pie

(letterpress typography) Alternative form of pi (“metal type that has been spilled, mixed together, or disordered”).


accolade

First use appears c. 1591 in the publications of Thomas Lodge, borrowed from French accolade, from Occitan acolada (“an embrace”), from acolar (“to embrace”), from Italian accollato, from Vulgar Latin *accollō (“to hug around the neck”), from Latin ad- + collum (“neck”) (English collar).


color

colors (plural)
colour (alternative Commonwealth Ireland)
usage notes (alternative)

From Middle English colour, color, borrowed from Anglo-Norman colur, from Old French colour, color, from Latin color. Doublet of couleur.
Displaced English blee, Middle English blee (“color”), from Old English blēo. Also partially replaced Old English hīew (“color”) and its descendants (English hue), which is less often used in this sense.
The spelling color was popularized in modern American English by Noah Webster, to match the spelling of the word's Latin etymon, and make all American spellings of the derivatives consistent (colorimeter, coloration, colorize, colorless, etc).

колори́т

interest, especially in a selective area

(typography) The relative lightness or darkness of a mass of written or printed text on a page. (See type color on Wikipedia.Wikipedia)


en

The name of the letter comes from Latin en. The typographic sense dates to 1793.

(typography) A unit of measurement equal to half an em (half the height of the type in use).


point

en-noun

point (countable and uncountable, plural points)

→ Cantonese: point

→ Indonesian: poin

→ Japanese: ポイント (pointo)

→ Korean: 포인트 (pointeu)

→ Malay: poin

From Middle English poynt, from Old French point m (“dot; minute amount”), from Latin pūnctum (“a hole punched in; a point, puncture”), substantive use of pūnctus m, perfect passive participle of pungō (“I prick, punch”) (ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *pewǵ- (“prick, punch”)); alternatively, from Old French pointe f (“sharp tip”), from Latin pūncta f (past participle). Mostly displaced native Middle English ord (“point”), from Old English ord (“point”). Doublet of pointe, ponto, puncto, punctum, punt, and punto.

kärki

position at the front or vanguard of an advancing force

decimal point

not used when reading decimal fractions aloud

A small discrete division or individual feature of something.

(typography) a unit of measure equal to 1/12 of a pica, or approximately 1/72 of an inch (exactly 1/72 of an inch in the digital era).


comma

en-noun

comma (plural commas or (rare) commata or (obsolete) commaes)

commas (plural)
commata (plural rare)
commaes (obsolete plural)
come (alternative obsolete)

From Latin comma, from Ancient Greek κόμμα (kómma), from κόπτω (kóptō, “I cut”).

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. In the fifteenth century this punctuation was improved by the famous Aldus Manutius with the typographical art in general; when he gave a better shape to the comma, added the semicolon, and assigned to the former points more proper places.

1828, Richard Thomson, Illustrations of the History of Great Britain, Vol. II, pp. 145–6

(typography) The punctuation mark ⟨,⟩ used to indicate a set of parts of a sentence or between elements of a list.

Komma

also denotes the German or Fraktur comma with a shape similar to /

(Romanian typography) A similar-looking subscript diacritical mark.


index

index (plural indexes or indices or (obsolete, in use in the 17th century) index's)

indexes (plural)
indices (plural)
index's (obsolete plural)

⇒ Chinese: 引得 (yǐndé)

→ Japanese: インデックス (indekkusu)

From Latin index (“a discoverer, informer, spy; of things, an indicator, the forefinger, a title, superscription”), from indicō (“point out, show”); see indicate.

der

(typography) A symbol resembling a pointing hand, used to direct particular attention to a note or paragraph.


black

en-adj

black (comparative blacker or more black, superlative blackest or most black)

blacker (comparative)
more black (comparative)
blackest (superlative)
most black (superlative)
blacke (alternative obsolete)
Black (alternative)
blk (alternative)
blak (alternative)

Bislama: blak

Sranan Tongo: blaka

Aukan: baaka

→ Caribbean Hindustani: blaaka

Tok Pisin: blak

Torres Strait Creole: blaik

→ Dutch: black

→ French: black

→ Greek: μπλάκης (blákis)

From Middle English blak, black, blake, from Old English blæc (“black, dark", also "ink”), from Proto-West Germanic *blak, from Proto-Germanic *blakaz (“burnt”) (compare Dutch blaken (“to burn”), Low German blak, black (“blackness, black paint, (black) ink”), Old High German blah (“black”)), possibly from Proto-Indo-European *bʰleg- (“to burn, shine”) (compare Latin flagrāre (“to burn”), Ancient Greek φλόξ (phlóx, “flame”), Sanskrit भर्ग (bharga, “radiance”)).
Sense 20 is a semantic loan from Cantonese 黑面 (hak1 min6, “to pull a long face, to scowl”).

sort

of coffee or tea, without milk or other whitener

Compare two Unicode symbols: ☞ (“WHITE RIGHT POINTING INDEX”); ☛ (“BLACK RIGHT POINTING INDEX”).

(typography) Said of a symbol or character that is solid, filled with color.


white

en-adj

white (comparative whiter or more white, superlative whitest or most white)

whiter (comparative)
more white (comparative)
whitest (superlative)
most white (superlative)
whight (alternative obsolete)
whyte (alternative obsolete)
whyght (alternative obsolete)
White (alternative)

Bislama: waet

Sranan Tongo: weti

Aukan: weti

Saramaccan: wéti

Tok Pisin: wait

→ Japanese: ホワイト (howaito)

white fella

⇒ Nyunga: wadjela

white gin

⇒ Gamilaraay: waatyin

⇒ Ngiyambaa: wadjiin

⇒ Wiradjuri: waajin

Inherited from Middle English whit, hwit, from Old English hwīt, from Proto-West Germanic *hwīt, from Proto-Germanic *hwītaz, from Proto-Indo-European *ḱweydós, a byform of *ḱweytós (“bright; shine”).
Cognates
* West Frisian wyt
*Dutch wit
* German weiß
* German weiss
* Norwegian Bokmål hvit
* Norwegian Nynorsk kvit
* Lithuanian šviẽsti (“to gleam”), šviesa (“light”)
* Old Church Slavonic свѣтъ (světŭ, “light”), свѣтьлъ (světĭlŭ, “clear, bright”)
* Persian سفید (sefid, “white”), Persian سپید (sepid, “white”)
* Avestan 𐬯𐬞𐬀𐬉𐬙𐬀 (spaēta, “white”)
* Sanskrit श्वेत (śvetá, “white, bright”).

cog

(typography) Not containing characters; see white space.

Compare two Unicode symbols: ☞ = "WHITE RIGHT POINTING INDEX"; ☛ = "BLACK RIGHT POINTING INDEX"

(typography) Said of a symbol or character outline, not solid, not filled with color. Compare black (“said of a character or symbol filled with color”).


pi

en-noun

pi (countable and uncountable, plural pis)

Unclear. Possibly from the Greek letter (see Etymology 1) as a common example of non-alphabetic character, possibly from pica (“type size”) (see Etymology 3), possibly from pie referring to its mixed nature or pied (“checkered, multicoloured”).

(letterpress typography) Metal type that has been spilled, mixed together, or disordered.


pi

en-verb

pi (third-person singular simple present pies, present participle piing, simple past and past participle pied)

pies (present singular third-person)
piing (participle present)
pied (participle past)
pied (past)

(letterpress typography) To spill or mix printing type.


pi

In computing, pi characters may be entered with special key combinations.

(typography) Not part of the usual font character set; especially, non-Roman type or symbols as opposed to standard alphanumeric Roman type.


pi

(typography) pica (conventionally, 12 points = 1 pica, 6 picas = 1 inch).


case

From Middle English case, from Old Northern French casse (compare Old French chasse (“box, chest, case”)), from Latin capsa (“box, bookcase”), from capiō (“to take, seize, hold”). Doublet of cash, chase, and chasse. Compare Spanish caja, Asturian caxa, Portuguese caixa.

(typography, by extension) The nature of a piece of alphabetic type, whether a “capital” (upper case) or “small” (lower case) letter.

դուրճ

typography: the nature of a piece of alphabetic type


stem

From Middle English stem, stemme, stempne, stevin, from Old English stemn, from Proto-West Germanic *stamni, from Proto-Germanic *stamniz, ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *steh₂- (“to stand, stay”).

der

the apple does not fall far from the stem

(typography) A vertical stroke of a letter.


wing

en-noun

wing (countable and uncountable, plural wings)

wings (plural)
weng (alternative obsolete)
whing (alternative obsolete)
wyng (alternative obsolete)

From Middle English winge, wenge, from Old Norse vængr ("wing of a flying animal, wing of a building"; compare vængi (“ship's cabin”)), from Proto-Germanic *wēingijaz, from Proto-Indo-European *h₂weh₁- (“to blow”), thus related to wind. Cognate with Danish vinge (“wing”), Swedish vinge (“wing”), Icelandic vængur (“wing”).
Replaced native Middle English fither (from Old English fiþre, from Proto-Germanic *fiþriją), which merged with Middle English fether (from Old English feþer, from Proto-Germanic *feþrō). More at feather.

gl

"wing of a flying animal, wing of a building"; compare <i class="Latn mention" lang="non">vængi</i> (“ship's cabin”)

der

ˇ wing, wedge, hǎcek, inverted circumflex (Karel Čapek)

1985, David Grambs, Literary Companion Dictionary, page 378:


bold

en-adj

bold (comparative bolder or more bold, superlative boldest or most bold)

bolder (comparative)
more bold (comparative)
boldest (superlative)
most bold (superlative)

From Middle English bold, bolde, bald, beald, from Old English bald, beald (“bold, brave, confident, strong, of good courage, presumptuous, impudent”), from Proto-West Germanic *balþ, from Proto-Germanic *balþaz (“strong, bold”), from Proto-Indo-European *bʰel-, *bʰlē- (“to bloat, swell, bubble”).
Cognate with Dutch boud (“bold, courageous, fearless”), Middle High German balt (“bold”) (whence German bald (“soon”)), Swedish båld (“bold, dauntless”). Perhaps related to Albanian ballë (“forehead”) and Old Prussian balo (“forehead”). For semantic development compare Italian affrontare (“to face, to deal with”), sfrontato (“bold, daring, insolent”), both from Latin frons (“forehead”).

cog

Many bold fonts are available on this computer.

In HTML, wrapping text in <b> and </b> tags produces bold text.

(typography, of typefaces) Having thicker strokes than the ordinary form of the typeface.

թավ

having thicker strokes than the ordinary form of the typeface

מֻדְגָּשׁ (mudgásh, literally “emphasized”)

בּוֹלֵט m (bolét, literally “conspicuous”)


ruby

→ Japanese: ルビ (rubi)

From the British 5½-point type size ruby (etymology 1), used for annotations in printed documents.

(typography) A pronunciation guide written above or beside Chinese characters.


eye

en-noun

eye (plural eyes or (archaic or dialectal) eyen or (archaic) eyne)

eyes (plural)
eyen (archaic dialectal plural)
eyne (archaic plural)

Sranan Tongo: ai

From Middle English eye, eie, yë, eighe, eyghe, yȝe, eyȝe, from Old English ēage (“eye”), from Proto-West Germanic *augā, from Proto-Germanic *augô (“eye”) (compare Scots ee, West Frisian each, Dutch oog, German Auge, Danish øje, Norwegian Bokmål øye, Norwegian Nynorsk auga, Swedish öga), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃okʷ-, *h₃ekʷ- (“eye; to see”).
Other Indo-European cognates include Latin oculus (whence English oculus), Lithuanian aki̇̀s, Old Church Slavonic око (oko), Albanian sy, Ancient Greek ὄψ (óps, “(poetic) eye; face”) and ὄσσε (ósse, “eyes”), Armenian ակն (akn), Avestan 𐬀𐬱𐬌 (aši, “eyes”), Sanskrit अक्षि (ákṣi). Related to ogle.
The uncommon plural form eyen is from Middle English eyen, from Old English ēaġan, nominative and accusative plural of ēaġe (“eye”).

cog

an eye for an eye makes the whole world blind

better than a poke in the eye with a burnt stick

better than a poke in the eye with a rusty nail

better than a poke in the eye with a sharp stick

better than a poke in the eye with a shitty stick

eye movement desensitization and reprocessing

it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God

it's all fun and games until someone loses an eye

The “e” was a bit over-inked, with a blacked-out eye.

