruction manuals discloses additional names such as diagonal and diagonal mark, and other sources provide the designation oblique.

[1965, Dmitri A. Borgmann, Language on Vacation, page 240:

(typography) Synonym of slash ⟨ / ⟩, particularly in its use to set off pronunciations from other text.


ascent

en-noun

ascent (countable and uncountable, plural ascents)

Formed from ascend on the model of descend/descent.

(typography) The ascender height in a typeface.


typesetting

typesetting (countable and uncountable, plural typesettings)

(typography) The setting or composition of written material into type.


dingbat

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-dingbat.wav

Unknown, US mid 19th century. The word-puzzle sense comes from the board game Dingbats, which is based on these puzzles.

"The compulsive editor, when checking the specs on an article, can't help checking also for such items as initial capital and closing dingbat, if they are used routinely. These decorative items have a way of being forgotten..."

1982, The Elements of Editing: A Modern Guide for Editors and Journalists, Arthur Plotnik, p.8

(typography) A special ornamental typographical symbol, such as a bullet, an arrow, a pointing hand etc.


háček

háčeks (plural)
háčky (plural)
haček (alternative)
hacek (alternative)
hachek (alternative)
haċek (alternative)
hatcheck (alternative)
hatschek (alternative)
hatchek (alternative)
hacheck (alternative)
hac̬ek (alternative)
haczek (alternative)
hácek (alternative)
haĉek (alternative)
haceck (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-háček.wav

First attested in 1951; from the Czech háček (“háček”, literally “little hook”), the diminutive of hák (“hook”) (from Middle High German hāken, from Old High German hāko (“hook”), from Proto-Germanic *hakô (“hook”), from Proto-Indo-European *keg-, *keng- (“peg, hook”)) + the diminutive suffix -ek. Cognate with and formed like English hooklet and German Häkchen. Also cognate with Old English haca (“hook, door-fastening”) and modern English hake (more information below).

cog

The caret (ˇ), háček, is used over the following consonants: c, d, n, t, r, s, and z to indicate the soft sound.

1948, Bohumil Emil Mikula, Progressive Czech (Bohemian), page 6:

Linguistic forms had to be set in ordinary roman type and the capital C of Cäxa had to be left without a háček.

1951, Hans Jakob Polotsky, Notes on Gurage Grammar, page 5:

Good Teutonic Kitsch looks rather forlorn and out of place wearing a Bohemian háček over its shrunken hind quarters. But the high traditions of scholarship must be maintained, and on these pages Meester Kitsch will masquerade as Mr. Kič.

1956, Morris Halle, editor, For Roman Jakobson, page 332:

In the system used here and elsewhere in this article for Bantu tone, low syllables are unmarked, high syllables have an acute accent, and rising syllables a haček respectively; thus a, á, ǎ.

1966, Charles Ernest Bazell et al., editors, In Memory of J.R. Firth, page 205:

The printer had no hatchek — the flattened “v” that appears over letters in Czech — to put over Dvořak’s R. So somebody laboriously inked in all the hatcheks.

1991, Peter Hugh Reed, American Record Guide, LIV:ii, page 69:

háček used to signify the third tone (wǔ — ‘five’)

2002, Torbjörn Lundmark, Quirky QWERTY, page 34:

Another orthographic practice […] was developed […] in the twentieth century: this is the adoption of the hacek for the representation of the Cypriot postalveolar fricatives and affricates, which are otherwise not distinguished by the normal characters of the Greek alphabet alone. It was not until very recently, therefore, that the spellings <σ̌>, <τσ̌>, <ζ̌> and <τζ̌>, for [ʃ], [tʃ], [ʒ] and [dʒ] respectively, became available.

2005, Stavroula Varella, Language Contact and the Lexicon in the History of Cypriot Greek, page 46:

My father always wrote Bětik with a little “v” called haĉek, above the “e”; Marušaks placed the haĉek above the “s”.

2006, Mary Betik Trojacek, Beyond Ellis Island, page 17:

For examples of the usage of other forms of this term see Citations:háček, Citations:haček, Citations:hacek, Citations:haċek, Citations:hachek, Citations:hatcheck, Citations:hatschek, Citations:hǎcek, Citations:hatchek, Citations:hacheck, Citations:hac̬ek, Citations:haczek, Citations:háçek, Citations:hácek, Citations:haĉek, Citations:haceck and Citations:háčky.

diacritical mark
diacritical mark#English

(orthography and typography) A caron; a diacritical mark (ˇ) usually resembling an inverted circumflex, but in the cases of ď, Ľ, ľ, and ť resembling a prime (′) instead.

Ǎǎ Čč Ďď Ěě Ǧǧ Ȟȟ Ǐǐ J̌ǰ Ǩǩ Ľľ Ňň Ǒǒ Řř Šš Ťť Ǔǔ Ǚǚ Žž Ǯǯ DŽDždž Ǆǅǆ

acute accent

diacritics used in Latin-derived scripts

comma

above right ( ̕); below ( ̦), reversed (ʽ), turned (ʻ)

hook

above ( ̉); palatal ( ̡), retroflex ( ̢), rhotic (˞)

tilde

above (˜); below ( ̰), double ( ͠ ), middle / overlay ( ̴), vertical ( ̾)


quadrat

Attested since 1683. Possibly from French cadrat or Italian quadrato (“square”), from Latin quadrātum (“square”). Doublet of quadrate and of etymology 1 above. So called because the basic quadrat, the em quadrat, has a square face, having the same width as the height of a line of type.

If his Title be ſhort, he Sets it in the middle of the Line, by Setting Quadrats on both ſides: If his Title be long, he Sets the middle Line in the middle: If it make three or more Lines, he Indents the firſt with an m Quadrat, and the other with two m Quadrats.

1683, Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises: Or, the Doctrine of Handy-Works. Applied to the art of Printing., volume 2, pages 222–23:

The footsticks may be a trifle shorter than the width of two pages and the gutter; for as there should always be a line of quadrats, or a reglet cut to measure, at the foot of each page, the footstick may be a pica shorter without danger, on this account, of any thing falling out, when the form is lifted and it thus prevents the side and foot sticks from binding when locked up.

1841, William Savage, A Dictionary of the Art of Printing, page 330:

(letterpress typography, obsolete) A quad; a blank metal block used to fill space in lines of type.


baria

bareia (alternative)
varia (alternative)

(orthography and typography) An Ancient Greek pitch-marking diacritic: ⟨ ` ⟩; written atop vowels, it denotes normal or low pitch.


curly

en-adj

curly (comparative curlier, superlative curliest)

curlier (comparative)
curliest (superlative)

(typography) Curling in a direction, as opposed to straight (quotation marks or apostrophes)

courbe

(typography) curling in a direction, as opposed to straight (quotation marks or apostrophes)


sans serif

sans serifs (plural)
sanserif (alternative)
sans-serif (alternative)

/ˌsɑ̃ ˈsɛɹɪf/

(typography) A typeface in which the characters do not have serifs.


sans serif

/ˌsɑ̃ ˈsɛɹɪf/

sanserif (alternative)
sans-serif (alternative)

If you have some sans-serif fonts on your computer, you can play this game, too.

2008, Clay Shirky, Gin, Television, and Cognitive Surplus:

(typography) Of a typeface, without serifs.


interrogative

/ˌɪn.təˈɹɒɡ.ə.tɪv/

/ˌɪn.təˈɹɑ.ɡə.tɪv/

[ˌɪn.təˈɹɑ.ɡə.ɾɪv]

/ˌɪn.təˈɹɔɡ.ə.tɪv/

[ˌɪn.təˈɹɔɡ.ə.ɾɪv]

There be five manner of points and divisions most used among cunning men; the which if they be well used, make the sentence very light and easy to be understood, both to the reader and hearer: and they be these, virgil,—come,—parenthesis,—plain point,—interrogative.

Whoever introduced the several points, it seems that a full-point, a point called come, answering to our colon-point, a point called virgil answering to our comma-point, the parenthesis-points and interrogative-point, were used at the close of the fourteenth, or beginning of the fifteenth century.

1842, F. Francillon, An Essay on Punctuation, page 9:

(typography, archaic) Synonym of question mark ⟨?⟩.


swash

en-noun

swash (countable and uncountable, plural swashes)

Scandinavian. Compare Swedish dialect svasska, Norwegian svakka, English dialect swack (“a blow”).

Yet Svvaſh-Letters, […] ought to have the Upper Sholder of that Svvaſh Sculped dovvn ſtraight, viz. to a Right Angle, or Square vvith the Face; […]

1683, Joseph Moxon, “Numb[er] VI. Applied to the Art of Printing.”, in Mechanick Exercises: Or, The Doctrine of Handy-Works. Applied to the Art of Printing. […], volume II, London: […] Joseph Moxon […], →OCLC, § 4 (Of Graving and Sculpting the Insides of Steel Letters), page 118:

There is a group of decorative swash initials, too.

1955, Club of Printing Women of New York, Antique, Modern & Swash: A Brief History of Women in Printing, page 18:

so swash versions of the capitals were produced as alternatives.

1986, Walter Tracy, Letters of Credit: A View of Type Design, page 163:

Tracy also wrote that the italic was too distinctive to combine well with the roman, and that the alternative swash characters made for the italic "prettify the text only at the expense of comforatable reading."

1992, Allan Haley, Typographic Milestones, page 110:

GX provides a mechanism for determining if a glyph is at the start or end of a text line (so swash substitutions could be made dependent on this) while Opentype ^([sic]) does not.

