Typographic Terms

Absolute Measurements - Measuring scales which never change such as points, picas, inches, etc.

Relative Measurements - Measurements which vary depending on factors such as the font used. For example an 'em' or 'en' dash or space.

Kearning - Space between two characters. A--usually small--adjustment to the tracking. Often capitals with a lot of space on the under-righthand side will make adjacent lower-case characters appear too far away. This is an example of a time when a kearning adjustment is necessary.

Leading - The space between lines of text. Pronounced with a short 'e' sound.

Points/Picas - Units of measurement used in the printmaking business because they are easily divisible (12pt in a Pica; 12 is a multiple of 3 and 2). There are 6 picas in an inch.

x-height - The height of the 'x' character of a font (and most lowercase letters minus their ascenders and descenders). A relative measurement.

The em - A relative measurement equal to the point-size of the font. Used for spacing, indentation, etc.

The en - Half an em

Dashes (hyphen, en, em) - Horizontal lines of various lengths. The hyphen is 1/3 of an em in length.

Alignments: Justifcation, Flush Left, Flush Right - How a body of text meets it's boundries. Justified text is spaced so that the words on both sides of the paragraph touch the edges of it's container. A body of text that is either left or right aligned will only have words touching the boundries on one side, leaving the other side ragged.

Letterspacing - The spacing between letters...

Tracking - The spacing between lines of text measured from baseline to baseline.

Word Spacing - Spacing between words. Could be thought of as the width of a space.

Widow - A solitary word on the last line of a paragraph.

Orphan(s) - One or two words that were continued from a previous spread.

Indent, Fist Line Indent, Hanging Indent - A space that moves type away from the left edge (or right edge, if right aligned). First line indentation only occurs on the first line of a paragraph; a Hanging indent occurs on all lines except the first.