2022, Hernan Diaz, Trust, Picador (2023):

(typography) The enclosed counter (“negative space”) of the lower-case letter e.


face

Sranan Tongo: fesi

→ Danish: fjæs

→ Norwegian:

Norwegian Bokmål: fjes

Norwegian Nynorsk: fjes

→ Swedish: fejs, fjäs

→ Wu: 番斯 (¹fe-sy)

Etymology tree
Proto-Indo-European *dʰeh₁-?
Latin faciēs
Late Latin facia
Old French facebor.
Middle English face
English face
From Middle English face, from Old French face, from Late Latin facia, from Latin faciēs (“form, appearance”). Doublet of facies. Displaced native onlete (“face, countenance, appearance”), anleth (“face”), from Old English anwlite, andwlita, compare German Antlitz; Old English ansīen (“face”), Middle English neb (“face, nose”) (from Old English nebb), Middle English ler, leor, leer (“face, cheek, countenance”) (from Old English hlēor), and non-native Middle English vis (“face, appearance, look”) (from Old French vis) and Middle English chere (“face”) from Old French chere.
In the sense of face as in reputation, influenced by Chinese 面子 (miànzi) or 臉／脸 (liǎn), both of which mean literally the front of the head and metaphorically one's public image. See lose face.

noncog

talk to the hand 'cause the face ain't listening

For the typophiles reading this, the book is attractively designed. It is set in Classic Aldine, a handsome face akin to the more popular Palatino. The designer's work is unfortunately marred by indifferent printing.

1982 August 28, Mark McHarry, “A Minor Delight”, in Gay Community News, volume 10, number 7, page 12:


slug

Nicoline van der Sijs
Slug (disambiguation)

Originally referred to a slow, lazy person, from Middle English slugge (“lazy person", also "sloth, slothfulness”), probably of either Old English or Old Norse origin; compare Norn slug (“lazy, slothful, sluggish”), dialectal Norwegian slugg (“a large, heavy body”), sluggje (“heavy, slow person”), Danish slog (“rascal, rogue”); perhaps ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *sliǵ-ōn, from *sley- (“smooth; slick; sticky; slimy”) or otherwise from the root of Old Norse slókr (“lazy person, oaf”), whence Icelandic slókur (“laziness”). Compare also Dutch slak (“snail, slug”). Doublet of slotch.

inh

(letterpress typography) A piece of type metal imprinted by a linotype machine; also a black mark placed in the margin to indicate an error; also said in application to typewriters; type slug.


furigana

Borrowed from Japanese 振り仮名 (furigana, “annotating kana”, literally “assigned phonetic character”).

bor

Furigana are indispensable for some names of people and places whose Kanji are not included among the official Kanji list, and whose sounds can be unusual and even idiosyncratic.

2014, Insup Taylor, M. Martin Taylor, Writing and Literacy in Chinese, Korean and Japanese, revised edition, John Benjamins, →ISBN, page 290:

(Japanese typography) Kana printed next to or above a kanji or other character to indicate the pronunciation.


lead

en-noun

lead (countable and uncountable, plural leads)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-lead.wav

From Middle English led, leed, from Old English lēad (“lead”), from Proto-West Germanic *laud (“lead”), possibly borrowed from Proto-Celtic *ɸloudom, from Proto-Indo-European *plewd- (“to flow”).
Cognate with Scots leid, lede (“lead”), North Frisian lud, luad (“lead”), West Frisian lead (“lead”), Dutch lood (“lead”), Low German Lod (“solder, plummet”), German Lot (“solder, plummet, sounding line”), Swedish lod (“solder, plummet”), Icelandic lóð (“a plumb, weight”), Irish luaidhe (“lead”) Latin plumbum (“lead”), Finnish luoti (“bullet”). Doublet of loth. More at flow.
* (graphite in a pencil): Graphite was once believed to be a form of lead; see black lead and plumbago.

cog

This copy has too much lead; I prefer less space between the lines.

(uncountable, typography) Vertical space in advance of a row or between rows of text. Also known as leading.


come

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, obsolete) Alternative form of comma in its medieval use as a middot ⟨·⟩ serving as a form of colon.

comma in its medieval use as a middot serving as a form of colon


drive

en-noun

drive (countable and uncountable, plural drives)

[d̠ɹ̠ ̝ʷaɪv]

From Middle English driven, from Old English drīfan (“to drive, force, move”), from Proto-West Germanic *drīban, from Proto-Germanic *drībaną (“to drive”), from Proto-Indo-European *dʰreybʰ- (“to drive, push”).
Cognates
Cognate with Scots drive (“to drive”), North Frisian driwe (“to drive”), Saterland Frisian drieuwe (“to drive”), West Frisian driuwe (“to chase, drive, impel”), Dutch drijven (“to drive”), Low German drieven (“to drive, drift, push”), German treiben (“to drive, push, propel”), Norwegian Bokmål drive, Danish drive (“to drive, run, force”), Norwegian Nynorsk driva, Swedish driva (“to drive, power, drift, push, force”), Icelandic drífa (“to drive, hurry, rush”).

cog

(typography) An impression or matrix formed by a punch drift.


weight

en-noun

weight (countable and uncountable, plural weights)

weights (plural)
wt. (alternative)
waight (alternative obsolete)

Belizean Creole: wayt

→ Japanese: ウエイト (ueito)

→ Burmese: ဝိတ် (wit)

From Middle English weight, weiȝte, weght, wight, from Old English wiht, ġewiht (“weight”), from Proto-Germanic *wihtiz ("weight"; compare *weganą (“to move”)), from Proto-Indo-European *weǵʰ- (“to move; pull; draw; drive”). Equivalent to weigh + -th (abstract nominal suffix).
Cognate with Scots wecht, weicht (“weight”), Saterland Frisian Wächte (“scale”), Gewicht (“weight”), West Frisian gewicht (“weight”), Dutch gewicht (“weight”), German Low German Wicht, Gewicht (“weight”), German Wucht (“massiveness, force”), Gewicht (“weight”).

gloss

"weight"; compare <i class="Latn mention" lang="gem-pro">*weganą</i> (“to move”)

inh

font weight

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


overshoot

en-noun

overshoot (countable and uncountable, plural overshoots)

/ˌəʊ.vəˈʃuːt/

From Middle English overshoten, oversheten (“to shoot beyond, shoot past, pour down from above”), perhaps continuing Old English ofersċēotan (“to shoot down”), equivalent to over- + shoot.

inh

The portion resting beyond the capline or baseline is called overshoot.

2019, Reece Patton, Formatting for Print:

The bowl of the D and the O are usually not identical, as most D forms do not have overshoot or undershoot.

2020, Karen Cheng, Designing Type, 2nd edition, page 88:

(countable, uncountable, typography, design) The portion of a letter extending above the capline of other letters of the same font, or the relative degree of such extent.


reset

→ German: Reset

→ Japanese: リセット (risetto)

(typography) That which is reset; printed matter set up again.


ring

→ French: ring
→ Romanian: ring

→ Hungarian: ring

→ Italian: ring

→ Japanese: リング

→ Polish: ring

→ Serbo-Croatian: ring

→ Spanish: ring

→ Turkish: ring

From Middle English ryng, from Old English hring (“ring, circle”), from Proto-West Germanic *hring, from Proto-Germanic *hringaz (“ring”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)krengʰ-, extended nasalized form of *(s)ker- (“to turn, bend”). Doublet of rank and rink, as well as indirectly range.
Cognates
* West Frisian ring
* Low German Ring
* Dutch ring
* German Ring
* Swedish ring
* Finnish rengas
More distantly cognate with Proto-Slavic *krǫgъ (whence Bulgarian кръг (krǎg), Polish krąg, Russian круг (krug)).

(typography) A diacritical mark in the shape of a hollow circle placed above or under the letter; a kroužek.


stick

en-noun

stick (countable and uncountable, plural sticks)

→ Catalan: estic

→ Italian: stick

→ Korean: 스틱 (seutik)

→ Portuguese: stique, estique

→ Sranan Tongo: tiki

From Middle English stikke (“stick, rod, twig”), from Old English sticca (“rod, twig”), from Proto-West Germanic *stikkō, from Proto-Germanic *stikkô, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)teyg- (“to pierce, prick, be sharp”). Cognate with Saterland Frisian Stikke (“stick”), West Flemish stik (“stick”). Related to stigma.

der

it is easy to find a stick to beat a dog

[…]although the headings may often be in other type, still, as these are composed in the same stick, they cannot fail to justify;[…]

1854, Thomas Ford, The Compositor's Handbook, page 125:

A tool, control, or instrument shaped somewhat like a stick.

(dated, letterpress typography) A composing stick, the tool used by compositors to assemble lines of type.


apex

Borrowed from Latin apex (“point, tip, summit”).

The highest or the greatest part of something, especially forming a point.

A diacritic in Classical Latin that resembles and gave rise to the acute.

A diacritic in Middle Vietnamese that indicates /ŋ͡m/.

A sharp upward point formed by two strokes that meet at an acute angle, as in "W", uppercase "A", and closed-top "4", or by a tapered stroke, as in lowercase "t".


solid

en-adj

solid (comparative more solid or solider, superlative most solid or solidest)

more solid (comparative)
solider (comparative)
most solid (superlative)
solidest (superlative)

From Middle English solide, borrowed from Old French solide, from Latin solidus (“solid”), from Proto-Indo-European *solh₂-i-dʰ-o-s (“entire”), suffixed form of root *solh₂- (“integrate, whole”). Doublet of sol, sold, soldo, solidus, sou, and xu.

doublet

American English writes many words as solid that British English hyphenates.

(typography) Written as one word, without spaces or hyphens.


solid

en-adv

solid (comparative more solid, superlative most solid)

more solid (comparative)
most solid (superlative)

Many long-established compounds are set solid.

(not comparable, typography) Without spaces or hyphens.


tail

Sranan Tongo: tere

From Middle English tail, tayl, teil, from Old English tæġl (“tail”), from Proto-West Germanic *tagl, from Proto-Germanic *taglą (“hair, fiber; hair of a tail”), from Proto-Indo-European *doḱ- (“hair of the tail”), from Proto-Indo-European *deḱ- (“to tear, fray, shred”). Cognate with Scots tail (“tail”), Saterland Frisian Tail (“tail, end”), West Frisian teil (“tail”), Dutch teil (“tail, haulm, blade”), Low German Tagel (“twisted scourge, whip of thongs and ropes; end of a rope”), German Zagel (“tail”), dialectal Danish tavl (“hair of the tail”), Swedish tagel (“hair of the tail, horsehair”), Norwegian tagl (“tail”), Icelandic tagl (“tail, horsetail, ponytail”), Gothic 𐍄𐌰𐌲𐌻 (tagl, “hair”). In some senses, apparently by a generalization of the usual opposition between head and tail.

cog

have the world by the tail on a downhill pull

mackerel sky and mare's-tails make lofty ships carry low sails

mackerel sky and mare's-tails make tall ships carry low sails

the cow knows not the worth of its tail till it loses it

trust someone as far as one could fling a bull by the tail

(typography) The lower loop of the letters in the Roman alphabet, as in g, q or y.


river

→ Finnish: river (“river (in poker)”)

Sranan Tongo: liba

From Middle English ryver, from Anglo-Norman rivere, from Early Medieval Latin rīpāria (“littoral, riverbank”), from Latin rīpārius (“of a riverbank”), from Latin rīpa (“river bank”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₁reyp- (“to scratch, tear, cut”). Unrelated to Latin rīvus (“stream”) (whence rival, derive). Doublet of riviera and rivière. Displaced native Old English ēa.

der

lake [⇒ thesaurus] "stream of running water"

Appendix:Roget MICRA thesaurus/Class III § 348. River

(typography) A visually undesirable effect of white space running down a page, caused by spaces between words on consecutive lines happening to coincide.

