FUNCTION

The apostrophe (or “single quote” for English speakers) is a very common punctuation mark in languages using the Latin alphabet. It has different functions from one language to another. In English, for example, it is used as a possession (“part of a letter” to “a letter’s part”) or an elision marker (“it is” to “it’s”).

HISTORY

A symbol looking like an apostrophe dates back to the 16th century in France when the engraver Geoffroy Tory (1480–1533) introduced this sign to replace a letter or a short word.
With the invention of typewriters, other look-alike glyphs (single quote, prime, acute accent, etc.) were assembled into the same key with the apostrophe to save as many keys as possible for the limited space of the keyboard. But this led to confusion that is still observed nowadays, with the prime glyph being often used as an apostrophe.

DESIGN

Well-designed typefaces either have slanted or curly-shaped apostrophes (related to the comma of the typeface). This shape avoids confusion with the prime.

FUNCTION

The asterisk is commonly used as a punctuation symbol placed after a word to indicate that it refers to a note.

HISTORY

Star-shaped symbols are seen in documents from many regions of the world throughout history. It was only in the Middle Ages in Europe that the asterisk began to be used as a mark to link a part of a text to additional comments added elsewhere.

DESIGN

The asterisk can have many different designs in order to match the style of a typeface, from a very abstract five-branched star to more flourished ones, with more or less contrast between the center and the tips. The asterisk is aligned at the top of the glyphs to be legible in a text.

FUNCTION

The at sign (@) is used in email addresses to indicate a domain name or a social media account tag.

HISTORY

The origins of how and why the at sign was created and why it looks the way it does remain unclear. Allegedly, it has been created as a symbol to measure weight or quantity (to signify “at the rate of”) in some parts of Europe since the 14th century. That symbol looked more or less the same as the modern “at sign”: with a letter a circled by an elongated tail.

Since the use of email addresses, it is used to indicate at which domain name it is hosted.

DESIGN

The at sign is commonly designed as a lowercase a with a tail surrounding the letter. Due to the sign’s visual complexity, there are many solutions to simplify it by making the tail shorter (not entirely enclosing the a) or by starting the tail directly from the top instead of the bottom of the stem.

In type design, Bézier curves are used to draw contours on digital applications with vectors drawn by placing points and handles. This technology allows us to rasterize digital shapes and keep their quality.

HISTORY

Bézier curve technology was developed by French mathematician and physicist Paul de Casteljau in 1959. Working at that time for the automobile brand Citroën, de Casteljau developed a mathematical formula to improve the design process of car bodies. French engineer Pierre Bézier used the same technology in 1962 for Renault (another automobile brand) to create shapes using digital tools. It wasn’t until 1985, when Citroën lifted its industrial secrecy clause, that de Casteljau could speak about his work and Pierre Bézier was able to publicly mention the origins of his own.

In 1982, Bézier curves were used by the American computer scientist John Warnock to develop a technology for describing and positioning digital shapes and contours for the company that he co-founded with Charles Geschke: Adobe Systems.

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There are two types of Bézier curves: cubic and quadratic.

A cubic Bézier curve section requires the positioning of four points (two points and two handles), creating three sections between each point. The overall shape resembles a cubic shape, hence the name. Postscript font formats use cubic curves.

Quadratic curves are formed by three points (two points and one control point) to create a curve, with two sections cut halfway through to determine where the curve turns to the other point. TrueType font formats use quadratic curves.

The bounding box is the rectangle enclosing a digital glyph.

Its width can vary from glyph to glyph, but the height of a bounding box covers the highest and lowest parts of the entire typeface.

In digital texts, the bounding box of a glyph is highlighted when some text or characters are selected.

The word calligraphy comes from the Greek kalos, meaning “beautiful,” and graphein, meaning “to write.” Together, it means “to write beautifully.”

Many civilizations around the world have practiced calligraphy (and continue to do so today) using a variety of tools: brush, pen, quill, broad nib pen or brush, etc. Most even consider it to be an art form.

Today, we tend to describe a calligraphic style typeface when it is inspired by letters and characters written with a calligraphy tool, following certain calligraphy styles. However, it is slightly different from “script” or “handwritten” styles, as these refer to handwritten shapes which are free from any particular calligraphic style.

