A line above and/or below a paragraph.

Typesetting where both uppercase and lowercase letters are used.

Named after Claude Garamond and Aldus Manutius, these fonts are between the the early (“humanist”) and late (“transitional”) oldstyle designs.

The first Roman typefaces created during the 15th century by Venetian printers. These typefaces sought to imitate the formal hands found in the humanistic (renaissance) manuscripts of the time.

Phototypesetting was a method of setting type, that was used in the second half of the 20th century. Light is projected through a negative of the glyph and exposes photosensitive film or paper.

Adjusting the distance between letters to achieve visually equal spacing.

Characters, especially punctuation, with forms better suited for all-capital text.

A letterpress cabinet holds type cases with lettepress letters.

A device to cast identical multiple instances of any character from a matrix.

Type-high means: of a height equal to the distance from the foot to the face of a type.

A sharpening tool for scissors, scythes, knives, razors, chisels and so on.

A line of type casted with a Linotype machine.

The r rotunda (ꝛ) is a historical variant of the lowercase letter r.

One part of a bicameral script with usually more ascenders and descenders.

The area(s) of a letter entirely or partially enclosed by the letter form.

A notch that is identical for all letters of a typeface and helps the printer to make sure that all letters belong to the same font and are placed in the right direction in one line of type.

The non-printing part of the physical letter.

The groove at the bottom (or “foot”) of the letter is the result of the manufacturing process.

A mostly curved (but sometimes more wedge-like) connection, which might appear for example at the connection of a serif and a stem.

Transitional typefaces appeared at the end the 17th century. They are still considered oldstyle designs, but already show characteristics (e.g. [almost] vertical stress, increased stroke contrast) of the Modern typefaces which follow during the 18th and 19th century.

The Didones draw their name from Didot and Bodoni. Dating from the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, these designs have a strong contrast between stems and hairlines, a purely vertical stress and unbracketed, hairline serifs.

Grades are subtle changes in stroke weight, which (where available) can be selected to give a similar impression of the typeface under different conditions (e.g. different printing technologies and papers).

Hot metal typesetting refers to machine-based typesetting technologies, where molten type metal is injected into a mold that has the shape of one or more glyphs. Examples of such machines are the Linotype and the Monotype.

When strokes meet at certain angles, they can be designed more open, forming a so-called ink trap. This can avoid a physical or optical ink blob in that area.

A set of characters, which is used as the standard method of writing in most Western and Central European languages, as well as many languages from other parts of the world.

Legibility is the ease with which a reader can recognize individual symbols.

Figures with a uniform height similar or equal to the cap height of the font.

Rounded or pointed letters will usually have an overshoot, which means the character design extends over the x-height, cap height or under the baseline to make the letter appear of equal size with the rest of the letters.

Figures with an individual width, based on the glyph design.

A text passage from an article that is displayed larger as a graphical element.

In typography, type specimen refers to a any presentation of a certain typeface to showcase its design and/or use.

Roman refers to the upright styles of the Latin script in contrast to italic styles or special categories such as blackletter.

Type set up and held in reserve for future uses. Also called live matter or standing type.

The body text or body copy is the text forming the main content of designs (like ads) or entire publications (like magazines, books and so on).

A galley is a (usually metal) tray used for letterpress printing. The individual lines are first set in the composing stick and then combined to columns in the galley. The galley usually has 3 closed sides. The one open side is used to push the assembled column easily from the galley.

Material to create spaces in letterpress printing. It is non-printing because its height is lower than the faces of the letters. Originally also called “lead”.

A font with a stroke weight in between what would be considered regular and bold.

The tool to tighten and loosen letterpress quoins.

… wood or metal blocks of various widths and lengths to fill in the chase for lock up.

A (usually cylinder-based) printing press for creating simple proof prints.