نهر أبيض

typography: visually undesirable effect of white space running down a page


space

en-noun

space (countable and uncountable, plural spaces)

From Middle English space, from Anglo-Norman space, variant of espace, espas et al., and spaze, variant of espace, from Latin spatium, from Proto-Indo-European *(s)peh₂- (“to stretch, to pull”).

مَسَافَة

gap between written characters, lines etc.

Fully Automated Luxury Queer Space Communism

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 240–1:

Horizontal spacing is further divided into multiples and fractions of the em. The multiples are called quads. The fractions are called spaces.

1979, Marshall Lee, Bookmaking, page 110:

Other larger spaces – known as quads – were used to space out lines.

2005, Phil Baines, Andrew Haslam, Type & Typography, 2nd edition, page 91:

(heading) A bounded or specific extent, physical or otherwise.

(letterpress typography) A piece of metal type used to separate words, cast lower than other type so as not to take ink, especially one that is narrower than one en (compare quad).


dagger

From Middle English daggere, daggare, dagard, probably adapted from Old French dague (1229), related to Occitan, Italian, Spanish daga, Dutch dagge, German Degen, Middle Low German dagge (“knife's point”), Old Norse daggarðr, Danish daggert, Faroese daggari, Welsh dager, dagr, Breton dac, Albanian thikë (“a knife, dagger”), thek (“to stab, to pierce with a sharp object”).
In English attested from the 1380s.
The ultimate origin of the word is unclear. Grimm suspects Celtic origin.
Others have suggested derivation from an unattested Vulgar Latin *daca "Dacian [knife]", from the Latin adjective dācus. Chastelain (Dictionaire etymologique, 1750) thought that French dague was a derivation from German dagge, dagen, although not attested until a much later date).
The knightly dagger evolves from the 12th century. Guillaume le Breton (died 1226) uses daca in his Philippide. Other Middle Latin forms include daga, dagga, dagha, dagger, daggerius, daggerium, dagarium, dagarius, diga; the forms with -r- are late 14th century adoptions of the English word).
OED points out that there is also an English verb dag (“to stab”) from which this could be a derivation, but the verb is attested only from about 1400.
Relation to Old Armenian դակու (daku, “adze, axe”) has also been suggested. Alternatively, a connection from Proto-Indo-European *dʰāg-u- and cognate with Ancient Greek θήγω (thḗgō, “to sharpen, whet”).


wedge

en-noun

wedge (countable and uncountable, plural wedges)

From Middle English wegge (“wedge”), from Old English weċġ (“wedge”), from Proto-West Germanic *wagi, from Proto-Germanic *wagjaz.

The wedge is used in Czech and is illustrated by the Czech name for the diacritic, haček.

1982, Thomas Pyles, John Algeo, The Origins and Development of the English Language, 3rd edition, page 49:

The tilde and the circumflex have a place in the ASCII scheme but the wedge and the umlaut do not.

1996, Geoffrey Keith Pullum, William A. Ladusaw, Phonetic Symbol Guide, 2nd edition, page xxvi:

The háček or ‘wedge’ ⟨ˇ⟩ is a diacritic commonly used in Slavic orthographies. […] As a tone mark the wedge is used iconically for a falling-rising tone as in Chinese Pinyin.

1999, Florian Coulmas, “háček”, in The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems, page 193:

Any symbol shaped like a V in some given orientation.


stroke

The noun is derived from Middle English strok, stroke (“blow from a weapon, cut”), from Old English strāc, from Proto-West Germanic *straik, from Proto-Germanic *straikaz (“stroke”), from Proto-Indo-European *streyg- (“to rub, stroke; to shear; to strike”).
Sense 3.6.2.2 (“the oblique, slash, or virgule (‘/’)”) is a contraction of oblique stroke, a variant of oblique which was originally used in telegraphy.
The verb is derived from the noun.
Cognates
* German Streich (“stroke”)
* Middle Low German strēk (“stroke, trick, prank”)
* Scots strak, strake, straik (“blow, stroke”)

isku

one of a series of beats or movements against a resisting medium, by means of which movement through or upon it is accomplished

ход

single movement or thrust of a part (such as a piston) of a machine that moves back and forth; length of this movement

A single movement of a paintbrush, chisel, pen, pencil, or similar implement; a line or mark made by such an implement.

(linguistics, calligraphy, typography) A line making up a written character.

خَطّ

line or mark made on a surface by an implement for drawing, writing, etc.

筆畫 /笔画

line making up a written character; specifically, a Chinese, Japanese, or Korean character

(computing) In Unicode: the formal name of the individual horizontal strikethroughs (as in "A̶").

Subject: Fire. Dear Sir-stroke-Madam: I am writing to inform you of a fire which has broken out at the premises of … No. That's too formal.

2006 February 3, Graham Linehan, “Calamity Jen”, in The IT Crowd, season 1, episode 2:

(UK, Ireland, Commonwealth) The oblique, slash, or virgule ("/").


nut

→ Japanese: ナット (natto)

From Middle English nute, note, from Old English hnutu, from Proto-West Germanic *hnut, from Proto-Germanic *hnuts (“nut”), from a root *knu- possibly shared with Proto-Celtic *knūs and Latin nux (“nut”). Based on the form of the nouns and the restriction of the root to Germanic, Celtic and Italic, it has been argued to be of non-Indo-European (substrate) origin.
See also West Frisian nút, Dutch noot, German Nuss, Danish nød, Swedish nöt, Norwegian nøtt.

dió

walnut in particular and an element in the name of some other nuts

dióféle

literally: ’walnut-like’, the family of this fruit

walnuts, hazelnuts/peanuts, chestnuts, and related fruits

even a blind squirrel can find a nut once in a while

(typography slang) En, a unit of measurement equal to half of the height of the type in use.

Halbgeviert

typography: unit equal to half of the height of the type in use


pipe

→ Bengali: পাইপ (paip)

desc

→ Gulf Arabic: پيپ (pēp, bēb, “smoking pipe”), پايپ (pāyp, bāyb, “medium of transportation (sense 2.1)”)

→ Hindi: पाइप (pāip)

→ Japanese: パイプ (paipu)

→ Korean: 파이프 (paipeu)

→ Malay: paip

→ Maori: paipa

→ Russian: пайп (pajp)

→ Urak Lawoi': ปาเฮะ (pahëq)

From Middle English pīpe, pype (“hollow cylinder or tube used as a conduit or container; duct or vessel of the body; musical instrument; financial records maintained by the English Exchequer, pipe roll”), from Old English pīpe (“pipe (musical instrument); the channel of a small stream”), from Proto-West Germanic *pīpā. Reinforced by Vulgar Latin *pīpa, from Latin pipire, pipiare, pipare, from pīpiō (“to chirp, peep”), of imitative origin. Doublet of fife.
The “storage container” and “liquid measure” senses are derived from Middle English pīpe (“large storage receptacle, particularly for wine; cask, vat; measure of volume”), from pīpe (above) and Old French pipe (“liquid measure”). In specific contexts, calques similar units of measure such as Portuguese pipa.
The verb is from Middle English pīpen, pypyn (“to play a pipe; to make a shrill sound; to speak with a high-pitched tone”), from Old English pīpian (“to pipe”).

onomatopoeic

imitative

inh

While parseing an xml document( sax parser ), trying to replace ' | ' with ' & ' , it finds the pipe, but won't replace with amper.

2001 July 13, JimmyMac, “java and xml”, in comp.lang.java.help (Usenet):

(computing, typography) The character |.

Meanings relating to computing.
The character |.


bullet

en-noun

bullet (countable and uncountable, plural bullets)

From Middle English bullet (“an official tag or badge of registration or identification”), from Old French bullete, diminutive of boule (“ball”). Later influenced by Middle French boulette and French boulet.

inh

(typography) A printed symbol in the form of a solid circle, “•”, often used to mark items in a list.

odrážka

typography: printed symbol in the form of a solid circle


ABC

Like QWERTY, the name is based on the first letter keys.

(computing, typography) A keyboard layout in which all keys are arranged in alphabetical order in English.


graph

Clipping of graphic formula. From 1878; verb from 1889.

A graph is a token-level nondistinctive representation of a grapheme. It can differ from the other variants of its grapheme with regard to upper case, lower case, script, print, typeface style, typeface size, etc.

2003, J. Richard Andrews, Introduction to Classical Nahuatl, Revised Edition, University of Oklahoma Press, page 10:

(linguistics, typography) A graphical unit on the token-level, the abstracted fundamental shape of a character or letter as distinct from its ductus (realization in a particular typeface or handwriting on the instance-level) and as distinct by a grapheme on the type-level by not fundamentally distinguishing meaning.


(software, publishing, typography) Abbreviation of PostScript Level 2.


em

Attested since 1808. In typography, the em is named after the em quadrat (later called em quad), from m quadrat, a metal type used in letterpress typesetting, which is as wide as the point size of the font.

etymid

name of the Latin script letter _M_, _m_

(typography) A unit of measurement equal to the height of the type in use.


hook

sometimes in Northern England and Ireland, otherwise obsolete

From Middle English hoke, from Old English hōc, from Proto-West Germanic *hōk, from Proto-Germanic *hōkaz, variant of *hakô (“hook”), probably ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *kog-, *keg-, *keng- (“peg, hook, claw”).
Cognates
Compare West Frisian heak, Dutch haak (“hook”)) (compare West Frisian/Dutch hoek (“hook, angle, corner”), Low German Hook, Huuk); also related to hake.

(typography) A diacritical mark shaped like the upper part of a question mark, as in ỏ.

felső kérdőjel

typography: a diacritical mark shaped like the upper part of a question mark: ỏ

Common diacritics in Slavonic language are the hook ˇ (as in haček – Czech for ‘hook’) and the stroke ´ (robić – Polish for ‘do/make’).

2003, Language Issues, XV-XVIII, page 36:

In Czech, palatalization is normally indicated by the symbol ˇ, called haček or “hook.”

2003, David Adams, The Song and Duet Texts of Antonín Dvořák, page 168:

2004, Keesing’s Record of World Events L:i–xii, page unknown
In detailing the proposed shortening of the Czech Republic to Česko…the hook (hacek) erroneously appeared over the letter “e” instead of the “C”.


minion

en-noun

minion (countable and uncountable, plural minions)

1490, from Middle French mignon (“lover, royal favourite, darling”), from Old French mignon (“dainty, pleasing, gentle, kind”), from Frankish *minnju (“love, friendship, affection, memory”), from Proto-Germanic *minþijō, *mindijō (“affectionate thought, care”), from Proto-Indo-European *men- (“to think”). Doublet of mignon.

der

(uncountable, typography, printing) The size of type between nonpareil and brevier, standardized as 7-point.


slash

Late Middle English, originally a verb of uncertain etymology. Perhaps of imitative origin, or possibly from Old French esclachier (“to break in pieces”), a variant of esclater, which is likely a Germanic borrowing, from Frankish *slaitan (“to slit, tear”).
Used in the Wycliffe Bible as slascht (see 1 Kings 5:18) but otherwise unattested until 16th century. Conjunctive use from various applications of the punctuation mark ⟨/⟩. See also slash fiction.

onomatopoeic

imitative

der

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:

(originally US, typography) The slash mark: the punctuation mark ⟨/⟩.

