Glossary
Essential typography terms every designer and developer should know.
Serif
A serif is a small decorative stroke attached to the end of a letter's main strokes. Serif fonts like Times New Roman, Georgia, and Garamond have thes...
Sans-Serif
Sans-serif (from French 'sans' meaning 'without') fonts lack the decorative strokes found in serif fonts. They have clean, uniform stroke endings. San...
X-Height
X-height is the height of lowercase letters measured from the baseline, typically represented by the letter 'x' (which has no ascenders or descenders)...
Kerning
Kerning is the adjustment of space between individual letter pairs. Unlike tracking (which affects all letters equally), kerning targets specific prob...
Leading (Line Height)
Leading (rhymes with 'bedding') is the vertical space between lines of text, named after the strips of lead placed between lines of metal type in trad...
Tracking (Letter Spacing)
Tracking is the uniform adjustment of spacing across all letters in a block of text. Unlike kerning (which adjusts individual pairs), tracking applies...
Font Weight
Font weight refers to the thickness of character strokes, typically expressed on a numerical scale from 100 (Thin) to 900 (Black). Standard weight nam...
Variable Font
A variable font is a single font file that contains multiple variations of a typeface along one or more axes (weight, width, slant, optical size). Ins...
Ligature
A ligature is a single glyph formed by combining two or more characters. Common ligatures include fi, fl, ff, ffi, and ffl, where the hook of the 'f' ...
Typeface vs Font
A typeface is the design of lettering — the visual identity created by a type designer. A font is a specific implementation of that typeface at a part...