Letters

All letters are either plain or fancy, according to their face. The plain include—1. Roman: 2. Italic: 3. Old English (or Black); all other varieties belong to the fancy sorts. The parts of a letter are, the feet, the nick, the shank (or body), the shoulder, the face, the beard. The face may be lean or fat; the body may be condensed or expanded. The face includes the stem, the seriphs, and the kern. Letters may be accented, ascending, descending, double (or ligatures), long, short, inferior, or superior. The height of a letter is usually eleven-twelfths of an inch; of an ordinary quad or space, three-quarters of an inch. Spaces used in matter intended to be stereotyped are, however, cast much higher. Scotch, and some foreign types, are, however, much higher, and some English offices have a standard of their own. The quality of a type is determined according to—1. The cut; 2. The shank, whether it be true or otherwise; 3. Its accurate range with other types of the same fount; 4. Its equal and uniform height; 5. The quality of the metal; 6. The depth of the face; 7. The depth of the nick. The imperfections in type are, as to its height—high or low; as to its breadth, bottle-necked, or bottle-arsed; and, generally, the burr. All of these terms are explained in this Dictionary in their alphabetical order.