2004, George Williams, “Beyond Glyphs, Advanced Typographic Features of Fonts”, in Apostolos Syropoulos, Karl Berry, Yannis Haralambous, editors, TeX, XML, and Digital Typography, page 258:

The grim satisfied smile on the woman's pug face suggests that she is doing this primarily to take revenge upon the absent, so conspiciously absent husband: there is a happy violence in the very swash of her signature.

To differentiate between a swash and a flourish, note that swash is a typographical term that refers to the end of a letter that is extended in a curved flourish, and a flourish itself is just a decorative curl in general.

2020, Lisa Quine, Vintage Hand Lettering:

(typography) A long, protruding ornamental line or pen stroke found in some typefaces and styles of calligraphy.


swash

en-adj

swash (comparative swasher, superlative swashest)

swasher (comparative)
swashest (superlative)

The French compositor took the greek capitals for latin ones and sought out his swashest type to set the handwritten letters,

1936, Acta arithmetica - Volume 58, page 217:

The failing to avoid at all costs when using this type of capital is that of making them too swash.

1967, John Le F. Dumpleton, Teach Yourself Handwriting, page 45:

A couple of the swashest Italic capitals have gone over the top

2001, Typography 21: The Annual of the Type Directors Club, page 285:


boldfaced

boldfaced (comparative more boldfaced, superlative most boldfaced)

more boldfaced (comparative)
most boldfaced (superlative)
bold-faced (alternative)

(typography) Of text emphasized by being set in a font having thicker strokes, yielding a heavier or darker appearance.


boldface

en-noun

boldface (countable and uncountable, plural boldfaces)

(typography) A font that is dark, having a high ratio of ink to white space, written or drawn with thick strong lines.


logotype

(typography) A single type combining two or more letters (as a ligature or otherwise).


midline

(typography) The level of the top of the x-height of a typeface.


camel case

camelcase (alternative)
camelCase (alternative)
CamelCase (alternative)

From camel + case (“nature of a piece of alphabetic type”), probably modelled after lowercase and uppercase, from a fancied resemblance of the capital letters to the humps of a two-humped camel.

compound

Near-synonyms: intercapping, intercaps

In the SMIL 1.0 specification, test criteria were hyphenated (e.g., system-bitrate and system-screen-size). This was deprecated by the SMIL 2.0 specification in favor of camel case attributes to be consistent with other developing standards.

2001 September, Jennifer Niederst, “Introduction to SMIL”, in Lorrie LeJeune, Richard Korman, editors, Web Design in a Nutshell: A Desktop Quick Reference, 2nd edition, Sebastopol, Calif.: O’Reilly Media, →ISBN, page 457:

It's common practice to name private members in camelCase, that is with an initial lower case letter and a capital for the start of each word.

2003, Rob Birdwell [et al.], “Introduction to Objects”, in Beginning ASP.NET 1.0 with C#, Wrox Programmer to Programmer, Wiley Publishing, →ISBN, page 298:

Write element and attribute names in a style called "CamelCase." Elements reflecting an entity should be written in UpperCamelCase; elements and attributes reflecting a property should be written in lowerCamelCase.

2003, Berthold Daum, Udo Merten, “Groundwork”, in System Architecture with XML, San Francisco, Calif.: Morgan Kaufmann Publishers, →ISBN, page 81:

Type and attribute names, and occasionally variable names, are traditionally written using camel case (with the first word lowercased and subsequent words title-cased, like dateTime), although there are exceptions to this rule (such as anyURI and QName), and some people prefer hyphenated lowercase words (like local-name).

2004 January, Michael Brundage, “Practical Examples”, in XQuery: The XML Query Language, Boston, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, →ISBN, part III (Application), pages 195–196:

RadioShack is an example of a company name that uses camel case. In some cases, technology uses camel case, such as VistaVision, which is a widescreen format for movies. It's little wonder that camel case appears in application code—everyone already knows how to use it. […] Microsoft and other industry leaders have modified the standard use of camel case. When you talk about camel casing for .NET, what you really mean is that the first letter of each word, except the first word, is capitalized. For example, if you want to create a variable that contains the background color for an object, you might call it backColor.

2009, John Paul Mueller, “Coding the Application”, in C# Design and Development (Expert One-on-One), Indianapolis, Ind.: Wrox Programmer to Programmer, Wiley Publishing, →ISBN, page 243:

CamelCase is a common way of writing variable names in programming. It allows the programmer or someone reading their code to easily parse long variable names. […] The key feature of camelCase is that it allows multiple words to be combined into one with a medial capital letter at the beginning of each original word. It is named camelCase because it looks a bit like the humps on a camel's back.

2023, Jenny Gibson Bond, “Variables and Components”, in Mark Taub, editor, Introduction to Game Design, Prototyping, and Development, 3rd edition, Boston, Mass.: Addison-Wesley, →ISBN, part II (Programming C# in Unity):

computer programming
computer programming

(typography, often programming) Especially in computer programming, and in the names of brands and organizations: a style of typography in which several words are concatenated together without any spaces between them, with the first letter of each word (sometimes excluding the first word) capitalized.


blackface

en-noun

blackface (countable and uncountable, plural blackfaces)

blackfaces (plural)
Blackface (alternative)

The laboratory procedure in the most important tests and methods is printed in blackface type for convenience of reference.

1917, Franklin Institute, Philadelphia, Journal - Franklin Institute of the State of Pennsylvania, →OCLC:

(uncountable, countable, typography) Synonym of boldface.


fleuron

From Old French floron (“flower”), spelling later changed to match modern French fleuron.

Fleurons include ❦, 🙐, 🙘, 🙠, 🙨, ☘, 🙬, 🕊, ✾, 𐡷, 𐫱.

(typography) A decorative typographic element, used to separate passages or simply for decoration. Often doubled, e.g. 🙚 🙘 or 🙘🙚, or combined with other fleurons into a short line.


wingding

After the Wingdings font developed by Microsoft in 1990. Its name was presumably derived from dingbat and earlier senses of wingding.

Instead of going through the menu selections needed to insert a special symbol like a Wingding, you can rely on AutoCorrect to substitute the symbol for the text you type […]

2004, Mary Millhollon, Katherine Murray, Microsoft Office Word 2003 Inside Out, page 202:

Don't know a wingding from a ring-a-ding-ding? Check out one of the For Dummies books on Microsoft Office.

2011, Suzanne Gilad, Copyediting and Proofreading For Dummies, page 179:

(computing, typography) A dingbat (ornamental typographical symbol), especially one from the Wingdings font.


italicized

Claire, however, sat looking profoundly unamused by her family’s spirited, italicized conversations.

1991, Douglas Coupland, “It Can't Last”, in Generation X, New York: St. Martin's Press, →OCLC, page 34:


line feed

(typography) On a typewriter, the action of the carriage roller to push the page up one or more lines, often simultaneously with executing a carriage return.


line feed

en-verb

line feed (third-person singular simple present line feeds, present participle line feeding, simple past and past participle line fed)

line feeds (present singular third-person)
line feeding (participle present)
line fed (participle past)
line fed (past)

(typography) To advance the page one line at a time, particularly in rapid succession.


descender

(typography) The part of a letter or number that is drawn below the baseline (the bottom of most lowercase letters).

(typography, uncommon) A letter that has such a portion, such as g, j, or in some fonts Q.


angle bracket

Any of a number of angle-shaped brackets.

(typography, mathematics) Either of a pair of symbols, ⟨ ⟩, used to enclose text in various technical contexts, and in mathematical formulas to denote an interval, a continuous parameter or an inner product.

(typography) Either of a pair of symbols, 〈 〉, used in Chinese, Japanese, and Korean punctuation.


tracking

en-noun

tracking (countable and uncountable, plural trackings)

(typography) A consistent adjustment of space between individual letters; letterspacing.


fac

If a Fac or Flowered letter be deeper than the Composing-stick we measure the exact width of it by Quotations, or common Quadrats; which we put into our Stick, and the Fac into the Galley, and then compose, and empty each time so many lines as our measure in the Stick will allow, till we have composed so many as reach something beyond the Depth of the Fac, that by justifying it up to the lines, its touching the letters underneath may be prevented.

1771, Philip Luckombe, The History and Art of Printing, page 385:

This combination of art and accident may be continued to any given length, as punches for letter-press may be formed of steel broken as above, by cutting, drilling, punching, bending (and all their varieties upon the same principle) parts of the letters and leaving the grain of the steel, &c. to form the lines or strokes, with all its accidental irregularities, and in this way title letters and two-line letters, facs, and complex founts of types, might be cast, every letter of which would vary in its lines from every other, and in larger letters a little art might be combin'd with accident so as to make the distinctions from all others obvious to a common observer.

1859, Robert Barclay, “A.D. 1790, July 26 -- No. 1766”, in Great Britain. Patent Office, editor, Patents for Invention, page 101:

The Fac Initial, a cheap substitute for the Pierced Initial, is made by combinations of small borders about an interior letter. As these borders are troublesome to construct and too often plainly show their joints, the Fac Initial is seldom made now.

1907, De Vinne Press, Types of the De Vinne Press, page 45:

(typography, rare) A factotum letter, or a similar kind of ornamentally bordered letter formerly used at the start of a chapter or section of a book.


ronde

(typography, dated) A kind of script in which the heavy strokes are nearly upright, giving the characters when taken together a round look.


double-spaced

All I do know for certain is that I had something happy and exciting to tell you—and on just one side of the paper, doublespaced — and I knew when I got home that it was mostly gone, or all gone, and there was nothing left to do but go through the motions.

