Identifying Terms | Adobe InDesign CS3 Bible

Typography terms include words that describe the appearance of text in a document or on a computer screen. These terms refer to such aspects of typography as the size and style of the typeface used and the amount of space between lines, characters , and paragraphs.

Characters

Font: This is a set of characters of a certain size, weight, and style (for example, 10-point Palatino Bold). This term is used often as a synonym for typeface, which is a set of characters of a certain style in all sizes, weights, and stylings (for example, Palatino).
Face: A face is a combination of a weight and styling in all sizes of a font (for example, Palatino Bold Italic).
Font family: This is a group of related typefaces (for example, the Franklin family includes Franklin Gothic, Franklin Heavy, and Franklin Compressed).
Weight: This describes typeface thickness . Typical weights, from thinnest to thickest, are ultralight, light, book, medium, demibold, bold, heavy, ultrabold, and ultraheavy.

Style: Type can have one of three basic stylings: Roman type is upright type; oblique type is the Roman type that has been mathematically slanted to give the appearance of italic type; and italic type is both slanted and curved (to appear more like calligraphy than Roman type). Type also may be expanded (widened), condensed (narrowed), or compressed (severely narrowed). See Figure 40-1 for examples of some of these stylings.

Figure 40-1: A sample sans serif typeface with different stylings.

Tip ‚

Keep in mind that some of these type-style variations are created mathematically, while other fonts are created to appear a certain way. For example, you can compress a Roman font, but it won't be the same as the official, compressed version of the face and will most likely appear squished rather than compressed.

X-height: This refers to the height of the average lowercase letter (this is based on the letter x ). The greater the height, the bigger the letter looks when compared to letters in other typefaces that are the same point size but have a smaller X-height (see Figure 40-2).

Figure 40-2: The elements of a typeface.
Cap height: Cap height is similar to X-height. It refers to the height dimension of the average uppercase letter (based on the letter C ). (Refer to Figure 40-2.)
Descender: In a letter such as q, the part of the letter that drops below the baseline is called a descender. (Refer to Figure 40-2.)
Ascender: The part of a letter that extends above the X-height (as in the letter b ) is called an ascender. (Refer to Figure 40-2.)
Serif: This is a horizontal stroke used to give letters visual character. The strokes on the upper-left and bottom of the letter p in a typeface such as Times are serifs. The serif is usually designed to improve the horizontal flow of letters and words, making serif typefaces easier to read at small sizes and in long paragraphs. (Refer to Figure 40-2.)
Sans serif: This means that a typeface does not use serifs. Helvetica is an example of a sans serif typeface.

Ligature: A ligature is a set of joined characters, such as fi, fl, ffi, or ffl. The characters are joined because the characters' shapes almost blend together by default, so typographers of yore decided to make them blend together naturally.

Note ‚

Automatic ligatures are available only for fonts that support them. OpenType fonts do, as do most PostScript and TrueType fonts created by professional type foundries. For InDesign to set ligatures for such fonts, make sure that Ligatures is checked in the Character pane's palette menu or that it is checked in the Basic Character Formats pane of the New Character Styles or Character Styles Options dialog boxes.

Typographic measurement units

Pica: A pica is a measurement unit that specifies the width and depth of columns and pages. A pica is just a little less than ¹ / ₆ of an inch (most people round it up to an even ¹ / ₆ inch). All major desktop publishing applications ‚ including QuarkXPress and InDesign ‚ use the 6-picas-per-inch conversion ratio.
Point: A point is a measurement used to specify type size and the space between lines. There are 12 points in a pica, so there are about 72.27 points to an inch. Although this is the historically accurate measurement, desktop publishing software generally drops the extra ²⁷ / ₁₀₀ of a point per inch. As with picas, the conversion ratio of points to inches is simplified so that there are only 72 points per inch in all major desktop publishing applications, including InDesign.
Cicero: A cicero is a unit of measure used in many parts of Europe. One inch equals about 5.62 ciceros.
Agate: An agate is used for measuring vertical column length in classified ads. One agate equals about 5.5 points. An agate inch is one column wide and ¹ / ₁₄ of an inch deep.

Em, en, and punctuation spaces: The terms em, en, and punctuation space (also called a thin space) are units of measurement that reflect, respectively, the horizontal space taken up by a capital M, capital N, and lowercase t.

Note ‚

Typically, an em space is the same width as the current point size; an en space is ‚ ½ of the current point size, and a punctuation (thin) space is ‚ ¼ of the current point size. In other words, for 12-point type, an em is 12 points wide, an en space is 6 points wide, and a punctuation or thin space is 3 points wide.