The word “character” is often confused with “letter” or “glyph.” But in fact, “character” is a generic term that covers letters, figures, punctuation symbols, and more.

To be more precise:

• one character can be represented by multiple glyphs (such as alternates glyphs of the same character a: single story and double story a);
• one glyph can contain multiple characters (such as ligature fl containing two characters).

A character set is a list of glyphs (letters, figures, symbols, ligatures, punctuations, etc.).

In digital fonts, character sets (also called encoding lists) contain the glyphs of a font with their individual names and Unicode references.

There are multiple character sets specific to various scripts or languages, as each contains the needed glyphs used by its respective language. Separated character sets per script or language allow a smaller and optimized file size.

With the many styles and designs of typefaces that exist, it can be difficult to describe, sort, or even find them in a catalog that isn’t familiar to the user.

Each writing system has its own typeface classification categories that best suit its nature and history. As aesthetic values differ from one culture to another, the same (or similar) style may not convey the same impression across different scripts, and one category considered a convention for one script is not always relevant to others.

For example, Latin typefaces have been sorted into multiple classification systems since the beginning of metal typesetting. Here are some of them:

• Thibaudeau, by French typographer Francis Thibaudeau in 1921, with four categories: Elzévirs, Didots, Égyptiennes and Antiques;
• Vox (or Vox-Thibaudeau), by French historian Maximilien Vox in 1954, who started with the Thibaudeau classification as a basis and added more to include in the additional styles from the typefaces from Deberny & Peignot type foundry’s library;
• Vox-ATypI, with additional categories and subcategories by the ATypI (Association Typographique Internationale) from 1962 to 2021.

Today, classification systems vary from one type foundry to another, using more or less “standardized” terms better suited to their own catalog or the scripts covered. These boxes also help users find what they are looking for in a wide variety of choices. They are not rules to be followed to the letter. Imagination and creativity shouldn’t be confined!

FUNCTION

A colon indicates the beginning of a quote, a list, a ratio within numbers, or it can be used to indicate time in between two numbers.

HISTORY

The colon has been used in various languages for various types of uses. It began to be used as we do nowadays by writers during medieval Europe.

DESIGN

The colon is built with two periods on top of each other. The top one is placed just below the x-height and the bottom one sits on the baseline.

TYPOGRAPHIC RULES

There is no space before the colon in a sentence, and is followed by a space (U+00A0). But this rule doesn’t apply to every Latin language!

FUNCTION

A comma separates parts of a sentence to mark a short pause or following ideas. If not overused, it helps improve the reading experience. It is also used in numbers to visually separate figures of larger categories. In the United States and most other English-speaking countries, in numerals of one thousand or more, a comma is used in between groups of three digits counting from the right (where a period is used for the same purpose in other European languages).

HISTORY

In Europe, the origins of many punctuation symbols, including the comma, come from the inventions of Greek scholar Aristophanes of Byzantium (3rd century BC) who created a set of symbols to help reading texts aloud.

DESIGN

The comma is basically a period with a tail. It has to be designed with enough differences to the period so that both can’t be confused with one another, even in smaller text sizes.

TYPOGRAPHIC RULES

A comma has no space before and is always followed by a space (U+0020) when used in a sentence. In numbers with decimals, it is used as such:

(European languages) 15.000,05

(English) 15,000.05

A counter (or counterform) is the negative shape inside a glyph with an enclosed form, either entirely closed (such as b) or partially open (such as n).

This term comes from the counterpunch used for punching the inside white space of a letterform in metal type punch. They were cut before the outer shape, and reused to make types of every related letter, to keep a consistent look on the entire font.

Every currency symbol carries one function: to give a financial value to numbers. Each of them evolved through time. Some of them disappeared or have been modified to follow the needs of various civilisations.

For most of them, currency symbols are made of Latin letters with various levels of modifications (US dollar $, Euro €, Vietnamese dong ₫). Some of them can simply” be letters (Swiss CHF) or a character on their own (Chinese Yuan 元).

DESIGN

Currency symbols need to be designed in a good balance with figures, as they are combined with them.