1957, J. D. Salinger, “Zooey”, in Franny and Zooey, published 1961:

(typography) Formatted so that there is a full blank line between each line of text; the style of formatting required by many entities inside business, academia, and publishing.


single-space

en-verb

single-space (third-person singular simple present single-spaces, present participle single-spacing, simple past and past participle single-spaced)

single-spaces (present singular third-person)
single-spacing (participle present)
single-spaced (participle past)
single-spaced (past)

(transitive, typography) To type (or format) text without leaving a blank line between each line of text.

(intransitive, typography) To type (or format) text with only one space between consecutive sentences.


hair space

(letterpress typography) A piece of metal type used to create the narrowest space.

(typography, US) The narrowest space appearing between letters and punctuation.


text box

text boxes (plural)
textbox (alternative)

The graphic design of secondary schoolbooks, which includes many text boxes, captions, labelled diagrams, thought bubbles, etc., introduced a certain level of noise into the scanning and OCR[.]

2018, Clarence Green, James Lambert, “Position vectors, homologous chromosomes and gamma rays: Promoting disciplinary literacy through Secondary Phrase Lists”, in English for Specific Purposes, →DOI, page 4:

(typography) A block of printed text contained within borders that is intended to be read separately from the major text of the page.


RM

en-noun

RM (countable and uncountable, plural RMs)

(typography) Initialism of right margin.


drop cap

(typography) A large initial letter that drops below the first line of a paragraph, usually used at the beginning of a section or chapter of a book.


letter case

letter case (countable and uncountable, plural letter cases)

(typography, uncountable) The distinction between majuscule (uppercase) and minuscule (lowercase) letters.


humanist

(typography) Of a typeface: resembling classical handwritten monumental Roman letters rather than the 19th-century grotesque typefaces.


rubdown

(typography, attributive) Synonym of dry transfer.


black letter

black letter (countable and uncountable, plural black letters)

black letters (plural)
blackletter (alternative)
black-letter (alternative)

Also we discovered what is still more curious, an English version of the black-letter Latin.

1886 October – 1887 January, H[enry] Rider Haggard, She: A History of Adventure, London: Longmans, Green, and Co., published 1887, →OCLC:

The original boldface printing types are the blackletters used by Gutenberg in the 1440s. For the next two centuries, blackletter fonts were widely used not only in Germany but in France, Spain, the Netherlands and England.

2002, Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style (version 2.5), Vancouver: Hartley & Marks, →ISBN, page 103:

(calligraphy) A highly calligraphic Western European script style used from approximately 1150.

(typography) A Northern European style of type based on the script, with contrasting thick-and-thin, angular strokes forming upright letterforms, and usually set with a dark typographic colour on the page.


tabbing

tabbing (countable and uncountable, plural tabbings)

These juxtapositions of perspective are generally indicated typographically, by a verse being tabbed in or out from the one above it: such tabbings indicate breaks in time, space, or voice.

2003, Stephen J. Hartnett, Incarceration Nation, page 23:


hedera

From the genus name Hedera, in turn from Latin hedera (“ivy”).

(typography) A fleuron depicting an ivy leaf.


subscript

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-subscript.wav

In chemical formulas the number of atoms in a molecule is written as a subscript, so we write H₂O for water which has two atoms of hydrogen for each one of oxygen.

(typography) A type of lettering form written lower than the things around it.


subscript

en-verb

subscript (third-person singular simple present subscripts, present participle subscripting, simple past and past participle subscripted)

subscripts (present singular third-person)
subscripting (participle present)
subscripted (participle past)
subscripted (past)

As in the chapters on the synchronous model, we use the convention of subscripting a variable by the index of the process at which the variable resides.

1996, Nancy A. Lynch, Distributed Algorithms, Elsevier, page 210:

The elements of these matrices are subscripted with a row–column index, that is, with two integers that give the row and column position in the array.

2011, William M. Davis (original author Cifford E. Dykstra), Physical Chemistry: A Modern Introduction (Second Edition), CRC Press, page 424

(mathematics, sciences, typography, transitive, of a variable) To provide with a subscript.

If your presentation covers chemistry or some other scientific field, you'll need to subscript and superscript characters (think H2O).

2007, Emily A. Vander Veer, PowerPoint 2007: The Missing Manual:

(mathematics, sciences, typography, transitive, of a text) To convert to a subscript form.


run in

en-adj

run in (not generally comparable, comparative more run in, superlative most run in)

more run in (comparative)
most run in (superlative)

These headings are run in because a free-hanging style would just be a waste of column inches.

One of the best headings for saving space is the heading that is run in.

1956, Daniel Melcher, Nancy Larrick, Printing and Promotion Handbook:

Third subheadings begin paragraphs (are indented and run in).

1976, American Institute of Physics, Editorial Handbook, page 17:

You can select how far you want subentries indented, how many lines between each entry and alphabetical block, and whether you want the final index indented (each sub- and sub-subheading indented under its parent) or run in (subheadings in paragraph form under the main heading).

1985 April 16, Charles Anderson, “The Ins and Outs of Indexing”, in PC Mag, volume 4, number 8, page 322:

Heading levels 3 through 7 are run in headings — the text that follows the heading appears on the same line as the heading.

1987, Rachel Morgan, Henry McGilton, Introducing UNIX System V, page 333:

Secondary headings are flush left, in regular type, and capitalized headline style. Tertiary headings are run in at the beginning of a paragraph, in bold type, capitalized sentence style, and followed by a period.

2019, Editorial staff, “Guide to Authors”, in Nagoya Journal of Medical Science, archived from the original on 2021-12-23:

Alternative form of run-in (adjective) (styled open when in predicative position)

(participial adjective; editing, typography) (not comparable) Having been run in before or behind previous text.


run in

en-verb

run in (third-person singular simple present runs in, present participle running in, simple past ran in, past participle run in)

runs in (present singular third-person)
running in (participle present)
ran in (past)
run in (participle past)

With these subsections, it is better to run their headings in.

(typography, printing) To insert (a word, etc.) without making a line break or new paragraph (so that it is not free-hanging).


strikethrough

en-noun

strikethrough (countable and uncountable, plural strikethroughs)

Deverbal from strike through; the verb, in at least some cases, is a back-formation from the noun, despite being redundant to strike through.

In HTML, wrapping text with the code <del> and </del> produces a strikethrough.

(typography) An horizontal line overlaid on other characters.

(oblique)

(typography) A horizontal or oblique line overlaid on individual characters.


obelus

obeluses (plural)
obeli (plural)
obolus (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-I learned some phrases-obelus.wav

From Middle English obelus, obelo, from Old English obelus, from Late Latin obelus (“critical mark”), from Koine Greek ὀβελός (obelós, “critical mark”), Ancient Greek ὀβελός (obelós, “rod, spit; obelisk; critical mark”). The further etymology is uncertain; a derivation from βέλος (bélos, “arrow, dart, missile”) (from Proto-Indo-European *gʷelH- (“to pierce; to reach; to throw; to hit by throwing”)) has been suggested, but the initial vowel remains unexplained. Compare obelisk.
The plural form obeli is derived from Late Latin obeli, from Ancient Greek ὀβελοί (obeloí).

der

The ancienteſt of all is that of the Library of M. Colbert, which contains part of Exodus, Numbers, and Leviticus, of the Tranſlation of the Septuagint, with Lines call'd Obeli and Aſteriſks, as we find them in the Hexapla of Origen.

1707, “Palæographia Græca, […] i.e. The Ancient Greek Way of Writing, or a Treatise of the Origin and Progress of Greek Letters, and of the Several Sorts of Greek Writing in All Ages: […] By D. Bernard of Montfaucon, […] At Paris 1708. […]”, in The History of the Works of the Learned. Or, An Impartial Account of Books Lately Printed in All Parts of Europe. […] For the Month of September 1708. […], volume X, London: […] H. Rhodes, […]; A. Bell, […]; and D[aniel] Midwinter, […], →OCLC, paragraph III, page 514:

'Tis pretended that the Divines of Louvain paſs'd the ſame judgment upon the miſplacing this obelus 150 years ago: but they have only ſaid that the Manuſcripts of [Robert] Stephens had the Text of the 7ᵗʰ Verſe entire, and ſo as 'tis printed, unleſs the obelus be placed wrong: I would my ſelf ſay as much, tho' I maintain that it is in its true place.

1722, David Martin, “Of the Obelus Plac’d in the Middle of the 7ᵗʰ Verse, […]”, in The Genuineness of the Text of the First Epistle of Saint John. Chap. v. Ꝟ. 7. […], London: […] W[illiam] and J[ohn] Innys […], →OCLC, page 93:

In A.D. 1550, Robert Stephens gave a third edition to the world, on a larger ſcale: in which he diſtinguiſhed the different Greek MSS, which he had collated, by Greek letters (β, γ, &c.) and the various readings by an obelus, and ſemi-parentheſis, or crotchet; which, wherever inſerted, were meant to denote, that, from the word, before which the obelus was placed, to the ſtation where the ſemi-parentheſis was found, in the Greek text, the whole of that verſe, or verſes, word, or words, was wanting in the particular MSS cited in the margin.

1785, George Travis, “Letter I.”, in Letters to Edward Gibbon, Esq. […], 2nd edition, London: […] C[harles] F[rancis] and J[ohn] Rivington, […], →OCLC, pages 5–6:

He, therefore, publiſhed another edition. In this he made few alterations in the text itſelf, but ſhewed by obeluſes and aſteriſks, where it differed from the Septuagint, or the Hebrew.