(often proscribed) Any similar typographical mark, such as the backslash ⟨\⟩.


dash

From Middle English daschen, dassen, from Danish daske (“to slap, strike”), related to Swedish daska (“to smack, slap, spank”), of obscure origin. Compare German tatschen (“to grope, paw”), Old English dwǣsċan (“to quell, put out, destroy, extinguish”). See also dush.

noncog

(typography) Any of the following symbols: ‒ (figure dash), – (en dash), — (em dash), or ― (horizontal bar).


hash

From French hacher (“to chop”), from Middle French hacher, from Old French hacher, from Old French hache (“axe”), from Frankish *happjā (“axe”). Compare also Old English ġehæċċa (“sausage meat”, literally “that which is hacked or chopped up”).

ncog

(typography) The # symbol (octothorpe, pound).


bar

en-noun

bar (countable and uncountable, plural bars)

→ Albanian: bar m

→ Arabic: بَار m (bār)

→ Armenian: բար (bar)

→ Bulgarian: бар (bar)

→ Burmese: ဘား (bha:)

→ Chichewa: bála

→ Cantonese: 吧 (baa¹)

→ Czech: bar m

→ Danish: bar c

→ Dutch: bar m

→ Esperanto: baro

→ Estonian: baar

→ French: bar m
→ Romanian: bar

→ Galician: bar m

→ Georgian: ბარი (bari)

→ German: Bar f

→ Greek: μπαρ n (bar)

→ Gulf Arabic: بار (bār)

→ Hebrew: בָּר (bar), בָּאר (bár)

→ Hungarian: bár (also via German)

→ Icelandic: bar m

→ Irish: beár m

→ Italian: bar m

→ Japanese: バー (bā)

→ Khmer: បារ (baa)

→ Korean: 바 (ba)

→ Lithuanian: bãras m

→ Macedonian: бар m (bar)

→ Malagasy: ba

→ Mandarin: 吧 (bā)

→ Norwegian:

Bokmål: bar m

Nynorsk: bar m

→ Persian: بار (bâr)

→ Polish: bar m

→ Portuguese: bar m

→ Russian: бар m (bar)

→ Serbo-Croatian: ба̑р m, bȃr m

→ Slovene: bȃr m

→ Spanish: bar m

→ Swahili: baa

→ Swedish: bar c (see there for further descendants)

→ Thai: บาร์ (baa)

→ Turkish: bar

→ Xhosa: íbhári

→ Zulu: ibha

From Middle English barre, from Old French barre (“beam, bar, gate, barrier”), from Vulgar Latin *barra, of uncertain origin. Doublet of barre.

der

(typography) Any of various lines used as punctuation or diacritics, such as the pipe ⟨|⟩, fraction bar (as in 12), and strikethrough (as in Ⱥ), formerly (obsolete) including oblique marks such as the slash.


typeface

typefaces (plural)
type face (alternative)

(Technically Aptos and Calibri are typefaces, while a “font” refers to a particular face or size, like italics or boldface. But in practice, “font” is often used as a synonym for “typeface,” including by Microsoft employees interviewed for this article.)

2024 February 28, Victor Mather, “Microsoft Word’s Subtle Typeface Change Affected Millions. Did You Notice?”, in The New York Times, →ISSN:

(typography) The particular design of some type, font, or a font family.


font

→ Thai: ฟอนต์ (fɔ́n)

From Middle French fonte (“act or process of founding or melting; act of producing items from molten metal; cast iron; set of type”) (modern French fonte), either:
* from fondre (“to melt, melt down; to smelt”), from Old French fondre, from Latin fundere, the present active infinitive of fundō (“to pour out; to make by smelting, found”), ultimately from Proto-Indo-European *ǵʰewd- (“to pour”); or
* from Late Latin *fundita, a noun use of funditus, a perfect passive participle form of Latin fundō (see above; the classical Latin form is fūsus).

(typography) A set of glyphs of unified design, belonging to one typeface (e.g., Helvetica), style (e.g., italic), and weight (e.g., bold). Usually representing the letters of an alphabet and its supplementary characters.

In metal typesetting, a set of type sorts in one size.

In phototypesetting, a set of patterns forming glyphs of any size, or the film they are stored on.

In digital typesetting, a set of glyphs in a single style, representing one or more alphabets or writing systems, or the computer code representing it.

خَطّ

typesetting: a grouping of consistently-designed glyphs

(originally computing, typography, informal) A typeface.

They bought a license for the Gulliver font and installed that font on several machines.

en:computer file encoding a typeface or subset thereof

(computing, typography, metonymic) A computer file containing the code used to draw and compose the glyphs of one or more typographic fonts on a computer display or printer.


shadow

en-noun

shadow (countable and uncountable, plural shadows)

From Middle English schadowe, schadewe, schadwe (also schade > shade), from Old English sċeaduwe, sċeadwe, oblique form of sċeadu (“shadow, shade; darkness; protection”), from Proto-West Germanic *skadu, from Proto-Germanic *skadwaz (“shade, shadow”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ḱeh₃- (“darkness”).
Cognates
Cognate with Scots scaddow, schaddow (“shadow”), Saterland Frisian Skaad (“shade, shadow”), Dutch schaduw (“shadow”), German Schatten (“shadow, shade”), Norwegian skodde (“fog, mist”), Irish scáth (“shadow”), Ancient Greek σκότος (skótos, “darkness, gloom”) (whence English scoto-).

cog

(typography) A drop shadow effect applied to lettering in word processors etc.


glyph

First attested in 1727. Borrowed from French glyphe, from Ancient Greek γλυφή (gluphḗ, “carving”), from γλύφω (glúphō, “I carve, engrave”).

глиф

carved relief representing a sound, word or idea

The grid column header displays a sort glyph indicating an ascending or descending ordering.

(typography, computing) A visual representation of a letter, character, or symbol, in a specific font and style.


question mark

Do you see this curious-looking mark in the margin? It is a little crooked mark with a dot at the bottom of it. It is a question mark. It always comes at the end of questions.

1856, Jacob Abbott, “Lesson V. Questions.”, in Learning to Read. […] (Harper’s Picture Books for the Nursery; The Little Learner), New York, N.Y.: Harper & Brothers, […], →OCLC, part III (Hard Reading Lessons), page 132:

When you come to a question mark, you must stop and rest. If the question may be answered by yes or no, your voice must rise on the last word before the question mark.

1857, Richard Greene Parker [i.e., Richard Green Parker], J[ames] Madison Watson, “Lesson II. The Interrogation Point.”, in The National Second Reader: […], revised edition, New York, N.Y.: A[lfred] S[mith] Barnes & Co., […], →OCLC, part I (Marks and Pauses), paragraph 4, page 14:

As the relation of the faulted lamprophyre dike to faults 1 to 3 is not known, the intersection of the dike with these faults is shown on plate 13 with question marks.

1954, George C. Hardin, Jr., “[Moore Hill Fault System, Crittenden and Livingston Counties.] Geology.”, in William R. Thurston, George C. Hardin, Jr., Harry J. Klepser, Fluorspar Deposits in Western Kentucky: Part 3 (Geographical Survey Bulletin; 1012-E), Washington, D.C.: United States Government Printing Office, →OCLC, page 96:

Fortunately, then, this text in which the play is preserved to us is, in general, substantively good. The quarto's punctuation and lineation, however, are much less reliable than its language. The pointing is not in most respects notably worse than that in comparable publications; but the text is peppered with question marks, the printers either having spilled these among the other marks or run out of periods.

1966, Lawrence J. Ross, “Introduction”, in Cyril Tourneur [now thought to be by Thomas Middleton], edited by Lawrence J. Ross, The Revenger’s Tragedy (Regents Renaissance Drama), Lincoln, Neb., London: University of Nebraska Press, →ISBN, page xxxi:

I would like to comment only on the question mark in the topic – and raise several questions for our discussion hidden within that question mark, questions integral to the ongoing debates since [John] Calvin, integral to the "historically extended and socially embedded argument within the Reformed tradition about the very goods that constitute that tradition" (adapting Alasdair MacIntyre's description of a living tradition).

2009, Dirk J. Smit, “On Self-love: Impulses from Calvin and Calvinism on Life in Society?”, in Robert Vosloo, editor, Essays on Being Reformed: Collected Essays 3, Stellenbosch, Western Cape, South Africa: SUN MeDIA Stellenbosch, →ISBN, part 4 (Contemporary Challenges), page 493:

The waitress, [...] places my coffee beside my notebook then stops to gawp at what I've written and a deep frown forms between her unplucked eyebrows. She stares at the initials, the connecting lines, the question marks, the circles. I see them as she sees them: a load of rubbish, fanciful nonsense from a person who has watched one too many cop shows.

2015, Dorothy Koomson, “Smitty”, in That Girl from Nowhere, London: Arrow Books, Penguin Random House, published 2016, →ISBN, page 415:

(typography) The punctuation mark "?", used at the end of a sentence to indicate a question.

ܫܘܼܘܕܵܥܵܐ ܕܫܘܼܐܵܠܵܐ

šuwdāʿā d-šuʾālā


virgule

Borrowed from Middle French virgule, from Latin virgula (“twig; scratch comma”), from virga (“rod, branch”) + -ulus (diminutive suffix). Doublet of virgula.

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

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

(typography, obsolete or historical) A medieval punctuation mark similar to the slash ⟨/⟩ or pipe ⟨|⟩ and used as a scratch comma and caesura mark.

(typography, dated) A slash, ⟨/⟩ or ⟨／⟩.

A slash, ⟨/⟩ or ⟨／⟩.
Used to mark line breaks within quotes.

(typography, dated) A pipe, ⟨|⟩.
(poetry) Used to mark metrical feet.

A pipe, ⟨|⟩.
Used to mark metrical feet.


Gothic

en-adj

Gothic (comparative more Gothic, superlative most Gothic)

more Gothic (comparative)
most Gothic (superlative)
gothic (alternative)
Gothick (alternative obsolete)
goffick (alternative)

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

From Late Latin gothicus (“Gothic, barbaric”), from Ancient Greek Γοτθικός (Gotthikós), from Ancient Greek Γότθοι (Gótthoi, “Goths”) + -ικός (-ikós, “-ic”), proposed to derive from unattested Gothic *𐌲𐌿𐍄𐌰 (*guta). Equivalent to Goth + -ic. The various usages of the adjective are introduced nearly simultaneously in the first half of the 17th century. The literal meaning “of the Goths” is found in the 1611 preface of the King James Bible, in reference to the Gothicke tongue. The generalized meaning of “Germanic, Teutonic” appears in the 1640s. Reference to the medieval period in Western Europe, and specifically the architecture of that period (“barbaric style”, initially a term of abuse), also appears in the 1640s, as does reference to “Gothic characters” or “Gothic letters” in typography.

готически

of the type formerly used for printing German

Gothic letters

black letter
black letter#English:_typography

(typography, England) Synonym of black letter.

(typography, US) Of a sans serif typeface using straight, even-width lines, also known as grotesque or lineal.


sort

From Middle English sort, soort, sorte (cognate Dutch soort, German Sorte, Danish sort, Swedish sort), borrowed from Old French sorte (“class, kind”), from Latin sortem, accusative form of sors (“lot, fate, share, rank, category”).