In a typeface family with a wide range of weights, currency symbols of the lightest styles can easily carry every stroke and conventional details. But as the style gets bolder, these can be tricky to keep, especially when too many details darken the symbol to a point where it is hardly recognizable. The most common solution is to simplify the symbol by removing some “less” important parts while keeping the symbol’s legibility.

USAGE

Among the multiple types of dashes (yes, there are many!), the most common ones are:

1. en dash, used:

• to indicate a list;
• to indicate a closed range (as a substitute of words ‘to’ or ‘between’);
• (less common) to hide letters in a word;
• to connect words in compounds (in some languages)

2. em dash, used:

• to indicate lines in a dialogue;
• (less common) to hide entire words or part of one.

Both en and em dashes are also used to enclose a section of a sentence, just like a pair of parentheses, or to indicate a separation within a sentence like a colon or semicolon.

HISTORY

Before the adoption of any punctuation standard, markers of various forms were used by scribes to indicate pauses. Dashes of various lengths have been used for many kinds of roles through the centuries, and across countries. But for dash-like symbols, these evolutions left us with the en dash and em dash as principal successors.

DESIGN

Their length has been standardized during the metal type printing era (in Europe and North America), using the size of the font as a reference for their measurement as such:

• 1 em = the font size;
• length of em dash = 1 em (or sometimes the width of letter M of the font);
• length of en dash = 1/2 of 1 em (or sometimes the width of letter n of the font).

Both are placed at the optical middle height between the baseline and ascenders. In a typeface style with contrast, the thickness of the dashes has to be visually consistent with that of the thin parts.

TYPOGRAPHIC RULES

Generally, in American English, it is preferred to use the em dash without space; and in British English, the en dash with a space before and after.

NOT TO BE CONFUSED

The en dash is particularly often confused with the hyphen (U+2010), the mathematical sign minus − (U+2212), or the hyphen-minus - (U+002D).

In digital fonts, each of these glyphs has its own Unicode. They are designed and can be accessed individually. But on modern keyboards—inherited from typewriter keyboards which had to make compromises on the number of glyphs due to the limited space available—we are still (mistakenly and without always knowing) often typing the hyphen-minus instead of the hyphen or the en dash. Thankfully, most intelligent text processing apps automatically replace the hyphen-minus with the correct glyph depending on the context.

FUNCTION

The ellipsis (or dot dot dot) is a punctuation symbol used to indicate a missing part of a text (incomplete or untold) or a rhetorical pause…

DESIGN

An ellipsis is composed of three periods aligned next to each other. It is advised to place the periods closer together than three actual periods to avoid an exaggerated gap in texts. In Chinese, the ellipsis has six dots instead of three and is traditionally center-aligned.

TYPOGRAPHIC RULES

In most languages, when an ellipsis indicates a string of missing text, it is surrounded by parentheses (…).

If it’s placed at the end of a sentence, the ellipsis is followed by a space after the period to introduce the next sentence.

FUNCTION

The exclamation mark is placed at the end of a sentence to indicate an exclamation (obviously!).

HISTORY

There is a theory that early exclamation marks were used by early manuscript copyists in Europe, who wrote the Latin word ‘io’ (sort of ‘hurray’), which evolved into a vertical stroke (formerly i) on top of a dot (formerly o). Other languages use different marks for the same purpose (as in Armenian or Burmese).

DESIGN

The top of the exclamation mark is optically aligned to the cap height, with a period at its base. The shape of the vertical stem can be designed to match the typeface (contrast, rounded tip, etc.).

TYPOGRAPHIC RULES

In English and in many other languages, there is no space before the exclamation mark. But in French, there is a non-breaking space. And in Spanish, a reversed exclamation mark is placed at the beginning of the sentence, with the upright one at the end, with no space.

The words ‘figure’ and ‘number’ are often confused. But, linguistically speaking, they are to be distinguished from one another: a figure (or numeral) is the graphic representation of a number, which is a mathematical concept. Several figures can be combined to form a number. For example, the number ‘22’ is represented by two figures ‘2’.

There are multiple styles of figures (oldstyle, proportional, lining, tabular, etc.) that suit specific situations.