1797, Charles Butler, chapter XIV, in Horæ Biblicæ, [London]: [s.n.], →OCLC, paragraph 2, page 97:

Dr. W[hite] has here given those readings which, according to the opinion of [Johann Jakob] Griesbach, ought to make a part of the text; he has rejected, or at least stigmatized with the obelus, those which, on the evidence of the most antient MSS. and versions, are not intitled to admission; [...]

1801 May, “Art. X. Quatuor Evangelia Græce. Textum receptum, signis distinctum ad instar Origenianæ ΤΩΝ Ό. recensionis edivit J. White, S.T.P. Ling. Arab. Prof.—Syriacæ Philoxenianæ Novi Testamenti Versionis Interpres. 8vo. pp. 335. Printed at Oxford. [book review]”, in The Monthly Review; or, Literary Journal, Enlarged, volume XXXV, London: […] A[ndrew] Strahan, […], and R[alph] Griffiths; and sold by T[homas] Becket, […], →OCLC, page 66:

The text of the Philoxenian as revised by Thomas [of Harqel] is furnished with obeli and asterisks. Most of the MSS. too have critical remarks and readings in the margin.

1853, Samuel Davidson, “The Philoxenian Version”, in A Treatise of Biblical Criticism Exhibiting a Systematic View of that Science, volume II (The New Testament), Boston, Mass.: Gould and Lincoln […], →OCLC, page 189:

In the Septuagint column, additions, to which nothing corresponded in the Hebrew, were marked by an obelus prefixed (÷ … ⸔); omissions, where words standing in the Hebrew were not represented in the Greek, were filled in by him, usually from Theodotion, and noted similarly by an asterisk (※ … ⸔). [Footnote 1: The sign ⸔ indicates the close of the words to which the obelus or asterisk refers.]

1890, S[amuel] R[olles] Driver, “Introduction”, in Notes on the Hebrew Text of the Books of Samuel: […], Oxford, Oxfordshire: Clarendon Press, § 2 (Early Hebrew Orthography), paragraph 4, page xlv:

The critical marks introduced by Origen were retained in the Syro-Hexapla, so that every page contained asterisks and obeli: [...]

1931, A[lec] E[li] Silverstone, “Onkelos and Peshitta”, in Aquila and Onkelos (Publications of the University of Manchester; no. I; Semitic Languages Series; no. CCXIV), Manchester: Manchester University Press, →OCLC, page 123:

Moreover, owing to a deficient understanding of the characteristics of the individual manuscripts, I have not included in this analysis those readings that are lacking in MT [Masoretic Text] but are in Syh [the Syro-Hexapla] without an obelus. [...] In all probability, the obeli were more readily discarded than the asterisks given that the attitudes towards the text made deletion somewhat taboo: unlike the asterisked portions, the obelised readings had already been part of the Church's text.

2011, Timothy Michael Law, “Hexaplaric Material outside of Syh”, in Anneli Aejmelaeus, Kristin De Troyer, Wolfgang Kraus, Emanuel Tov, editors, Origenes Orientalis: The Preservation of Origen’s Hexapla in the Syrohexapla of 3 Kingdoms (De Septuaginta Investigationes; 2), Göttingen, Lower Saxony: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, →ISBN, page 317:

(historical) A symbol resembling a horizontal line (–), sometimes together with one or two dots (for example, ⨪ or ÷), which was used in ancient manuscripts and texts to mark a word or passage as doubtful or spurious, or redundant; an obelisk.

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symbol used in ancient manuscripts and texts to mark a word or passage as doubtful or spurious, or redundant

And, with respect to the Homer of Aristarchus, it is to be considered, that besides the lines, sentences, and long passages, to which that Herod of critics affixed his obelus (†) or stiletto, there were entire books which he found no use on obelising piecemeal; because it was not this line or that line into which he wished to thrust his dagger, but the whole rabble of lines—"tag, rag, and bobtail."

1862, Thomas De Quincey, “Homer and the Homeridæ”, in Dr Samuel Parr or Whiggism in Its Relations to Literature and Other Writings (De Quincey’s Works; V), Edinburgh: Adam and Charles Black, →OCLC, page 313:

I have translated the Oxford Classical Text of C[harles] Hude (3rd edn., Oxford, 1927), except at the places marked in the translation with an obelus (†), which refer the interested reader to a note in the Textual Notes.

1998, Robin Waterfield, “Translator’s Note”, in Herodotus, translated by Robin Waterfield, The Histories: A New Translation (Oxford World’s Classics), Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, published 2008, →ISBN, page xlii:

The obeli (†) bring the letter into alignment with the Irish ninth century illuminated gospel manuscript, the Book of Kells: on the recto of folio 219, there are four red obeli that run down the middle of the page between the lines, and others around the margins. As such, these obeli thus correspond to the 'cardinal' and 'doubtful points' [...] also found in the letter.

2009, Peter Mahon, “The Language(s) and Structure(s) of Finnegans Wake”, in Joyce: A Guide for the Perplexed, London, New York, N.Y.: Continuum International Publishing Group, →ISBN, page 167:

Note: Square brackets […] indicate editorial excisions from the text, and angled brackets <…> editorial additions, while obeli † show that the text is unsound and that the translation gives only an opinion of what Livy might have been saying at that point.

2013, Livy, “Appendix 1: List of Variations from the Oxford Classical Text of Walters and Conway”, in J. C. Yardley, transl., Rome’s Italian Wars: Books Six to Ten (Oxford’s World Classics), Oxford, Oxfordshire: Oxford University Press, →ISBN, page 288:

A dagger symbol (†), which is used in printed matter as a reference mark to refer the reader to a footnote, marginal note, etc.; beside a person's name to indicate that the person is deceased; or beside a date to indicate that it is a person's death date; an obelisk.


justifier

When the operator starts typing the third line, the justifier goes to work on the second.

1955, Book Production, volumes 61-62, page 43:

(computing, typography) A machine, program or algorithm that justifies text by aligning it.


non-spacing

(typography) Of a character: combined with another and so not consuming additional horizontal space.


handset

en-verb

handset (third-person singular simple present handsets, present participle handsetting, simple past and past participle handset)

handsets (present singular third-person)
handsetting (participle present)
handset (participle past)
handset (past)

handsetting type


characters per inch

Please use a type that is 10 characters per inch.

(design, typography) A unit of measurement of the number of typographic characters that fit on a one inch line of printed type. This unit is mainly used to specify font sizes that have the same width for each character (monospaced), however it may also be used to give an average for fonts with characters of varying widths.


downstyle

down style (alternative)
down-style (alternative)

(typography, capitalization) Which only capitalizes words (e.g. in headers) that would be capitalized in a normal sentence: which is styled in sentence case.


upstyle

up style (alternative)
up-style (alternative)

Some style guides write north temperate zone upstyle as North Temperate Zone.

(typography, capitalization) Which capitalizes all nouns, adjectives and adverbs (in a title, heading, headline, header, or similar display type element): which is styled in title case.


upstyle

en-noun

upstyle (countable and uncountable, plural upstyles)

upstyles (plural)
up style (alternative)
up-style (alternative)

(uncountable, typography) Upstyle capitalization.


callout

Ancient Egypt: Civilization in northeastern Africa that gives reference volumes a chance to change up the pace a little and break up the monotonous, text-heavy format with more graphical elements, timelines, and a few callout boxes.

2012, The Onion Book of Known Knowledge, page 64:

(typography, graphic layout) A pull quote: an excerpt from an article (such as in a news magazine) that is duplicated in a large font alongside the article so as to grab a reader's attention and indicate the article's topic.


double space

en-verb

double space (third-person singular simple present double spaces, present participle double spacing, simple past and past participle double spaced)

double spaces (present singular third-person)
double spacing (participle present)
double spaced (participle past)
double spaced (past)

(ambitransitive, typography) To format (a document) so that every other line is left blank, leaving sufficient whitespace for annotation (e.g. a teacher's corrections).


hatted

(typography) Written with a circumflex ('^'). For example, â.


kerning

en-noun

kerning (countable and uncountable, plural kernings)

From kern (“part of a letter which extends into the space used by another letter”) + -ing, from French carne (“corner”).

affix

(typography) The adjustment of the horizontal space between selected pairs of glyphs in a typeface.


versal

(typography, calligraphy) Ornamental letter that begins a section


font name

(computing, typography) Used other than figuratively or idiomatically: see font, name: the name of a font (typeface).


all caps

all-caps (alternative)
ALL CAPS (alternative)

(typography) Text or a font in which all letters are capitalised.

csupa nagybetűs

text or a font in which all letters are capital letters


horizontal bar

(typography) The dash symbol (―) (used to introduce quoted text)

(typography) The horizontal form of the fraction bar.


type design

en-noun

type design (countable and uncountable, plural type designs)

(typography) The art of designing typefaces.

(typography) A particular style of typeface that has been designed.


capitulum

capitulum (plural capitulums or capitula)

Borrowed from Latin capitulum. Doublet of chapiter and chapter.

(typography, obsolete) The symbol ⸿. It was used to mark chapters or paragraphs, and is the ancestor of the pilcrow (¶).


caps and small caps

(typography) Formatting of text that leaves uppercase letters as they are but converts lowercase letters to small caps.


halfwidth

This would convert any half-width katakana characters to full-width katakana.