Green managed to recover a total of 151 sorts (the name for individual pieces of type) out of a possible 500,000.

2024 May 5, Holly Black, “Remnants of a Legendary Typeface Have Been Rescued From the River Thames”, in artnet:

(typography) A piece of metal type used to print one letter, character, or symbol in a particular size and style.


bracket

From earlier bragget, *bracket, from Middle English *braget, *braket (attested in braket nail), from Old French braguette (“the opening in the fore part of a pair of breeches, one's fly”), a diminutive of Old French brague (“knickers, britches”), from Old Occitan braga, from Latin brāca (“pants”), from Transalpine Gaulish *brāca, from Proto-Germanic *brāks, an early form of Proto-Germanic *brōks (“leggings, breeches, trousers”).

kllapë

generically any of “(”, “)”, “[”, “]”, “{”, “}”, “⟨”, “⟩”, “<”, “>”, etc.

(typography) The small curved or angular corner formed by a serif and a stroke in a letter.


roman

In some early printed Bibles quoted text is indicated by changing the font from roman to italic.

2021, Claire Cock-Starkey, Hyphens & Hashtags, Bodleian Library, page 48:

(of type, typography) Upright, as opposed to italic.

(of text, typography, computing) Of or related to the Latin alphabet or roman numerals.


roman

(typography) One of the main three types used for the Latin alphabet (the others being italics and blackletter), in which the ascenders are mostly straight.


sans

From Middle English saunz, sans, borrowed from Old French sans, senz, sens, from Latin sine (“without”) conflated with absēns (“absent, remote”). Compare French sans, Italian senza, Portuguese sem, and Spanish sin.


ellipsis

en-noun

ellipsis (countable and uncountable, plural ellipses)

Unadapted borrowing from Latin ellīpsis, from Ancient Greek ἔλλειψις (élleipsis, “omission”). Doublet of ellipse.

der

The ellipsis in 1, 2, 3, ..., 7, 8 means that the numbers 4, 5, and 6 are not explicitly included, but are considered to be a part of the pattern.

The ellipsis in 0.333... means that the number is a repeating decimal, having threes that go on forever.

CARD: Hey Baby. Thanks for the … last night. Love you!
HAZEL: Wow. I've never despised an ellipsis so much in my life.

2006, Danielle Corsetto, Girls with Slingshots: 114:

(typography, mathematics) A mark consisting of multiple full stops (with or without spaces), used to indicate omitted, missing, or illegible words; or (in mathematics) that a pattern continues.


copy

copies (plural)
coppy (alternative)
coppie (alternative)
copie (alternative)

Etymology tree
Middle English copy
English copy
From Middle English copy, copie, from Old French copie (“abundance, plenty; transcript, copy”), from Medieval Latin copia (“reproduction, transcript”), from Latin cōpia (“plenty, abundance”), from *coopia, from co- (“together”) + ops (“wealth, riches”). More at opulent.

ру́копись

для сда́чи в печа́ть

материа́л

для статьи́, заме́тки, книги, публика́ции

en:text that is to be typeset or similarly prepared and published

en:output of copywriters, as marketing or advertising matter

(typography, journalism, publishing) The text (words, content) that is to be typeset or similarly prepared and published.

(marketing, advertising) The output of copywriters, who are employed to write material which encourages consumers to buy goods or services.

Submit all copy to the appropriate editor.

(uncountable) The text to be set into newspaper articles, magazine pages, or similar.

This organization doesn't publish any copy that hasn't been edited by a good copy editor.


diagonal

backslash

antonym(s) of “oblique punctuation mark”

/daɪˈæɡənəl/

/dɑɪˈæɡ.ə.nəl/

From Middle French diagonal, from Latin diagōnālis, from Ancient Greek διαγώνιος (diagṓnios, “from angle to angle”), from διά (diá, “across”) + γωνία (gōnía, “angle”).

диагонал

something forming or resembling a diagonal line

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.

Anything forming or resembling such a line, particularly:

(typography, uncommon) Synonym of slash ⟨/⟩.


serif

From earlier ceriph, ceref, of obscure derivation. There are two (not directly interrelated) candidates for a possible Dutch origin: 1.) the noun schreef (“stroke”, now also “serif” as a semantic loan), related with schrapen (“to scrape”); and 2.) the verb schrafferen (“to provide with horizontal lines, to shade”), from Italian sgraffiare. For the latter, compare German Schraffe (“serif”), although this again may be a semantic loan based on the English word rather than original to it. Alternatively, from Late Latin cerificus (“waxen”), from Latin cera (“wax”), after the ruled lines used in writing on wax tablets.

It is generally believed, by those who study such things, that serif typefaces are easier to read when reading a lot of words. The hickeys (serifs) on each letter tend to push our eye toward the next letter.

2018, Paul W. Ross, Revival: The Handbook of Software for Engineers and Scientists:

(typography) A short line added to the end of a stroke in traditional typefaces, such as Times New Roman.


serif

(typography) Of a typeface, provided with serifs.


agate

en-noun

agate (countable and uncountable, plural agates)

From Middle French agathe, from Latin achatēs, from Ancient Greek ἀχάτης (akhátēs, “agate”).

(countable, typography) One fourteenth of an inch.


vertex

Late Middle English, borrowed from Latin vertex (“whirl, eddy; top, crown, peak, summit”). Doublet of vortex.

der

Mathworld article on vertices of polyhedra

Mathworld article on vertices of polygons

(typography) A sharp downward point opposite a crotch, as in the letters "V" and "W" but not "Y".


hat

Sranan Tongo: ati

From Middle English hat, from Old English hætt, from Proto-Germanic *hattuz (“hat”), from Proto-Indo-European *kadʰ- (“to guard, cover, care for, protect”). Cognate with North Frisian hat (“hat”), Danish hat (“hat”), Swedish hatt (“hat”), Icelandic hattur (“hat”), Finnish hattu (“hat”), Latin cassis (“helmet”), Lithuanian kudas (“bird's crest or tuft”), Avestan 𐬑𐬀𐬊𐬛𐬀 (xaoda, “hat”), Persian خود (xud, “helmet”), Welsh cadw (“to provide for, ensure”). Compare also hood.

cog

I’lll have to leave it up to antiques experts to tell you when objects were marked that way, but I can tell you it’s called a “hacek” (with the hat over the “c” and pronounced “hacheck”.) It is used to show that a “c” is pronounced as “ch” and an “s” as “sh.” Sometimes linguists just call it the “hat.”

1997 October 6th, “Patricia V. Lehman” (user name), rec.antiques (Usenet newsgroup), “Re: Unusual Mark – made in Cechoslovakia”, Message ID: <34390399.BD7@umich.edu>#1/1

(typography, nonstandard, rare) The háček symbol.


small caps

1856. Compare caps (“capitals”), 1856; small capitals, 1770.

Because small caps are smaller than full size caps—slightly larger than the x-height—they are less obtrusive and do not overwhelm the upper and lower case type as full size capitals would.

2006, Nigel French, chapter 3, in InDesign Type: Professional Typography with Adobe InDesign CS2, Adobe Press, →ISBN, page 37:

(typography) Capital letters shown in the same form but in small size (typically of the same size as lower-case letters).


fount

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Naomi Persephone Amethyst (NaomiAmethyst)-fount.wav

A variant of font, influenced by fount (etymology 1) being a synonym of font (“natural source of water, spring”).

Of each Body he provides a Fount ſuitable to ſuch ſorts of VVork as he deſigns to do; But he provides not an equal vvieght^([sic – meaning weight]) of every Fount; Becauſe all theſe Bodies are not in equal uſe: For the Long-Primmer, Pica and Engliſh are the Bodies that are generally moſt uſed; And therefore he provides very large Founts of theſe, viz. of the Long-Primmer in a ſmall Printing-Houſe; Five hundred Pounds vveight Romain and Italica, vvhereof One hundred and fifty Pounds may be Italica.

1683, Joseph Moxon, “Numb[er] II. 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, § 2 (Of Letter), page 17:

Founts are large or ſmall, according to the demand of the printer. vvho orders them by the hundred vveight, or by ſheets. VVhen a printer orders a fount of five hundred, he means that the fount, conſiſting of letters, points, ſpaces, quadrates, &c. ſhall vveigh 500 ℔. […] [A] fount does not contain an equal number of a and b, or of b and c, &c. the letter-founders have therefore a lift or tariff, or as the French call it, a police, by vvhich they regulate the proportions betvveen the different ſorts of characters that compoſe a fount; […]

1765, Temple Henry Croker, Thomas Williams, Samuel Clark [et al.], “FOUNT, or Font”, in The Complete Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. […], volume II, London: […] J. Wilson & J. Fell, […], →OCLC, signature [Kk3], verso, column 1:

For the small characters it was in fact imperative to use such a fount as was available; not to mention that no strictly accurate fount of Chinese type has as yet been cast.

1892, Herbert Giles, “Preface”, in A Chinese–English Dictionary, London: Bernard Quaritch […]; Shanghai; Hongkong: Kelly and Walsh, →OCLC, page v:

Mr. Tallboy corrected the misprints, damned their eyes for using the wrong name-block, made it clear to them that they had set the headlines in the wrong fount, cut the proof to pieces, pasted it up again in the correct size, and returned it.

1933, Dorothy L[eigh] Sayers, “Murder Must Advertise. Chapter 4. Remarkable Acrobatics of a Harlequin.”, in The Five Red Herrings (Suspicious Characters) and Murder Must Advertise, Garden City, N.Y.: Nelson Doubleday, published [1977?], →OCLC, page 344:

The company is to be congratulated on the neatness and businesslike look of the tickets, and also on the very clear and artistic founts of type which are used.

1940 May, G. W. J. Potter, “Tickets of the Great Southern Railways”, in The Railway Magazine, London: Tothill Press, →ISSN, →OCLC, page 292:

(UK, printing, typography, chiefly dated, historical) Synonym of font (“a set of glyphs of unified design, usually representing the letters of an alphabet and its supplementary characters belonging to one typeface, style, and weight; a typeface; a family of typefaces”).


octothorpe

octothorpes (plural)
octothorp (alternative)

/ˈɒktəʊθɔːp/

/ˈɑːktoʊθɔːɹp/

Origin disputed. There is no known usage before it was adopted by Bell Labs in the late 1960s or early 1970s, so most sources agree it was coined by someone at Bell Labs, but accounts from Bell Labs personnel conflict on the details. The derivation as a traditional term from octo- (“eight”) + thorpe (“field, hamlet or small village”) lacks any evidence, but there is near universal agreement that the first element refers to the number eight. Eight is derived from the number of ends of the lines. Thorpe could be a reference to Jim Thorpe, as one proponent was a fan of the athlete.

unk

disputed

prefix

The pad 1 provides keys for numerals 0 to 9, while the sextile or asterisk (*) key is decoded to provide a decimal point and the octothorp ( # ) key generates a command to send the contents of the memory unto the telephone line through a send circuit 7, a coupling circuit 8 and the hybrid network 2.

1973, US patent application ser. no. 05/422,816 (filed 3 December 1973), issued as patent no. 3,920,926 (18 November 1975), Telephone Data Set Including Visual Display Means, col. 3

Octothorp is the # on a push-button telephone. Rumor at the telephone company is that a man named Charles B. Octothorp, wanting to make his name famous, would approach anyone with a Touch-Tone ’phone, stop, and say admiringly, “That’s a mighty handsome octothorp you have there.”

1982, Willard R. Espy, A Children's Almanac of Words at Play, New York: Clarkson N. Potter, →ISBN, retrieved 2022-01-18, page 230:

Strings are enclosed in double quotation marks, numbers are not enclosed in anything, and dates and Boolean values are enclosed between octothorpe (#) characters.