HISTORY

In Europe, figures and numbers used to be represented by Roman capital letters (X, V, I, D, C, etc.). With the rise of trade with Arab countries around the 15th century, the Arabic figures (themselves influenced by Indian figures) were adopted and replaced the Roman capitals. These distinct origins explain the difference between the structure and stroke shapes of modern figures compared to Latin letters.

For each category of glyphs in a character set (caps, lowercase, smallcaps, etc.), the designer uses specific height levels as guidelines. They help maintain the consistency of the shapes and the positioning of the various elements for every glyph throughout the typeface.

Often forgotten when we think about the elements of a writing system, along with letters, characters and figures, punctuation symbols play a very important role.

When correctly used in a text, they mark its rhythm and transmit the author’s desired voice. When well designed in a typeface, they help with readability and facilitate its typesetting and typography.

During the evolution of each writing system across the globe, some have developed different punctuation shapes for the same or similar purpose. Not every script or language uses the same shapes used in Latin.

FUNCTION

For many writing systems (but not all), spaces separate words. Like punctuation symbols, they bring rhythm and clarity to a text and help with the reading experience. In the Latin script, several spaces with different widths are used for various situations (see Typographic Rules below).

HISTORY

In Ancient Latin, Roman capitals had no spaces between words. In some monuments, dots could be placed at middle height to help identify the words. In Europe, with the adoption of the Latin script, they started to appear in calligraphed manuscripts to help the readers identify the different words.

During the metal type printing era, blank pieces of lead were used as spaces between words. There were multiple widths for word spaces to help arrange text lines with precise length (em space, thin space, etc.). They lead to various rules in various languages and typographic traditions.

Nowadays, texts in the digital realm still make use of a variety of spaces for different situations in different languages, and also to offer different typographic options.

DESIGN

Spaces shouldn’t be too wide or too narrow. In Latin script based languages, a common convention is to set the width of the generic space glyph (U+0020) similar to that of the letter I or i.

TYPOGRAPHIC RULES

Many languages—including those commonly using the Latin script—have specific typographic rules.

One example: in French, before a question mark, exclamation mark, semi-colon or colon, there is a non-breaking space, whereas there isn’t any in English or other languages.

In digital typesetting, there are variable word spaces, breaking and non-breaking spaces, which give the text processing application the information on whether the width of the space can be adjusted or if the text line can or can not be broken at a specific place.

Many terms are borrowed from architecture or human and animal anatomy to designate and describe parts of letters and other characters. We are even speaking of type design anatomy.

In many writing systems, a glyph’s stem refers to its vertical bar(s) or stroke(s).

In any writing system, typefaces exist in an infinite number and variety of styles. They are influenced by many factors, such as technology, tools, necessity, and trends. But some of them are (or can be) grouped into categories for their similarities, into classification systems (sans serif, serif, humanist or geometric, etc.).

In the Latin script, we also identify Roman (or upright) and Italic as two ‘companion’ styles of the same typeface style.

Swashes are the elongated extensions of letters, designed with longer strokes than their “usual” construction, most generally as a decorative feature and/or in display style typefaces.

HISTORY

They appeared during the metal type era in the Latin world, when swashed letters served as decorative features to the text. They were also a way to showcase the punch-cutters’ skills, sometimes with incredibly long and elaborate swashes.
Swashes still have the same purpose today in digital typefaces, where “normal” letters are the default ones and swashes can be activated as alternates from the typefaces’ features (if available).

Many terms are borrowed from architecture or human and animal anatomy to designate and describe parts of letters and other characters. We are even speaking of type design anatomy.

The terminal of a character is its very last part, according to its ductus. The shape of the terminal can vary depending on the style of the typeface, with names that ‘feel’ most suited to its shape (drop, ear, serif, etc.).

Unicode is an international coding norm to identify signs and symbols used in digital devices worldwide.

Created by a non-profit organization called the Unicode Standard Consortium with a team of international members, the Unicode attributes a code to each glyph of any written language. These codes are integrated into the systems of digital devices to ensure a stable information exchange.

A white space is any part of a glyph that is not of the glyph itself. They can be counters (inside), spaces, or negative space (outside).