1993, GO Corporation, Penpoint Application Writing Guide:

...and half-width (zenkaku, hankaku) alphabets are regarded as separate...

1998, Rick Jelliffe, The XML & SGML Cookbook:

The half-width characters have normal character spacing...

2002, Cay S Horstmann, Gary Cornell, Core Java 2:

(computing, typography) Of a text character, occupying the space of half of a fullwidth character, or one "normal" text column.

半角

occupying half the width of a fullwidth character


romanette

From Roman (numeral) + -ette (“a diminutive”).

affix

The court held that romanette (ii) of the statute in issue did not limit eligibility for legal relief.

[…] (romanette (ii) in the Columbia/HCA Healthcare Corporation waiver-of-liability provision included in footnote 1) […]

1993, Dan K. Webb et al., Corporate Internal Investigations, →ISBN, page 3.14:

This can best be visualized with reference to FIGS. 5, illustrating both ends of the preferred embodiment perforation roll 12 side by side, numbered with romanette numerals i-xii corresponding to the hour positions on a clock face.

1999, Greg M. Kauppila, Andrew P. Tijan, Rotary valve assembly and method, US Patent 6539829, page 11:

2000 January, Joseph Kimble, “A Modest Wish List for Legal Writing”, originally in TRIAL, reprinted in Michigan Bar Journal, Volume 79, Number 11 (November 2000), pages 1574–1577,
In numbering, avoid roman numerals and romanettes (like iii). They are too much like a foreign language.

You'll need to use this technique almost every time you see parenthesized romanettes (i, ii, iii) or letters (a, b, c) in the middle of a contractual or legislative paragraph.

2001, Bryan A. Garner, Legal Writing in Plain English, →ISBN, page 101:

2008, United States Supreme Court oral argument, United States v. Hayes, Case no. 07-608https://web.archive.org/web/20081203011317/http://www.supremecourtus.gov/oral_arguments/argument_transcripts/07-608.pdf, page 9,
MS. SAHARSKY: . . . not looking at this Romanette (i) and (ii), but just looking at that sentence.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: Romanette?
MS. SAHARSKY: Oh, little Roman numeral.
CHIEF JUSTICE ROBERTS: I've never heard that before. That's -- Romanette.

(colloquial, law, typography, US) A Roman numeral in lower case, such as “ii”, as frequently introduces list items; or, a list item introduced by such.


roman font

roman fonts (plural)
Roman font (alternative)

The Roman fonts of Aldus were eclipsed by his Italic and Greek, but he cut several fine alphabets.

1897, Old Faces of Roman and Medieval Types, De Vinne Press, page 13:

(typography) An oldstyle serif font or typeface (sometimes capitalized "Roman").


orthotic

en-adj

orthotic (comparative more orthotic, superlative most orthotic)

more orthotic (comparative)
most orthotic (superlative)

(typography) Of Greek typography: having an upright form, distinct from the cursive and chancery types.


NLQ

near letter-quality
near letter-quality#English

(typography, computing) Initialism of near letter-quality.


LQ

en-noun

LQ (countable and uncountable, plural LQs)

(typography, uncountable) Initialism of letter quality.


archigrapheme

From archi- + grapheme, by analogy with archiphoneme.

(typography) a grapheme which represents any of several graphemes (often causing ambiguity), by analogy with the archiphoneme, which represents several phonemes.


line break

line breaks (plural)
line-break (alternative)
linebreak (alternative)

(typography) A point in writing where text that would normally continue on the same line starts at the beginning of a new line.

斷行 /断行

a point in writing where text that would normally continue on the same line starts at the beginning of a new line or the character indicating that subsequent characters should appear on a separate line of text


x-height

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Flame, not lame-x-height.wav

(typography) The distance between the baseline and midline in a typeface, typically equal to the height of the lower-case letter x.

x-korkeus

the distance between the baseline and midline in a typeface


soft hyphen

(computing, typography) A generally invisible text character marking a point where hyphenation can occur without forcing a line break in an inconvenient place if the text is later reflowed.

weiches Trennzeichen

a generally invisible text character marking a point where hyphenation can occur without forcing a line break in an inconvenient place if the text is later reflowed


cicero

From its use in Pannartz and Sweynheim's Roman edition (1467) of Cicero's Epistulae ad Familiares ("Letters to My Friends").

(typography, Continental printing) The Continental equivalent of the English pica: a measure of 12 Didot points (4.51368 mm or about 0.178 in.) or a body of type in this size.

Pannartz and Sweynheim
cicero (typography)


adscript

From Latin adscriptus, past participle of adscribere (“to enroll”). See ascribe.

(typography) Something written or printed immediately after another character and aligned with it.


VF

(typography) Initialism of variable font.


manicule

(typography) A symbol resembling a hand with the index finger extended, used to draw attention to or indicate something.


fullwidth

From full + width, as a calque of Japanese 全角 (zenkaku).

(computing, typography) Of a text character, occupying the space of two alphanumeric characters in a monospace font, or two "normal" text columns.

全角

occupying two columns on a traditional text display


separatrix

separatrix (plural separatrixes or separatrices)

separatrixes (plural)
separatrices (plural)

Learned borrowing from Latin sēparātrīx, the feminine form of separator (originally owing to an implied līnea (“line”)), from sēparāre (“to divide; to separate”) + -trix (forming female agents). By surface analysis, separate + -trix. First developed as a decimal mark among the medieval Arab mathematicians, whence a shorter variant gave rise to the decimal comma employed by many European countries and their former colonies.

Therefore in writing of decimall parts let the separatrix be always used.

1660, Jonas Moore, Moor's Arithmetick, page 13:

(typography, historical) The ⟨L⟩ or pipe ⟨|⟩ mark formerly used to divide integers from decimals.

(typography, obsolete) Synonym of decimal point, which replaced such marks.

(typography) The proofreader's mark resembling a slash ⟨ / ⟩ or vertical bar ⟨ | ⟩ placed after a note in the margin to indicate that it should replace the item(s) struckthrough in the running text or to separate it from other margin notes.


single-spaced

(typography) Formatted without leaving a full blank line between each line of text.


variation selector

variation selector (plural variation selectors)

(computing, typography) A metacharacter in Unicode that selects one of a set of semantically equivalent glyphs.


unpointed

an unpointed vowel


gnaborretni

This is why we still need the Interobang on keyboards, not the gnaborretni .

2007 November 21, Docky Wocky, “Re: Did UN artificially raise AIDS numbers to swindle more funds ?”, in alt.politics.bush (Usenet):

Butbutbut, what other articles link to the interrobang article, and how else would I have discovered the gnaborretni‽

2009 October 29, Dr. HotSalt, “Re: Wackypedia”, in alt.religion.kibology (Usenet):

Switch one of the interrobang sequences to gnaborretni

2010 November 19, Cyril Brulebois, “Accepted libx11 2:1.3.3-4 (source all amd64)”, in linux.debian.changes.devel (Usenet):

(typography, very rare) The symbol ⸘ (an inverted superimposed exclamation point and question mark), used in place of ¡¿ in Spanish, Galician, and Leonese.


noncapital

(typography) A letter that is not uppercase.


tonos

From the Modern Greek τόνος (tónos, “stress, accent”). Doublet of tone.

(orthography and typography) The Modern Greek stress-marking diacritic: ⟨ ΄ ⟩, written atop a vowel in a given word’s stressed syllable.


en space

(typography) A space which has a nominal width of 1 en.


en quad

(typography) A quad with a fixed width of 1 en.


em quad

Attested in 1841.
From 1808 em quadrat, from 1683 m quadrat, from m + quadrat, a metal type, which is as wide as the point size of the font. The origin of the letter m is unclear; perhaps because the type body of the letter M was approximately square during the early days of typesetting, and to contrast it with the n quadrat, the letter n being approximately half as wide.

(typography) A quad which has a fixed width of 1 em.


em space

(typography) A space which has a nominal width of 1 em.


thin space

From thin + space. First use appears c. 1683 in the writings of Joseph Moxon.

If it be only a Single Letter or two that drops, he thruſts the end of his Bodkin between every Letter of that Word, till he comes to a Space: and then perhaps by forcing thoſe Letters closer, he may have room to put in another Space or a Thin Space; which if he cannot do, and he finds the Space ſtand Looſe in the Form; he with the Point of his Bodkin picks the Space up and bows it a little; which bowing makes the Letters on each ſide of the Space keep their parallel diſtance; for by its Spring it thruſts the Letters that were cloſed with the end of the Bodkin to their adjunct Letters, that needed no cloſing.

1683, Joseph Moxon, Mechanick Exercises: Or, the Doctrine of Handy-Works. Applied to the art of Printing., volume 2, pages 240–41:

(letterpress typography) A metal block used to separate words, one fifth of an em in width.

All you may see on the keyboard is a space bar, but typographers use several invisible characters: the word space, fixed spaces of various sizes (em space, en space, thin space, figure space, etc) and a hard space or no-break space.

2002, Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style (version 2.5), Vancouver, Hartley & Marks, p 43

(typography) In digital text, a character representing a thin space.


thick space

From thick + space. First use appears c. 1683 in the writings of Joseph Moxon.

(letterpress typography) A metal block used to separate words, one third of an em in width.