2004, Andrew Douglas Pitonyak, Openoffice.org Macros Explained, Whitefish Bay, Wisconsin: Hentzenwerke Publishing, →ISBN, page 139:

(chiefly US, typography) The hash or square symbol #, used mainly in telephony and computing.


stub

From Middle English stubbe (“tree stump”), from Old English stybb, stubb (“tree stump”), from Proto-West Germanic *stubb, from Proto-Germanic *stubbaz (compare Middle Dutch stubbe, Old Norse stubbr, Faroese stubbi (“stub”)), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)tew-; compare steep (“sharp slope”). Doublet of stob.
Sense extended in Middle English to similarly shaped objects. Verb sense “strike one’s toe” is recorded 1848; “extinguish a cigarette” 1927.

(typography, in tabular matter) A row heading in a table (with horizontal reference, whereas a column heading has vertical reference).


antique

en-adj

antique (comparative antiquer, superlative antiquest)

antiquer (comparative)
antiquest (superlative)
antic (alternative obsolete)
anticke (alternative obsolete)
antiq. (alternative abbreviation)

Borrowed from French antique (“ancient, old”), from Latin antiquus (“former, earlier, ancient, old”), from ante (“before”); see ante-. Doublet of antic.

der

(typography) Designating a style of type.


antique

antiques (plural)
antic (alternative obsolete)
anticke (alternative obsolete)
antiq. (alternative abbreviation)

(typography) A style of type of thick and bold face in which all lines are of equal or nearly equal thickness.


bicameral

From bi- + Latin camera (“chamber”) + -al.

Aspect values on bicameral fonts are based on the size of the lowercase characters.

2001, Yves Savourel, XML Internationalization and Localization, page 80:

Bicameral (upper- and lowercase) unserifed roman fonts were apparently first cut in Leipzig in the 1820s.

2004, Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style, version 3.0, page 255:

2004, Parmenides, Peter Koch, et al., Carving the Elements: A Companion to the Fragments of Parmenides, page 91,
For more than a thousand years, classical Greek has been habitually written in a bicameral, polytonic alphabet (one with caps and lower case and a set of diacritics marking tone and aspiration).

(typography) Of a script or typeface: having two cases, upper case and lower case.

bikameraalinen

(typography, of a typeface or script) Having two cases: uppercase and lowercase


bowl

Bislama: bol

→ Esperanto: bovlo

desctree

→ French: bol
→ Catalan: bol
→ Greek: μπολ (bol)

→ German: Bowle, → Bowl

→ Hungarian: bólé

→ Ido: bolo

→ Irish: bolla

→ Japanese: ボール (bōru)

→ Latvian: bole (probably via German)

→ Korean: 볼 (bol)

→ Scottish Gaelic: bòl

→ Swedish: bål

From Middle English bolle, from Old English bolla, bolle (“bowl, cup, pot, beaker, measure”), from Proto-West Germanic *bollā, from Proto-Germanic *bullǭ (“ball, round vessel, bowl”).
Cognate with North Frisian bol (“bun, bread roll”), Middle Low German bolle, bole (“round object”), Dutch bol (“ball, sphere, scoop, dot”), German Bolle (“bulb”), Danish bolle (“bowl, bread roll”), Icelandic bolli (“cup”). Doublet of boule and pulla.

inh

(typography) A rounded portion of a glyph that encloses empty space, as in the letters d and o.


z-variant

z (axis) + variant; from the three dimensions visualized for the character space. The x-axis separates characters by semantics (function and meaning, e.g. A from B), the y-axis separates them by their general form (abstract shape, e.g. A from a), and the z-axis by their actual shape (minor details such as typeface, e.g. a from a).

(typography, Unicode) A shape variant of a Han character, encoded for historical reasons.


justification

en-noun

justification (countable and uncountable, plural justifications)

/ˌd͡ʒʌstɪfɪˈkeɪʃən/

From Middle English justificacioun, justification, from Middle French justification, from Late Latin iustificationem, justificationem < iustificatio, from iustifico, from Latin iustus.

der

(typography, uncountable) The alignment of text to the left margin (left justification), the right margin (right justification), or both margins (full justification).


page

→ Hindi: पेज (pej)

→ Japanese: ページ (pēji)

→ Korean: 페이지 (peiji)

Borrowed from Middle French [Term?], from Latin pāgina, from Proto-Indo-European *peh₂ǵ-. Doublet of pagina.

(typography) The type set up for printing a page.


Old English

Wiktionary’s coverage of Old English terms

(typography, historical) The form of black letter used by 16th-century English printers.


whack

Uncertain. Originally Scottish; probably onomatopoeic, but compare Middle English thakken, from Old English þaccian (whence Modern thwack by conflation with whack). Sense 6 of the verb is likely a semantic loan from Malay hentam (“to strike; to do something carelessly”).

sl

del c:\docs\readme.txt
Delete c colon whack docs whack readme dot text.

(slang, computing, typography) The backslash, ⟨ \ ⟩.


oblique

From Middle French oblique, from Latin oblīquus (also spelled oblīcus) (“slanting, sideways, indirect, envious”).

uder

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:

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

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


orphan

orphans (plural)
orphane (alternative obsolete)

Late Middle English, from Late Latin orphanus, from Ancient Greek ὀρφανός (orphanós, “without parents, fatherless”), from Proto-Indo-European *h₃órbʰos.
 PIE word
 *h₃órbʰos
Cognate with Sanskrit अर्भ (árbha), Latin orbus (“orphaned”), Old High German erbi, arbi (German Erbe (“heir”)), Old English ierfa (“heir”). More at erf.

weeskind

person whose (parent or) parents have died

anak yatim (who has lost father, literally means orphan child)

(typography) A single line of type, beginning a paragraph, at the bottom of a column or page.

fransk horeunge

single line of type at the bottom of page


greeking

If text gets smaller than this value, [Adobe] Illustrator shows the text blocks as gray bars, an operation called greeking. Both type size and view size figure into the equation, so that 6-point type greeks at 100-percent view size and 12-point type greeks at 50 percent. Greeking speeds the screen display because gray bars are easier to draw than individual characters.

2002, Deke McClelland, “The Interface”, in Real World Adobe Illustrator 10, Berkeley, Calif.: Peachpit Press, →ISBN, pages 46–47:

Designers have long worked with a concept known as greeking. Greeking is a method of drawing gray bars to represent blocks of text rather than taking the time to image them all on the screen. […] Unless you really want to see every character of every word at every size, there's hardly any reason to turn greeking off.

2007, David Blatner, Gene Gable, Real World QuarkXPress 7, Berkeley, Calif.: Peachpit Press, →ISBN:

The use of greeking (also called dummy text) allows page designers to place text on a page without the actual content acting as a distraction. The history of greeking is unclear, but it was first used in the middle of the 20th century. The text was based on the words of Cicero, a Roman leader whose writings are admired. The language he spoke and wrote was Latin rather than Greek, so the naming of this dummy text is misleading.

2007, Susan E. L. Lake, Karen Bean, “Using Other Design Tools”, in The Business of Technology: Digital Desktop Publishing, Mason, Oh.: Thompson/South-Western, →ISBN, page 109:

(computing, typography) Nonsense text or graphics inserted into a document as a placeholder to create a dummy layout, or to demonstrate a type font; the practice of using such placeholder text or graphics.


storey

en-noun

storey (plural storeys or (obsolete) stories)

storeys (plural)
stories (obsolete plural)
story (alternative Philippines US)

From Middle English story, via Medieval Latin historia (“narrative, illustraton, frieze”) from Ancient Greek ἱστορίᾱ (historíā, “learning through research”). The current sense arose from narrative friezes on upper levels of medieval buildings, esp. churches. Doublet of story and history.
An alternative etymology derives Middle English story from Old French *estoree (“a thing built, building”), from estoree (“built”), feminine past participle of estorer (“to build”), from Latin instaurare (“to construct, build, erect”), but this seems unlikely since historia already had the meaning "storey of a building" in Anglo-Latin.

der

Storey in the Encyclopædia Britannica (11th edition, 1911)

The IPA symbol for a voiced velar stop is the single-storey , not the double-storey .

(typography) A vertical level in certain letters, such as a and g.


inferior

en-adj

inferior (comparative more inferior, superlative most inferior)

more inferior (comparative)
most inferior (superlative)
inferiour (alternative)

Borrowed from Latin īnferior (“lower in situation or place”), comparative of īnferus (“below, underneath”).

bor

an inferior figure or letter

Located below:
(typography) Printed in subscript.


superior

/sʉːˈpɪə.ɹiː.ə/

From Middle English, borrowed from Old French superiour, from Latin superior (“higher, upper”).

a superior figure or letter


kern

From French carne (“corner; projecting angle; quill of a pen”), from Latin cardinem (“hinge”) or from Etymology 1. The verb is a back-formation from kerned, which is from the noun. Doublet of cardo.

uder

A few types have a portion of the face letter projecting over the body, as in the letter f ; this projection is called the kern, and in combination with other letters the projecting part generally extends over the next letter, as in fe. In those combinations, wherein the kern would come in contact with another letter, compound types are cast, as in the case of ff, fi, fl, ffi, ffl.

1856, Independent Order of Odd Fellows, Odd Fellows' Literary Casket, volumes 6-7, page 360:

(hot metal printing, typography) Any part of a letter which extends into the space used by another letter.


kern

en-verb

kern (third-person singular simple present kerns, present participle kerning, simple past and past participle kerned)

kerns (present singular third-person)
kerning (participle present)
kerned (participle past)
kerned (past)
kerne (alternative)

If you need to kern anything beyond the most commonly used pairs, you can use applications software such as Adobe PageMaker to customize pairs.

2001, Constance J. Sidles, Graphic Designer's Digital Printing and PrePress Handbook, page 51:

Especially consider kerning if you are printing on a relatively high-resolution printer, such as a 600-dpi (dots per inch) laser printer.

2001, Bill Camarda, Special Edition Using Microsoft Word 2002, page 122:

Remember, the goal of kerning is to make letter pairs look natural, not necessarily to minimize letterspaces.

2006, Tova Rabinowitz, Exploring Typography, page 320:

You should kern letter pairs when spacing between characters is too wide or too narrow.

2008, Terry Rydberg, Exploring Adobe InDesign CS4, page 98:

(typography, chiefly proportional font printing) To adjust the horizontal space between selected pairs of letters (characters or glyphs); to perform such adjustments to a portion of text, according to preset rules.

välistää

to adjust the horizontal space between selected pairs of letters


ligand

Borrowed from Latin ligandus, gerundive of ligo (“bind”).

ربيطة

something that binds to another chemical entity

(typography) A letter that orthography requires or allows to be ligated with one or more other letters to form a ligature, such as a in æ or o in œ.


pica

en-noun

pica (countable and uncountable, plural picas)

From Medieval Latin pica (“pica: a service book”), possibly from Latin pīca (“magpie”) after the piebald appearance of the typeset page (cf. pie (“disordered type”)). The relation to the printer's measure is unclear, as no edition of the text in pica type is known. The French pica derives from English rather than vice versa.

der

I had been at Baldwin's before dinner in consequence of a letter from him which showed me that, by using a pica instead of an English letter in printing my book, I might comprise it within such a number of sheets as a guinea-volume should contain […].

1790, James Boswell, edited by Danziger & Brady, Boswell: The Great Biographer, Yale, published 1989, page 30:

(typography, printing, uncountable) A size of type between small pica and English, now standardized as 12-point.

(typography, uncountable, usually with qualifier) A font of this size.