Small caps will often be slightly or significantly larger than the x-height of the font. Some typefaces have additional small caps which match the x-height and they are called petite caps. Both types can be access through distinct OpenType features: SMCP (small caps) and PCAP (petite capitals).

A galley rack holds standing jobs on galleys.

Usually wooden cabinets with boards open on at least one side to slide matter on an off.

Quadrat-high (or lead-high) means: of a height of letterpress furniture.

A usually wooden letterpress tool (used in combination with a mallet or quoin key) for leveling a form of type.

A tool to cut slugs and reglets.

An instrument for measuring type height.

An imposing stone (also known as composing stone) is a slab of usually stone or metal, on which the pages or columns of type are imposed/made into forms.

Putting metal type back into the typecase after printing.

The physical or virtual width of a glyph/character.

Composing rules (or setting rules) are metal strips to be placed inside the composing stick to set the measure, to remove the line more easily or to set one line of type over another more easily.

Monospaced describes a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space.

The pastedown endpaper is the portion of the endpaper that is glued to the inner boards of a hardback book.

The free endpaper is the inner leaf of an endpaper secured at its binding edge to the first or last page of a book. It is forming a flyleaf.

An endpaper is a folded sheet of paper having one leaf pasted flat against the inside of the front or back cover of a book and the other pasted at the base to the first or last page.

The endband at the top of the book.

The endband at the bottom of a book.

The block of paper formed by the cut and stacked pages of a book, not including covers, boards, end papers, dust jacket or other accoutrements.

The half title or bastard title is a page usually carrying only little information (like the title)—as opposed to the title page. The half title is usually the first page of the text block.

Any book with a cover made from flexible materials such as paper, cloth, leather, or vellum.

A usually small and cheap book with a paper cover and glued pages. A paperback book will be a softcover book at the same time, but not every softcover book can be considered a paperback.

The title page of a book (or other written work) is the page at or near the front which displays its title and usually additional information like author's/editor's name, the publisher and the place and date of publication.

String used for tying up a columns or pages of letterpress type after making up. This is done to to secure the columns or pages temporarily until they are imposed or to store them (see standing matter).

The composition of movable type by hand—in contrast to hot metal typesetting.

A type founder is a person who is casting metallic printer's type.

A flong (also mat or stereo mould) is a relief impression (in materials such as papier-mâché or plaster mould) of a forme created from handset metal type and/or printing blocks. It is used to cast a so-called stereotype, which is then used for printing.

A solid flat or semi-circular plate of type metal, usually of an entire artwork or page of handset type, created from a stereo mould (see flong).

A tympan is made from a soft material (such as parchment, leather, paper, rubber). It is used for letterpress printing and covers the the platen or printing cylinder while printing. It provides a necessary flexibility and can also be used to adjust the printing pressure. The tympan can be mounted permanently on the platen or printing cylinder or it mounted to a frame, which is then put between the platen and the forme while printing.

Logographic printing was a form of moveable type printing where the font contained words or parts of words rather than single letters. The logographic type was used in the same way as the common letterpress ligatures. The difference was the purpose of using letter combinations specifically to speed up the typesetting process. But with hundreds of compartments in a typecase, logographic typesetting was also very challenging. The system never came into broad use.

Plakadur was a brand name for a resin-based material used for display letters of the Berthold AG in the 20th century as an alternative to wood type.

A thread counter or linen tester is a magnifying tool, where the lens is mounted at a fixed distance above the object being put under the tool. It was originally invented to check the quality of woven fabrics. But it also became a common tool in the printing industry.

A tool used for letterpress printing to set the rollers to the correct height.

A glyph to represent glottal stop or glottal plosive.

Smaller (leads) or thicker (slugs) strips used as spacing material in letterpress printing, especially to to increase the line height.

Line spacing, interline spacing, line height or leading is the distance between the baselines of successive lines of type. The term leading has its roots in letterpress printing where it referred to the lead strips added between the lines.

In the context of letterforms, hairlines are the thinnest strokes within a letter.