(typography) In digital text, a character representing a thick space.


end mark

end marks (plural)
endmark (alternative)

(typography, graphic design) A typographic element that signals the end of an article. Often they are simple bullets, but they can also be intricate symbols.


textura

(typography) A calligraphic form of black letter.


duplexed

(typography, of a font) Of consistent glyph width across weights.


fraktur

fraktur (countable and uncountable, plural frakturs)

frakturs (plural)
Fraktur (alternative)
fractur (alternative)
Fractur (alternative obsolete)

1886 fractur, 1904 fraktur, from German Fraktur, from Latin frāctūra (“breaking”, noun), from frangere (“to break”), past participle fractus. Compare English fracture, fraction. Doublet of fracture.

(typography) A style of black letter type, used especially in German-speaking countries from the 16th century until World War II.


unbolded

(typography) Not bolded; not in a bold typeface.


foreslash

From fore- + slash, a retronym, distinguishing slash from backslash; compare forward slash.

Yes, that is a combination of foreslashes and backslashes.

Don't confuse the backslash (\) with the foreslash (/).

...using transitions labelled by their input and output, separated by a foreslash, with x and y standing for any non-identical nucleotides...

1997, Sándor Suhai, Theoretical and computational methods in genome research:

The command set print rat off . switches off the special printing for _/_ so that rational numbers will be printed with spaces around the foreslash sign.

2007, Manuel Clavel, Francisco Durán, Steven Eker, Patrick Lincoln, Narciso Martí-Oliet, All About Maude - A High-Performance Logical Framework:

(typography, computing, rare) Synonym of slash ⟨/⟩.


cpi

characters per inch
characters per inch#English

(graphic design, typography) The measure of a number of typeset font characterss per inch used or supported by a digital display device


dots per inch

My printer prints at 300 dots per inch.

(graphic design, typography) The measure of a number of pixels per inch used in a graphic or supported by a digital display device, used to specify type or image resolution.


Unihan

(computing, typography) A character set, a subset of Unicode, that attempts to unify the regional and historical variants of Han characters by treating them as different glyphs representing the same grapheme.


no-break space

non-breaking space
non-breaking space#English

(typography, word processing) Synonym of non-breaking space.


CLDR

(computing, typography) Initialism of Common Locale Data Repository: a project of the Unicode Consortium to provide locale data in the XML format for use in computer applications.


smallcap

en-verb

smallcap (third-person singular simple present smallcaps, present participle smallcapping, simple past and past participle smallcapped)

smallcaps (present singular third-person)
smallcapping (participle present)
smallcapped (participle past)
smallcapped (past)

(computing, typography) To set in small caps.


overstrike

en-noun

overstrike (countable and uncountable, plural overstrikes)

/ˈəʊvəstɹʌɪk/

/əʊvəˈstɹʌɪk/

(typography) The printing of one character over another, as - on top of L to produce Ł.


full out

en-adj

full out (comparative more full out, superlative most full out)

more full out (comparative)
most full out (superlative)
full-out (alternative)

(typography, not comparable) Extending across the full width of a page or column, without indentation.


virgula

From Latin virgula (“twig; wand; scratch comma”), from virga (“branch; rod”) + -ulus (“-ule: forming diminutives”). As a dowsing rod, via virgula divina or divinatoria. Doublet of virgule.

der

A Point with a Virgula, call'd a Semicolon.

1728, Ephraim Chambers, “Point”, in Cyclopædia:

The full stop or, instead, a virgula, i.e. a short slanting strike (/) is used... to mark the end of a sentence or of a portion of a sentence followed by a pause.

1934, Robert C. Priebsch et al., chapter X, in The German Language, volume II, page 380:

(typography, rare) Synonym of virgule: a punctuation mark.


nonbolded

The nonbolded text is the expected response from our e-mail server.

2009, James Turnbull, Peter Lieverdink, Dennis Matotek, Pro Linux System Administration:


ZWNJ

(computing, typography) Initialism of zero-width non-joiner (“non-printing character used to avoid ligatures”).

zero-width non-joiner

neobʺjedinjájuščij símvol nulevój širiný

необъединя́ющий си́мвол нулево́й ширины́


ZWJ

(computing, typography) Acronym of zero-width joiner.


straight quote

(typography) A vertical quotation mark, ", as distinguished from a curly quote.

írógép-idézőjel

a vertical quotation mark, ", as distinguished from a curly quote


curly quote

(typography) A shaped opening or closing quotation mark, as distinguished from a straight quote. In English: “ ”. In some other languages: ” ”, „ ” or „ “.


double-struck

(typography, of a character or font) Formed in a blackboard bold typeface, in which certain lines of the character are doubled


unemboldened

Text that has not been modified since the last revision is unemboldened.


sicilicus

From the Latin sicilicus, the diminutive form of sicilis (“sickle”), so named because of its falciformity.

It is stated by grammarians that a sicilicus or laterally inverted Ⅽ, Ↄ, was placed above a consonant which was to be regarded as a doubled letter.

1925, Sir John Edwin Sandys, A Companion to Latin Studies, 3rd edition, Cambridge University Press, page 743:

(Old Latin typography) A diacritic, resembling a 180°-rotated ‘C’ (i.e., being similar in appearance to ⟨ ᵓ ⟩), written atop a consonant to mark gemination, superseded in Classical Latin by doubling the letter representing the geminated consonant.


sidebox

(typography) A box placed alongside the main text in a book, etc. containing further related text.


brevier

Probably from Old French or Anglo-Norman *brevier, from Latin breviārium (“breviary”), presumably from its use in printing them, hence a doublet of breviary and brimborion. Most breviaries were not, however, printed with such small type, leading some to conjecture that it instead derived from cognates of brief and has a meaning similar to French petit and German Petit.

(typography, printing, dated) The size of type between minion and bourgeois, standardized as 8-point.


(software, publishing, typography) Abbreviation of PostScript Level 1.


(software, publishing, typography) PostScript level 3


maqaf

Transliteration of Hebrew מַקָּף (maqaf).

The maqaf is available only in some Hebrew keyboard layouts.

(Hebrew typography) The Hebrew script hyphen (־)


unhatted

However, the translation of Razor programs is such that matching hatted and unhatted action particles can only be found on different sides of a parallel composition operator […]

2001, Eike Best, Raymond Devillers, Maciej Koutny, Petri net algebra, page 339:

(typography) Written without a circumflex ('^').


reordrant

/ɹiːˈɔɹdɹənt/

From reorder + -ant. By analogy with reentrant.

(computing, typography) Of a character (usually a vowel in Indic scripts): input after another character, but intended to display before it when text is rendered.


backward slash

en-noun

backward slash (plural backward slashes)


linespace

linespace (usually uncountable, plural linespaces)

(typography) The gap between successive lines of text.


unbold

en-verb

unbold (third-person singular simple present unbolds, present participle unbolding, simple past and past participle unbolded)

unbolds (present singular third-person)
unbolding (participle present)
unbolded (participle past)
unbolded (past)

From Middle English unbolde, unbald, from Old English unbeald (“unbold, unconfident, irresolute”), from Proto-Germanic *unbalþaz (“unbold”), equivalent to un- + bold. Cognate with Old High German unbald (“discouraged”).

inh

(typography, transitive) To change (text) from a bold typeface to a non-bolded typeface.


unbold

en-adj

unbold (comparative more unbold, superlative most unbold)

more unbold (comparative)
most unbold (superlative)


ZWNBSP

zero-width non-breaking space
w:zero-width non-breaking space

(computing, typography) Initialism of zero-width non-breaking space.


gravo-acute accent

en-noun

gravo-acute accent (plural not attested)

/ˌɡɹɑːvəʊəˈkjuːt ˈæksənt/

Mr. Walker does triumphantly claim the discovery of the inverted circumflex accent, or the downward and upward continued movement. Yet, if it is correctly inferred from the dates of publication, and from Mr. Walker’s rather derisive allusion to Mr. Steele’s essay, that the latter author preceded him, he might have found, in Mr. Steele’s gravo-acute accent, proof of the real existence of his newly found function of the voice.

1827, James Rush, The Philosophy of the Human Voice, pages ix–x:

( ˘ ) Gravo-acute accent, or gravo-acute circumflex.

1841, Andrew Comstock, “Explanation of the characters used in the exercises in reading and declamation”, in A System of Elocution, page 200:

(phonology and typography, obsolete, rare) A dipping tone, or the diacritic that denotes it, similar in form to the breve (˘) and the háček (ˇ).


inverted circumflex

inverted circumflex (plural inverted circumflexes)

From its earliest attested use as an idiomatic phrase in 1810, inverted circumflex was first used to denote a dipping tone — an inversion of the peaking tone denoted by ⟨῀⟩, the Ancient Greek περισπωμένη (perispōménē), commonly translated as “circumflex” — thence the name was applied to diacritics which marked such a dipping tone and, by extension, other tones to which it was suited; finally, due to such a diacritic’s resemblance to the háček, the name came to be applied to it as well.

This rising inflection will be indicated by an inverted circumflex ( ˇ ) being placed over the last syllable in the clause that bears the primary accent.