(typography, countable) A unit of length equivalent to 12 points, officially ³⁵⁄₈₃ cm (0.166 in) after 1886 but now (computing) ¹⁄₆ in.


vee

(computing, typography) A unit of vertical spacing, typically corresponding to the height of an ordinary line of text.


brace

From Middle English brace, from Old French brace (“arm”), from Latin bracchia, the nominative and accusative plural of bracchium (“arm”).

(typography) A curved, pointed line, also known as "curly bracket": { or } connecting two or more words or lines, which are to be considered together, such as in {role, roll}; in music, used to connect staves.


elite

From Middle English elit, from Old French elit, eslit (“chosen, elected”) past participle of elire, eslire (“to choose, elect”), from Latin eligere (“to choose, elect”), with past participle electus; see elect.

(typography) A typeface with 12 characters per inch.


indent

en-verb

indent (third-person singular simple present indents, present participle indenting, simple past and past participle indented)

indents (present singular third-person)
indenting (participle present)
indented (participle past)
indented (past)

Partly from Middle English indenten (“to dent in”), equivalent to in- + dent (see dent); partly from Middle English indenten, endenten, from Old French endenter (“to provide with teeth”), from en- (“in-, en-”) + dent (“tooth”), from Latin dēns.

uder

to indent the first line of a paragraph one em

to indent the second paragraph two ems more than the first

(typography) To begin (a line or lines) at a greater or lesser distance from the margin. See indentation, and indention. Normal indent pushes in a line or paragraph. "Hanging indent" pulls the line out into the margin.

правя абзац

typography: to begin a line or lines at a greater or less distance from the margin


indentation

en-noun

indentation (countable and uncountable, plural indentations)

The resulting document does not contain the indentation and line breaks found in the original document.

2007, Robert Richards, Pro PHP XML and Web Services, Apress, →ISBN, page 502:

(typography) The act of beginning a line or series of lines at a little distance within the flush line of the column or page, as in the common way of beginning the first line of a paragraph.

абзац

act of beginning a line at a distance from the flush line


paragon

From Anglo-Norman paragone, peragone, Middle French paragon, from Italian paragone (“comparison”) or Spanish parangón, from Byzantine Greek παρακόνη (parakónē, “whetstone”), from Ancient Greek παρακονάω (parakonáō, “I sharpen, whet”), from παρά (pará) + ἀκόνη (akónē, “whetstone”) (from Proto-Indo-European *h₂eḱ- (“sharp”)).

affix

(typography, printing, dated) The size of type between great primer and double pica, standardized as 20-point.


pearl

en-noun

pearl (countable and uncountable, plural pearls)

Horace
Jean Jannon
New Testament
Vergil
en:pearl
en:pearl (disambiguation)
en:pearl (typography)

From Middle English perle, from Old French perle of uncertain etymology. Probably via unattested Medieval Latin *pernula, from Latin perna (“haunch; a marine bivalve shaped like a leg of lamb”) but also derived from Medieval Latin perla, from Latin perula (“little bag”). Its typographic use follows the name given by Jean Jannon to the type used in his miniature editions of Vergil, Horace, & the New Testament in the 1620s, which were the smallest printed works to his time. Its surfing use derives from the supposed resemblance to pearl diving.

der

(uncountable, typography, printing, dated) The size of type between diamond and agate, standardized as 5-point.


decimal point

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

(typography) A period/full stop ⟨.⟩ or middot ⟨·⟩ used to set off the decimal or fractional part of a number.

(typography, inexact) Any decimal mark, inclusive of commas, separatrices, etc.

десетична запетая

the decimal mark symbol, characteristic to the native tongue


grotesque

en-adj

grotesque (comparative grotesquer or more grotesque, superlative grotesquest or most grotesque)

grotesquer (comparative)
more grotesque (comparative)
grotesquest (superlative)
most grotesque (superlative)

From Middle French grotesque (French grotesque), from Italian grottesco (“of a cave”), from grotta. Compare English grotto.


grotesque

en-noun

grotesque (countable and uncountable, plural grotesques)


subset

en-verb

subset (third-person singular simple present subsets, present participle subsetting, simple past and past participle subsetted)

subsets (present singular third-person)
subsetting (participle present)
subsetted (participle past)
subsetted (past)

(transitive, computing, typography) To extract only the portions of (a font) that are needed to display a particular document.


unicameral

In the ancient world, Greek was written in a script that was unicameral and atonic. It consisted of a single set of forms – the ones we now regard as upper case. There was little or no punctuation, and there were no diacritics.

2004, Letter Arts Review, volume 19, Norman, Okla.: Calligraphy Review, →OCLC, page 37:

There have been several misunderstandings with regard to Georgian. The Unicode table speaks of "capital" Georgian letters (for example, georgian capital letter an) and of caseless letters (for example, georgian letter an). In fact, the modern Georgian script is unicameral. Two issues gave rise to this confusion. First, the fact that there are two types of Georgian fonts: those for running text and those for titles. […] Second, in the ancient Georgian script, khutsuri, there were indeed two cases.

2007 September, Yannis Haralambous, translated by P. Scott Horne, Fonts & Encodings, Sebastopol, Calif.: O'Reilly Media, Inc., →ISBN, page 75:

(typography) Of a script or typeface: making no distinction between upper and lower case, but rather having only one case.


stigma

stigmas (plural)
stigmat (alternative)
stigmate (alternative)
stigme (alternative)

Partly from Ancient Greek στίγμα (stígma, “mark, sign”), and partly from the acrophonic value of its initial st- as well as the analogy with the name of sigma.

der

(typography) A ligature of the Greek letters sigma and tau, (Ϛ/ϛ).

stigmo

a ligature of the Greek letters sigma and tau


margin

→ Cantonese: 孖展 (maa¹ zin²)

→ Korean: 마진 (majin)

/ˈmɑːɹd͡ʒ(ə)n/

From Middle English margyn, from Latin marginem (possibly via Old French margin), accusative of margō (“edge, brink, border, margin”). Doublet of marge and margo.

(typography) The edge of the paper, typically left blank when printing but sometimes used for annotations etc.

kantlyn

typography: edge of the paper that remains blank


initial

From Middle French initial or directly from its Latin etymon initiālis (“of the beginning, incipient, initial”), from initium (“a going in, entrance, beginning”), from inire (“to go in, enter upon, begin”), from in (“in”) + ire (“to go”).

(typography, calligraphy) A distinguished initial letter of a chapter or section of a document.

caplletra

calligraphy: distinguished initial letter


mutton

en-noun

mutton (countable and uncountable, plural muttons)

From Middle English motoun, moton, from Old French mouton (“sheep”), from Vulgar Latin moltō, from Gaulish *multon-, from Proto-Celtic *moltos (“ram, wether”). Doublet of mouton.

(typography slang) Em, a unit of measurement equal to the height of the type in use.


emphasis

emphasis (countable and uncountable, plural emphases)

From Latin emphasis, from Ancient Greek ἔμφασις (émphasis, “significance”), from ἐμφαίνω (emphaínō, “I present, I indicate”), from ἐν- (en-, “in”) + φαίνω (phaínō, “I show”).

der

(typography) The use of boldface, italics, or other such formatting to highlight text.

èmfasi

typography: the use of boldface, italics, or other such formatting to highlight text


crotch

Of disputed origin; two possibilities seem likely:
* From Middle English croche, variant of crucche (“crutch”); compare crook.
* From Middle English croche, variant of crouche (“cross, crozier”).

could eat the crotch out of a low flying duck

(typography) The open counter (negative space) formed by two downward strokes that meet at an internal acute angle, potentially above a vertex, as in the letters "V" and "Y".


gutter

Sranan Tongo: gotro

From Middle English gutter, guttur, goter, from Anglo-Norman guttere, from Old French goutiere (French gouttière), ultimately from Latin gutta (“drop”).

(typography) A space between printed columns of text.


Dvorak

August Dvorak
Dvorak Simplified Keyboard

From Czech Dvořák. The keyboard is named after the American inventor August Dvorak.

Dvorak keyboard

(computing, typography) Describing an optimized keyboard layout for the English language, in which the alphabet is arranged in the order PYFGCRL on the top row, AOEUIDHTNS on the middle, or home row, and QJKXBMWVZ on the bottom row, thus placing the letters most frequently used in the home row. Many variants on Dvorak layouts also exist, including keyboards for right-hand-only and left-hand-only-typists.


obelisk

Hippodrome of Constantinople
Obelisk of Theodosius
Theodosius I
Thutmose III

From Middle French obelisque, from Latin obeliscus (“obelisk”), from Ancient Greek ὀβελίσκος (obelískos), diminutive of ὀβελός (obelós, “needle”). Compare obelus.

(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.

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.


baseline

Several characters typically have descenders below the lower baseline.

(typography) A line used as the basis for the alignment of glyphs.

účaří

typography: line used as the basis for the alignment of glyphs


caption

Borrowed from Latin captiō (“deception, fraud”), from the past participle of capiō (“I take, I seize”) (English capture). Compare Middle English capcioun (“seizure, capture”).

cog

(typography) The descriptive heading or title, of a document or part thereof.

заглавие

descriptive title or heading of (part of) a document


quad

Shortened, via clipping or abbreviation, from various English terms. Ultimately related to Latin quattuor (“4”); compare quadri-, quadruple.
The typography senses are from the abbreviation quad. for obsolete quadrat; the keyboard command comes from the verb sense.

“Quadrats, sir. We call 'em quads.” . . . Quads are the spaces left between the paragraphs that come white on the paper. If you look here, at this page that is set-up, you will see that they are deeper than the spaces left between the words and letters—regular little trenches.

1853 April 16, Charles Dickens, Household Words, number 160, page 148:

Horizontal spacing is further divided into multiples and fractions of the em. The multiples are called quads. The fractions are called spaces.

1979, Marshall Lee, Bookmaking, page 110:

Other larger spaces – known as quads – were used to space out lines.

2005, Phil Baines, Andrew Haslam, Type & Typography, 2nd edition, page 91:

(typography, obsolete) Abbreviation of quadrat.

(letterpress typography) A blank metal block used to fill short lines of type.

(printing slang) A joke used to fill long days of setting type.

(typography, phototypesetting and digital typesetting) A keyboard command which aligns text with the left or right margin, or centred between them. In combination, as quad left, quad right, or quad centre.


quad

en-verb

quad (third-person singular simple present quads, present participle quadding, simple past and past participle quadded)

quads (present singular third-person)
quadding (participle present)
quadded (participle past)
quadded (past)

(typography, letterpress typography, transitive, intransitive) To fill spaces in a line of type with quads. Also quad out.

(typography, phototypesetting and digital typesetting, transitive, intransitive) To align text with the left or right margin, or centre it.


orientation

en-noun

orientation (countable and uncountable, plural orientations)

→ Japanese: オリエンテーション (orientēshon)

→ Korean: 오리엔테이션 (orienteisyeon)

/ˌɔɹiɛnˈteɪʃən/

From French orientation. By surface analysis, orient + -ation.

(typography, countable) The direction of print across the page; landscape or portrait.


italicize

en-verb

italicize (third-person singular simple present italicizes, present participle italicizing, simple past and past participle italicized)

italicizes (present singular third-person)
italicizing (participle present)
italicized (participle past)
italicized (past)
italicise (alternative Commonwealth)

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


italics

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

There is no need to put the whole paragraph in italics.

[T]hey [the Catholics and Puritans] encumbered their verſion [of the Bible] with a load of uſeleſs Italics; often without the leaſt neceſſity, and almoſt always to the detriment of the text. In fact, either the words in Italics are virtually implied in the Hebrew, or they are not. In the former caſe they are a real part of the text, and ſhould be printed in the ſame character: in the latter, they are generally ill aſſorted and clumſy ekes, that may well be ſpared; and which often disfigure the narration under pretence of connecting it.