Figure space: This refers to the width of a numeral, which usually is the same as an en. (In most typefaces, all numerals are the same width so that tables align naturally.)

Spacing

Leading: This term, also called line spacing, refers to the space from the base of one line (the baseline) to another. (Leading is named after the pieces of lead once used to space out lines.) See Figure 40-3 for examples of leading.

Figure 40-3: The same type with different leading has a very different appearance.
Tracking: Tracking determines the overall space between letters within a word.
Word spacing: This defines the preferred, minimum, and maximum spacing between words.

Letter spacing: Letter spacing (sometimes called character spacing) defines the preferred, minimum, and maximum spacing between letters.

Note ‚

InDesign uses your preferred spacing specifications unless you justify the text or apply manual spacing adjustments; if you justify text, the program spaces letters and words within the limits you set for maximum and minimum spacing.

Kerning: This refers to an adjustment of the space between two letters. You kern letters to accommodate their specific shapes. For example, you probably would use tighter kerning in the letter pair to than in oo because to looks better if the o fits partly under the cross of the t.
Pair kerning: This is a table of characters, built into the font itself, that indicates the letter pairs you want the publishing program to kern automatically. InDesign lets you adjust the kerning on a case-by-case basis or for all highlighted text. Kerning is used most frequently in headlines where the letter spacing is more noticeable. See Figure 40-4 for an example of kerning.

Figure 40-4: An example of unkerned (top) and kerned letter pairs.
Justification: Justification adds space between words (and sometimes between letters) so that each line of text aligns at both the left and right margin of a column or page. Justification also is used to refer to the type of spacing used for optimum letter and word spacing: justified, ragged right, centered, or ragged left (see the following definitions).
- Ragged right and flush left: Both these terms refer to text that aligns with a column's left margin but not its right margin.
- Ragged left and flush right: This refers to text that aligns with the right margin but not the left margin.
- Centered: This refers to text that aligns so that there is equal space on both margins.
- Vertical justification: This adds space between paragraphs (and sometimes between lines) so that the tops and bottoms of each column on a page align. (This term is often confused with column balancing, which ensures that each column has the same number of lines.)
- Carding: Carding is a vertical-justification method that adds space between paragraphs in one-line increments .
- Feathering: This is another vertical-justification method that uses fractional -line spaces between paragraphs.

Paragraphs

Indent: You typically indicate a new paragraph with an indent, which inserts a space (often an em space in newspapers and magazines) in front of the paragraph's first letter.
Outdent: An outdent (also called an exdent) shifts the first character past the left margin and places the other lines at the left margin. This paragraph alignment is typically used in lists.
Block indent: A block indent, a style often used for long quotes, moves an entire paragraph in from the left margin.
Hanging indent: A hanging indent is like an outdent except that the first line begins at the left margin and all subsequent lines are indented.
Bullet: This is a character (often a filled circle) used to indicate that a paragraph is one element in a list of elements. Bullets can be indented, outdented, or kept at the left margin.
Drop cap: A drop cap is a large capital letter that extends down several lines into the surrounding text (the rest of the text wraps around it). Drop caps are used at the beginning of a section or story.
Raised cap: A raised cap is the same as a drop cap except that it does not extend down into the text. Instead, it rests on the baseline of the first line and extends several lines above the baseline.
Style sheets: These contain named sets of such attributes as spacing, typeface, indent, leading, and justification.

Style or style tag: A set of attributes is known as a style or style tag.

Note ‚

Essentially, styles are formatting macros. You tag each paragraph or character with the name of the style that you want to apply. Any formatting changes made to one paragraph or character are automatically reflected in all other paragraphs or characters tagged with the same style.

Hyphenation

Hyphen: A hyphen is used to indicate the division of a word at the end of a line and to join words that combine to modify another word.
Hyphenation: This determines where to place the hyphen in words that need to be split.
Consecutive hyphenation: This determines how many lines in a row can end with a hyphen (more than three hyphens in a row is considered bad typographic practice).
Hyphenation zone: The hyphenation zone determines how far from the right margin a hyphen can be inserted to split a word.
Exception dictionary: An exception dictionary lists words with nonstandard hyphenations. You can add words that the publishing program's default dictionary does not recognize and override the default hyphenations for a word such as project, which is hyphenated one way as a noun ("proj-ect") and another as a verb ("pro-ject").
Discretionary hyphen: Placing a discretionary hyphen (also called a soft hyphe n) in a word tells the program to hyphenate the word at that place if the word must be split. A discretionary hyphen affects only the word in which it is placed.