1844, An Introduction to the Art of Reading, page 107:

(typography) Any diacritic obtained by rotating a circumflex (ˆ) 180°.


word space

(typography, word processing) A regular space between words, as contrasted with other kinds of spaces.


hook above

(typography) A tone mark ( ̉) that indicates falling then rising tone in Vietnamese.


smart quotes

(computing, typography) Curly quotes automatically inserted into text as a replacement for the straight quotes typed by the user.


typographic ligature

typographic ligature (plural typographic ligatures)

ae (a + e) > æ
AE (A + E) > Æ
db (d + b) > ȸ
dz (d + z) > ǳ
Dz (D + z) > ǲ
DZ (D + Z) > Ǳ
et (e + t) > &
ff (f + f) > ﬀ
ffi (ﬀ + ﬁ) > ﬃ
ffl (ﬀ + ﬂ) > ﬄ
fi (f + i) > ﬁ
fl (f + l) > ﬂ
fs (f + s) > ?
ft (f + t) > ?
ij (i + j) > ĳ
IJ (I + J) > Ĳ
lj (l + j) > ǉ
Lj (L + j) > ǈ
LJ (L + J) > Ǉ
ng (n + g) > ŋ
NG (N + G) > Ŋ
nj (n + j) > ǌ
Nj (N + j) > ǋ
NJ (N + J) > Ǌ
oe (o + e) > œ
OE (O + E) > Œ or ɶ
ou (o + u) > Ȣ (majiscule) or ȣ (minuscule)
qp (q + p) > ȹ
ſs (ſ + s) or ſz (ſ + z) > ß (ẞ when capitalized)
st (s + t) > ﬆ
ſt (ſ + t) > ﬅ
ue (u + e) > ᵫ

(countable, typography) A character that visually combines multiple letters, usually but not always by connecting them (making them contiguous), such as æ, œ, ß or ĳ; a logotype.


subfont

Two subfonts are available for EGA/VGA displays, and only one is available for LCD displays.

2001, Jim Cooper, Using MS-DOS 6.22, page 346:

(computing, typography) A subset of a font, holding only some of its glyphs.


supralinear

(typography) above the lines of normal text


palatal hook

In the Zographensis one finds pьřěaxǫ (John 6:52). Here the liquid is marked with the palatal hook.

1962, Revue Canadienne des Slavistes, V, page 60:

Kalnyn′ states […] that in the best manuscripts […] the instances of marking of palatal l and n in general exceeds those of failing to do so; moreover, the marking of non-palatal consonants with a palatal hook is rare.

1968, Robert Magidoff et al., editors, Studies in Slavic Linguistics and Poetics, in Honor of Boris O. Unbegaun, page 42:

In Czech, [the háček] is actually a variant of the palatal hook, which can take the form of caron or apostrophe.

2004, Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style, 3rd edition, page 304:

l-caron/l-palatal hook

2009, Theodore Rosendorf, The Typographic Desk Reference, page 130:

(typography, rare) = háček (when it takes the form of a prime)

(typography, pre-1989 IPA) A hamiform diacritic ⟨◌̡⟩ formerly used to mark consonantal palatalisation; superseded by the superscript jay ⟨◌ʲ⟩.


minionette

From minion + -ette (“forming diminutives”).

(uncountable, US printing, typography, dated) A size of type between nonpareil and minion, standardized as 6½-point.


angle quote

(typography, informal) Any particular quotation mark consisting of a pair of straight lines radiating from a common point separated at an angle anywhere between 60°–150°, be it single or double.

A Korean quotation mark; e.g., 〈, 〉, 《, 》.


ideographic space

ideographic space (plural ideographic spaces)

(typography, in fonts whose ideographs are of uniform width) A space of non-variable width, equal to the width of an ideograph, used in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and other languages that use Siniform ideographs.


figure space

(typography) In fonts whose digits are of uniform width, a space of non-variable width: ⊣ ⊢ equal to the width of a digit.


tiebar

(typography) Synonym of tie (“the symbol ⁀”).


body line

body line (countable and uncountable, plural body lines)

(typography) The mean line; the level of the top of the main lower-case letters (without ascenders).


type face

(typography, printing) Alternative form of typeface.


sidebearing

(typography) The margin of empty space around a glyph in a font, measured from the glyph contour's leftmost, rightmost, topmost and bottommost points to the sides of its bounding box


punchcutter

Early punch-cutters appeared to have forged their own steel blanks, and the manner in which they finished their punches can often identify their work.

2009, James Mosley, edited by Michael F Suarez and Michael L Turner, The Cambridge History of the Book in Britain, vol. V, Cambridge, published 2014, page 170:

(typography) Someone who carries out punchcutting; a person who makes punches for type founders.


punchcutting

(typography) The craft of cutting letter punches in steel from which matrices were made in copper for type founding in the letterpress era.


hooktop

(typography) Having a hook-like element at the top, as in some phonetic symbols such as Ɓ ("hooktop B").


box-drawing character

box-drawing character (plural box-drawing characters)

(computing, typography) A text character used for creating geometric frames and boxes.


oxia

From the Ancient Greek ὀξεῖᾰ (oxeîă), an elliptical use for ἡ ὀξεῖᾰ προσῳδῐ́ᾱ (hē oxeîă prosōidĭ́ā, “the acute accent”) — ἡ (hē, the nominative feminine singular form of ὁ, ho, “the”, the definite article) + ὀξεῖᾰ (okseia, the nominative feminine singular form of ὀξῠ́ς, oksus, “sharp”, of sound “shrill”, of tones “high-pitched”) + προσῳδῐ́ᾱ (prosōdiā, “variation in pitch of the speaking voice”, “pronunciation of a syllable on a certain pitch”, “a mark [i.e., a diacritic] indicating normally unwritten differences of pronunciation, viz. vowel quantity, breathing, and pitch”).

(orthography and typography) An Ancient Greek pitch-marking diacritic: ⟨ ´ ⟩; written atop vowels, it denotes high pitch on short vowels, and rising pitch on long vowels and diphthongs.

οξεία

Ancient Greek diacritic marking high or rising pitch


line-height

Therefore, you could give an inline nonreplaced element a line-height of 1em and still have its background overlap the content of other lines.

2006, Eric Meyer, CSS: The Definitive Guide, page 194:

(typography) The height of a line of text.


bastard type

(printing, typography, historical) A type having the face of a larger or smaller size than the body.


dinkus

From dinky (“tiny and cute”). The word was coined by an artist on the Australian periodical, The Bulletin, in the 1920s.

More generally a dinkus is a small ornamentation, usually three asterisks, that break up sections of a book chapter, article or other written text.

2023 January 31, Elisabeth Ribbans, “The perils of using journalist jargon outside the newsroom”, in The Guardian:

(typography) A small ornament, usually a line of three asterisks (* * *), especially for the purpose of breaking up sections of a chapter, article, or other text.


r rotunda

r rotunda (plural rs rotunda or rs rotundae)

rs rotunda (plural)
rs rotundae (plural)

/ˌɑː.ɹəʊˈtʌn.də/

/ˌɑɹ.ɹoʊˈtʌn.də/

From or representing Latin r rotunda (literally “round ‘r’”). The adjective rotunda is the feminine form of rotundus, inflected to agree with littera (“letter”), elliptically omitted (compare e caudata). The phrase is little attested in Latin, and might have been formed in English, or been borrowed from another language which formed it from those Latin roots.

[…] completely informed about the decisions made and the reasons to make them, e.g. r rotunda does not figure in the transcription as the use of straight r and r rotunda is governed by the preceding character and thus completely predictable.

1989, Arend Quak, Florus (Floor) Rhee, Palaeogermanica et onomastica., Rodopi, page 3

And certain geminated consonants are represented by capitals : ɢ, ɴ, ʀ, ꜱ. Does a form like haʀ mean a long r, or is it a scribal habit on the level of the usage of r rotunda, not straight r, after round letters? The occurrence of forms with -rr […]

2000, Anna A. Grotans, Heinrich Beck, Anton Schwob, De consolatione philogiae: studies in honor of Evelyn S. Firchow, volume 2, page 624:

The distinction between r rotunda and straight r has not been kept in the transcription, as the usage of r rotunda is predictable from the preceding character: r rotunda is used after round letters.

2017, Andrea de Leeuw van Weenen, editor, A Grammar of Möðruvallabók, BRILL, →ISBN, page 11:

(typography) A curved form of the letter r, found in some medieval and fraktur scripts: ⟨ ꝛ ⟩.


scripta continua

scriptio continua
scriptio continua#English

(typography, epigraphy) Synonym of scriptio continua.


scriptio continua

From Latin scrīptiō (“writing”) + continua (“continuous, held together”).

(typography, epigraphy) A style of writing without spacing between the words of the text, particularly writing without any punctuation at all.


ultrabold

en-adj

ultrabold (comparative more ultrabold, superlative most ultrabold)

more ultrabold (comparative)
most ultrabold (superlative)

Many commercial typefaces come in an "ultrabold" or "heavy bold" weight that is even larger than the regular bold available on the Mac. You can create ultrabold lettering in MacPaint as follows […]

1986, Lon Poole, Lon Poole's Mac Insights, page 195:

In England, a classification standard has been developed that contains eight weights: extralight, light, semilight, medium, semibold, bold, extrabold, and ultrabold.

2014, Rob Carter, Philip B[axter] Meggs, Ben Day, Sandra Maxa, Mark Sanders, Typographic Design: Form and Communication (Edition 6), →ISBN, page 45:

In Frutiger LT, for instance, the lowercase a of the regular font features a rather round curve terminal compared to a fairly flat one in the ultrabold font.

2021, Heidrun Osterer, Philipp Stamm, Adrian Frutiger – Typefaces. The Complete Works (Edition 3), →ISBN, page 260:

(typography) Bolder than a typical bold typeface.


Garamond

Claude Garamont
Garamond
Garamond (typography)

From Garamondus, the Latin form of the name of Claude Garamont.

Caslon or Garamond or Baskerville is shouted as the compositors search for as many cases of these types as can be found.