1786, Alexander Geddes, Prospectus of a New Translation of the Holy Bible from Corrected Texts of the Originals, Compared with the Ancient Versions. […], Glasgow: Printed for the author, and sold by R[obert] Faulder, […]; C. Eliot, […]; and —— Cross, […], →OCLC, page 95:

Writing of cyclic diagramming, he speaks of ". . . the practical state of locomotives that pass through any number of engine and maintenance crews' hands in the course of a week's common user working, receiving love from none". The italics are mine.

1959 May, G. F. Fiennes (reviewer), “New Reading on Railways: British Railways Today and Tomorrow. By G. Freeman Allen. Ian Allan. 25s.”, in Trains Illustrated, page 271:

(typography, plural only) Letters in an italic typeface.


counter

From Old French contre, Anglo-Norman cuntre, both from Latin contra.

[ˈkʰaʊ̯.ɾ̃ɚ]

(typography) The enclosed or partly closed negative space of a glyph.


runt

The OED classifies this word as "of obscure origin". Some see a connection to Middle Dutch runt (“ox”), but the OED considers this to be unlikely.

unk

obscure

(typography) A single word (or portion of a hyphenated word) that appears as the last line of a paragraph.

orposana

single word that appears as the last line of a paragraph


em dash

em dashes (plural)
em rule (alternative)
emdash (alternative)
em-dash (alternative)
m dash (alternative)
m-rule (alternative)
mutton dash (alternative)

Named for its width, which is equal to the width of the letter m or M, or approximately twice the width of an en dash.

(typography) The symbol (—) (used to demarcate a parenthetical thought or to indicate a break, or for emphasis)


en dash

en dashes (plural)
en rule (alternative)
endash (alternative)
en-dash (alternative)
n dash (alternative)
n-rule (alternative)
nut dash (alternative)

Named for its width, which is equal to the width of the letter n or N, or approximately half the width of an em dash.

(typography) The punctuation mark –, which is used, for instance, to indicate a range.


widow

PIE word
 *dwóh₁
From Middle English widwe, from Old English widuwe, from Proto-West Germanic *widuwā, from Proto-Germanic *widuwǭ, from Proto-Indo-European *h₁widʰéwh₂, possibly from *h₁weydʰh₁-, *widʰ- (“to separate, split, cleave, divide”), whence also wood from Old English widu, wudu.
Cognates include German Witwe, Dutch weduwe, Gothic 𐍅𐌹𐌳𐌿𐍅𐍉 (widuwō), Old Irish fedb, Latin vidua, Old Church Slavonic въдова (vŭdova), Sanskrit विधवा (vidhavā) and Persian بیوه (bive, bêva), Middle Persian wēwag, Avestan viðavā- "widow" .

(typography) A single line of type that ends a paragraph but is separated from it by being carried over to the next page or column.

intañvez

single line of type carried over to the next page


tofu

en-noun

tofu (countable and uncountable, plural tofus)

Borrowed from Japanese 豆(とう)腐(ふ) (tōfu), from Middle Chinese 豆腐 (duwᴴ bju^X, “curdled bean”). Doublet of dubu.

der

(computing, typography) A box or rectangle, empty or with a question mark or hexadecimal code inside, displayed by some systems in place of a character not supported by available fonts. (such as _□ or 𐕪)


flush

en-adj

flush (comparative flusher, superlative flushest)

flusher (comparative)
flushest (superlative)

Same as Etymology 3, according to the American Heritage Dictionary.

flush left and right
flush left and right#English

(typography) Ellipsis of flush left and right: a body of text aligned with both its left and right margins.


drop letter

(typography) A large letter at the beginning of a line of text, positioned in a decorative way below the baseline of the rest of the type.


italic

Named after the nation of Italy, as it was first used by an Italian printer, Aldo Manuzio, around 1500. Literally Italy + -ic.

(typography, of a typeface or font) Designed to resemble a handwriting style developed in Italy in the 16th century.

курсивен

designed to resemble a handwriting style

The text was impossible to read: every other word was underlined or in a bold or italic font.

(typography, of a typeface or font) Having letters that slant or lean to the right; oblique.


italic

Names of vessels, as the Kearsarge or the Alabama, are frequently put in italic.

1902, Theodore Low DeVinne, The Practice of Typography: Correct Composition, page 104:

[…] ROBERT GRANJON, possibly in collaboration with CLAUDE GARAMOND, had created an italic which matched Garamond Roman.

1983, Ida M. Kimber, The Art of Lettering, translation of original by Albert Kapr, page 329:

(typography) A typeface in which the letters slant to the right.

շղատառ

typeface whose letters slant to the right


script

en-noun

script (countable and uncountable, plural scripts)

From Middle English scrit, borrowed from Old French escrit, from Latin scriptum (something written), from scrībō (“write”).

(typography) Type made in imitation of handwriting.


mortise

en-verb

mortise (third-person singular simple present mortises, present participle mortising, simple past and past participle mortised)

mortises (present singular third-person)
mortising (participle present)
mortised (participle past)
mortised (past)
mortice (alternative)

From Middle English morteys, from Old French mortaise, from Arabic مُرْتَزّ (murtazz), from اِرْتَزَّ (irtazza).

(typography) To adjust the horizontal space between selected pairs of letters; to kern.


forward slash

A retronym coined to distinguish the slash from the backslash, particularly in computing contexts.


Oxford comma

From Oxford University Press, where such use is the house style.

It was Collins who invented the ‘Oxford comma’, for which he obtained supported from Herbert Spencer.

2002 [1978], Peter Sutcliffe, “Making the Press what it ought to be”, in The Oxford University Press, Clarendon Press, page 114:

Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma? / I've seen those English dramas too; they're cruel / So if there's any other way to spell the word / It's fine with me, with me

2008, “Oxford Comma”, in Vampire Weekend, performed by Vampire Weekend:

It is a debate that has torn the nation in two, ripped friends and family apart, and entrenched deep and uncrossable lines throughout the land. Should the Royal Mint have used an Oxford comma on its Brexit 50p piece?

2020 January 27, Alison Flood, “Philip Pullman calls for boycott of Brexit 50p coin over 'missing' Oxford comma”, in The Guardian:


Harvard comma

From Harvard University Press, where such use is the house style.


justified

en-adj

justified (comparative more justified, superlative most justified)

more justified (comparative)
most justified (superlative)

(typography) Of text, arranged on a page or a computer screen such that the left and right ends of all lines within paragraphs are aligned, with the space between words adjusted as necessary. Also called fully justified to contrast with left-justified and right-justified.

tasattu

having lines arranged on a page or computer screen


justify

en-verb

justify (third-person singular simple present justifies, present participle justifying, simple past and past participle justified)

justifies (present singular third-person)
justifying (participle present)
justified (participle past)
justified (past)
justifie (alternative)

From Middle English justifien, from Old French justifier, from Late Latin justificare (“make just”), from Latin justus, iustus (“just”) + ficare (“make”), from facere, equivalent to just + -ify.

The text will look better justified.

(transitive, typography) To arrange (text) on a page or a computer screen such that the left and right ends of all lines within paragraphs are aligned.

подравня́вам

arrange lines on a page or computer screen


pigeonhole

pigeonholes (plural)
pigeon-hole (alternative)
pigeon hole (alternative)

Stanford University
Thomas Chippendale
pigeon-hole messagebox

The noun is derived from pigeon + hole. The verb is derived from the noun.

分類架 /分类架

one of an array of open compartments in a desk, set of shelves, etc., used for sorting and/or storing letters, papers, or other items; one of an array of open compartments for receiving mail and other messages at a college, office, etc.

kulkuaukko

small opening for looking or passing things through; opening in a ship for passing equipment through

Theſe vvide VVhites are by Compoſiters (in vvay of Scandal) call'd Pidgeon-holes, and are by none accounted good VVorkmanſhip, unleſs in ſuch caſes of neceſſity, as aforeſaid. […] And if he [a compositor] Sets too VVide, and he chance to Set a VVord to tvvo tvvice over, he may be forc'd to make Pidgeon-holes e're he come to a Break, […]

1683, Joseph Moxon, “Numb[er] XIV. Applied to the Compositers Trade.”, in Mechanick Exercises: Or, The Doctrine of Handy-Works. Applied to the Art of Printing. […], volume II, London: […] Joseph Moxon […], →OCLC, § 4 (Of Composing), page 215:

(typography, archaic) A space between two words that is too wide.


Roman

en-adj

Roman (comparative more Roman, superlative most Roman)

more Roman (comparative)
most Roman (superlative)

From Old French Romain, from Latin Rōmānus. In reference to the Byzantine Empire, via the Byzantine Greek endonym Ῥωμαῖος (Rhōmaîos). By surface analysis, Rome + -an. Doublet of Romano.

(typography) A font that is upright, as opposed to oblique or italic. (See roman font.)


run down

en-verb

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

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

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

If they occasionally supply any additional copy after this element, run it down with a manual line break.

(transitive, typography) To move (some copy) down to the next line.


interpunct

From Latin interpunctus, from inter- (“between, mid-”) + punctus (“point”).


caesura

caesuras (plural)
caesurae (plural)
cesura (alternative)
cæsura (alternative archaic)

Latin caesūra (“cutting, hewing”), from caesus, perfect passive participle of caedō (“I cut down, hew”).


literal

literals (plural)
litteral (alternative obsolete)
lit. (alternative)

LL-Q1860 (eng)-Mélange a trois-literal.wav

From Middle English literal, from Old French literal, from Late Latin litteralis, also literalis (“of or pertaining to letters or to writing”), from Latin littera, litera (“a letter”); see letter.

(epigraphy, typography) A misprint (or occasionally a scribal error) that affects a letter.


qwertz

(computing, typography) A style of keyboard layout used in some European countries.


pullout

en-noun

pullout (countable and uncountable, plural pullouts)

pullouts (plural)
pull-out (alternative)

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

(typography) Synonym of liftout (“quotation given special visual treatment”).


ligate

en-verb

ligate (third-person singular simple present ligates, present participle ligating, simple past and past participle ligated)

ligates (present singular third-person)
ligating (participle present)
ligated (participle past)
ligated (past)

Latin ligātus, perfect passive participle of ligō (“I bind”). Doublet of legato. Compare league.

(transitive, typography) To connect text characters with a ligature.


solidus

From Middle English solidus, from classical Latin solidus (“solid”), see below. Doublet of sol, sold, soldo, solid, sou, and xu.
In numismatic and weight senses, via medieval Latin solidus (“various coins”), from Late Latin solidus (“a gold coin of the Roman Empire”). In chemical sense, via German Solidus, coined by H.W.B. Roozeboom in his 1899 Zeitschrift für Physikalische Chemie, Stöchiometrie, und Verwandtschaftslehre (XXX, page 387).
In typography, from the shilling mark originally being an abbreviation (a long s ⟨ſ⟩), of Medieval Latin solidus meaning shilling.

der

slash (typography)
solidus (coin)
solidus (disambiguation)

(typography) Synonym of slash ⟨/⟩, originally (UK) in its use as the shilling mark and now its formal designation by the ISO and Unicode.

slash

(typography) The formal name of the oblique strikethrough overlay (as in A̷ and B̸) in Unicode.

(typography) The division line between the numerator and the denominator of a fraction, whether horizontal or oblique.


unjustified

en-adj

unjustified (comparative more unjustified, superlative most unjustified)

more unjustified (comparative)
most unjustified (superlative)

unjustified text in a wordprocessor

(typography) Not justified (of text, arranged on a page or a computer screen such that the left and right ends of all lines within paragraphs are aligned)