In typography, style refers to the individual members of a type family, e.g. regular, italic, bold.

A large type family, especially one which combines different classification types like slab serif, serif and sans serif.

A swash is a decorative element added to a glyph or a glyph containing such decorative elements.

A descending often decorative stroke.

A way of typesetting where the centered lines gradually change their width, usually becoming narrower at the end of a text or segment.

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

A type case is a compartmentalized (usually wooden) box used to store movable type used in letterpress printing.

The foundation of typography—individual letters meant to be set and printed.

The original form of movable type meant for manual typesetting. (In contrast to the fonts made for hot metal typesetting since the end of the 19th century.)

An underline is a horizontal line immediately below a portion of writing.

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

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

A person who sets type.

A bar of softer metal (e.g. copper or nickel + brass) in which the punch is driven into to create a “sunken” image of a letter. Once the matrix was “fitted” it can be used to cast letters.

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

A letterpress cabinet holds type cases with lettepress letters.

The space between columns.

Rivers, or rivers of white are gaps which appear to run through a paragraph of text, due to a coincidental alignment of spaces.

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 bigger than what would be considered “normal” or “regular”.

A font with a lighter stroke weight than what would be considered “normal” or “regular”.

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

A font with a very large stroke weight.

A font with a width smaller than what would be considered “normal” or “regular”.

A font with a width greater than what would be considered “normal” or “regular”.

Any set of characters, e.g. of a specific font. Not to be mixed up with “character encoding”.

In computing, a character encoding is used to represent a repertoire of characters by some kind of an encoding system.

Lettering refers the act, art, or technique of inscribing letters on to something or the letters created in such a way. In the field of professional graphic design, lettering is understood as one of three technique to create textual information beside calligraphy (“writing”) and typography (“typesetting”).

An OpenType variable font is one in which the equivalent of multiple individual fonts can be compactly packaged within a single font file. This is done by defining variations within the font, which constitute a single- or multi-axis design space within which many font instances can be interpolated.

The cyma is an element employed to equalize the spacing of irregular letters by placing it where the space is open and requires something more than the plain letter to make word appear solid. This character derives its name from the Greek its undulating form resembling a wave. The cyma is usually attached to the letters A, L, M, W, etc.

A bodkin is a piercing tool used in hand typesetting for extracting a piece of type from a form.

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

A chase is a metal frame used to hold type in place while printing.

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).

An en is a typographic unit, half of the width of an em. By definition, it is equivalent to half of the height of the font.

An ink ball (or dabber) was a tool to apply ink to the plate or type to be printed. An ink ball usually consists of a piece of leather stuffed with wool and a wooden handle.

A typometer (also line gauge, compositor’s rule or type scale) is a ruler to measure typographic units. It can also have additional scales for other units such as millimeters.

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.

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

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

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

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 instrument used for controlling measurements of electrotypes, stereos, cylinder backings, rubber blocks etc.

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 flat surface of a printing press on which the type form is placed.

A flat plate in a printing press used for pressing the paper against the inked form. Presses with a hinged platen are named after this piece as “platen presses”.

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.

A piece of thick, flat material, with a design on its surface, used to print repeated impressions of that design in relief printing. Also called cliché or electro (when created with the technique of electrotyping).

A line of type casted with a Linotype machine.

Letterforms drawn or written without contrast.

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

A decorative illustration on a block used in printing along with the text, e.g. at the beginning or end of a book or chapter of a book.

Front matter, or preliminaries (prelims, for short), is the first section before the body matter. The front matter contains things such as the title page, table of contents, frontispiece, foreword, preface and so on.

A frontispiece is a decorative or informative illustration facing a book’s title page.

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

Guillemets are a pair of punctuation marks in the form of sideways double chevrons (« and »), used as quotation mark.

The hyphen (‐) is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word.

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.

A catchword is a word placed at the foot of a handwritten or printed page that is meant to be bound along with other pages in a book. The word anticipates the first word of the following page. It was meant to help the bookbinder or printer make sure that the leaves were bound in the right order or that the pages were set up in the press in the right order.

An endband is a part of a (hardcover) book that consists of a small cord or strip of material affixed near the spine to provide structural reinforcement and decorative effect.

The endband at the top of the book.

The endband at the bottom of a book.

The Spine of a book refers to the outside edge of the book where the pages are gathered and bound.

The fore edge is the edge of a book’s text block opposite the spine.

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 at sign was originally an accounting and commercial invoice abbreviation meaning “at a rate of”. Today it is also used in email address and on social media platforms.

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.

A book cover is any protective covering used to bind together and protect the pages of a book.

Book edges are the top, bottom, and un-hinged outer sides of a book.

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.