2010, Andrea Levy, The Long Song, Tinder Press (2017), page 381:

(typography) A family of serif fonts derived from the work of Claude Garamont.


hungarumlaut

The "regular umlaut" with the dieresis dots originated from a form with two vertical or slanted strokes (not unlike the "hungarumlaut" speaking in typographical terms).

2003 July 12, Andreas Höfeld, “Re: middle age font”, in comp.fonts (Usenet):

For example, the small o with tilde, õ, has been displayed instead of o with the double acute accent (also known as the Hungarumlaut), ő, which is a different character.

2014, Leslie Sikos, Web Standards: Mastering HTML5, CSS3, and XML, page 48:

Many accents are specific to certain languages; the double acute, for instance, is used solely in Hungarian and is sometimes referred to as the Hungarumlaut.

2017, Gavin Ambrose, The Visual Dictionary of Pre-press and Production, page 19:

(typography, very rare) The double acute accent (˝), a rare diacritical mark made up of two acute accents, chiefly used in the Hungarian language.


full point

(UK, typography) full stop, period (British printers' term)


letterspacing

en-noun

letterspacing (usually uncountable, plural letterspacings)

letterspacings (plural)
letter-spacing (alternative)

(typography) The amount of space between adjacent text characters.


vox nihili

From Latin vōx (“voice”) + nihilī (“of nothing”). See also vox populi.

(typography) A spelling or textual error.


letterspace

(typography) A space as wide as a single text character.


eraser dust

The handwritten, chalkboard type is called eraser dust.

2004, Maria Nerius, Digital Scrapbooking, →ISBN, page 75:

He is also known for designing dozens of graphic fonts during the early 1990s such as Dragonwick, Dupuy, Eraser Dust, Pixie Font, Polo Semi-Script, Rabbit Bars, and Hosting, to name only a few.

2011, James Michael Floyd, Composers in the Classroom, →ISBN, page 238:

The moment Kelly noel saw the eraser dust font at Dafont.com, she knew it would be perfect for a page about her sons playing with chalk on the driveway.

2011, Scrapbook Tips & Techniques - Book 2, →ISBN, page 80:

(computing, typography) A font that simulates wide hand-drawn letters with a slightly mottled appearance and irregular edges.


shilling mark

A development of the long s ⟨ſ⟩, an abbreviation of Latin solidus, used to mark the amount of shillings in a sum. Formerly also the slash in all its uses, but this extended sense was taken on by the term solidus.

(UK, typography, historical) Synonym of slash ⟨/⟩ in its use to mark the amount of shillings in a sum or (obsolete) in all its uses.

slash in its use to mark the amount of shillings in a sum or


slash mark

slash marks (plural)
slash-mark (alternative)

Used to distinguish the typographic sense of slash from its other uses.

Initial inquiries among professional typists uncover names like slant, slant line, slash, and slash mark. Examination of typing instruction manuals discloses additional names such as diagonal and diagonal mark, and other sources provide the designation oblique.

1965, Dmitri A. Borgmann, Language on Vacation, page 240:


slash-mark

(typography) Alternative form of slash mark.


scratch comma

scratch commas (plural)
scratch-comma (alternative)

(typography, historical) Synonym of slash ⟨ / ⟩ in its former use as a form of comma.

slash in its former use as a form of comma


scratch-comma

(typography, historical) Alternative form of scratch comma.


middot

From mid- + dot, possibly as a calque of its alternative name interpunct.


forward stroke

(UK, typography) Synonym of forward slash.


fraction slash

fraction slash (plural fraction slashes)

(typography) The slash variant ⟨⁄⟩ used for expressing fractions.


diagonal mark

To distinguish the intended sense of diagonal.

(typography) Synonym of slash as the forward slash ⟨/⟩ and sometimes also its proscribed sense inclusive of the backslash ⟨\⟩.


slant line

Used to distinguish the intended sense of slant.


oblique mark

A clarification of the intended sense of oblique.

The oblique mark ∖ above the letters implies that the notes must come in succession, the upper one first, as this mark ／ signifies a contrary succession.

1804, William Bingley, North Wales, volume II, page 338:

Any fraction may be made by typing the numerator, the oblique mark (/), and the denominator. The oblique mark is struck with the small finger of the right hand.

1941, Rupert Pitt Sorelle, Gregg Typing, page 266:

Your fourth finger on your right hand strikes semicolon (;) on the home row, reaches up slightly for p, and down to the bottom row slightly right for the oblique mark (/).

2003, Frank P. Donnelly, Touch N Type, page 20:

(typography, uncommon) Synonym of slash ⟨/⟩, sometimes (generally proscribed) inclusive of similar marks such as the backslash ⟨\⟩.


oblique stroke

The oblique, short for oblique stroke or line, is written /, originally the French way of writing or printing a comma.

1953, Eric Partridge, You Have a Point There: A Guide to Punctuation and Its Allies, page 155:

They are normally in the form "Case 79/87", in which the two digits after the oblique stroke (slash) indicate the year.

2004, Trevor C. Hartley, European Union Law in a Global Context, page 18:


oblique dash

No punctuation has been inserted in the records of cases... The oblique dash in punctuation is freely used. Where it is used as a mere flourish in conjunction with other punctuation it has been ignored, where it terminates an entry the dash has been read as a full-stop, and where it occurs in the middle of an entry it has been read as a comma.

1934, E.E. Rich, The Staple Court Books of Bristol, page vi:

In (9.2) and in the following equations an oblique dash (/) before an index r denotes differentiation with respect to χᵣ.

1962, Giuseppe Grioli, Mathematical Theory of Elastic Equilibrium (Recent Results), page 132, n. 1

Where Moore's and Finzi's datings differ substantially, both are given, separated by an oblique dash, with Moore's first.

1985, Stephen Banfield, Sensibility and English Song, page 456:


virgil

An anglicization of French virgule, from Latin virgula.

There be five manner of points and divisions most used among cunning men; the which if they be well used, make the sentence very light and easy to be understood, both to the reader and hearer: and they be these, virgil,—come,—parenthesis,—plain point,—interrogative... it is a slender stroke leaning forward, betokening a little short rest, without any perfectness yet of sentence.

No points were used by the ancient printers, excepting the colon and the period; but, after some time, a short oblique stroke, called a virgil, was introduced, which answered to the modern comma.

1828, Richard Thomson, Illustrations of the History of Great Britain, Vol. II, page 145

Whoever introduced the several points, it seems that a full-point, a point called come, answering to our colon-point, a point called virgil answering to our comma-point, the parenthesis-points and interrogative-point, were used at the close of the fourteenth, or beginning of the fifteenth century.

1842, F. Francillon, An Essay on Punctuation, page 9:

Other Chaucerian manuscripts had the virgule (or virgil or oblique: /) at the middle of lines.

1990, John McDermott, Punctuation for Now, page 20:

(typography, UK, archaic) Synonym of slash ⟨/⟩.


full-point

(typography, obsolete) Synonym of full stop or period ⟨.⟩.


plain point

There be five manner of points and divisions most used among cunning men; the which if they be well used, make the sentence very light and easy to be understood, both to the reader and hearer: and they be these, virgil,—come,—parenthesis,—plain point,—interrogative.


parenthesis-point

(typography, obsolete) Synonym of parenthesis.


colon-point

(typography, obsolete) Synonym of colon ⟨:⟩.


interrogative-point

(typography, obsolete) Synonym of question mark ⟨?⟩.


comma-point

(typography, obsolete) Synonym of comma ⟨,⟩.


fraction bar

The fraction bar is a kerned character, so unlike the solidus it will not push the numerals away a full em space.

2006, Gavin Ambrose et al., The Fundamentals of Typography, page 74:

(typography, mathematics) The line separating the numerator from the denominator, whether horizontal, oblique, or diagonal.

дробна черта

line separating numerator from denominator

diagonal mark

as a diagonal line regardless of kerning


French spacing

(typography) The archaic practice (though still current in French) of inserting a space around colons, semicolons, question marks and exclamation marks, and also two spaces between sentences.


multifont

(computing, typography) Involving multiple fonts or typefaces.


logotypy

(typography) The use of logotypes or ligatures.


unitalicize

en-verb

unitalicize (third-person singular simple present unitalicizes, present participle unitalicizing, simple past and past participle unitalicized)

unitalicizes (present singular third-person)
unitalicizing (participle present)
unitalicized (participle past)
unitalicized (past)

He unitalicizes some italicized words, he changes 'woulds' to 'shoulds.'

(typography, transitive) To change (text) from an italic typeface to a non-italic typeface.


oldstyle

Books aimed at older and possibly vision impaired readers may have more difficulty with the generally lighter appearing transitional typefaces than they might with an oldstyle typeface.

2005, Pete Masterson, Book Design and Production: A Guide for Authors and Publishers:

A sentence set in an oldstyle serif and a similar-weight sans serif at the same point size will appear to be two different sizes.

2014, Timothy Samara, Design Elements, 2nd Edition:

(typography, often attributive) A traditional style of typeface designed to mimic the handwriting of scribes.


ultracondensed

(chiefly typography) Extremely condensed.


private-use character

en-noun

private-use character (plural private-use characters)

(typography) A character whose use is defined by private users and companies rather than defined by a standard such as Unicode, and which therefore has no universally accepted meaning.


vertical line

(computing, typography) The vertical bar; |.


hintable

(typography) Having support for hinting.


Fournier point

(typography, historical) A former point size of about 11/864 French inches or (by 1799) 345 µm.