Typography Definitions

1. Absolute measurement- Measurements of fixed values measured by units such as millimeters and picas.
2. Relative measurement- Measurements that don’t use fixed values. Examples are Ems and ens that have no absolute size.
3. Point- Unit of measurement that measure the height of the type block.
4. Pica- Unit of measurement commonly used for measuring lines of type.
5. Em (and em dash)- Unit of measurement equal to the point size of the current font.

6. En (and en dash)- En is half the width of an em.
7. Legibility- Based on how easy it is for the eye to read letters and distinguish them from one another.
8. Rag- irregular or uneven vertical margin of a block of type. Usually it’s the right margin that’s ragged
9. Type alignments: flush left- text is aligned along the left margin Advantage it is the default style of text alignment on the web. flush right- text is aligned along the right margin advantageous for languages that read right-to-left. centered- text is aligned to neither the left nor right margin disadvantage is that is harder to read a body of text that is centered. justified-text is aligned along the left margin, and letter- and word-spacing is adjusted so that the text falls flush with the right margin, often used in print media.
10. Word spacing: The ideal word spacing is that as the character increases in size, so should the word spacing.

11. Rivers- Gaps of white space in several lines, usually found in justified test blocks.
12. Indent- Spacing at the beginning of a paragraph to provide easy entry to a paragraph for the reader.
13. Leading- The vertical spacing between lines of type
14. Kerning- adjusting letter spacing in proportional font.
15. Tracking- adjusting the overall space between letters instead of the space between two characters like kerning.

16. Weight- Weight provides a choice on how thick a typeface is. Ex: bold
17. Scale- the point size of a font
18. Typographic variation- Different ways type is used by typographers.
19. Orphan- Final line or word of a paragraph that starts a new column.
20. Widow- One word at the end of a paragraph or column.