C Terms
Case It shouldn't surprise you that in hot metal times, capital letters where kept in the upper drawer (or case), and non-capitals in the lower drawer.
Ceceril In case you need the name of a c accented with a cedilla.
Center Point Not quite a bullet, not quite a period. It's the dot that appears between letters to indicate syllable breaks.
Character Sets Every font has a limited set of characters that it contains-and they aren't always located at the same keyboard address (a key or combination of keys that make the character appear on your screen and on the printer). Unfortunately, a number of standards have emerged for character sets, so fonts can be different from system to system (or even on the same system). All of this is a bit confusing, so try not to worry about it-when in doubt, consult a keyboard layout chart or use a character-choosing utility.
- ASCII Most fonts are based on this American Standard Code for Information Interchange, which is limited to 128 characters, but in its extended form, covers up to 256 separate items (see ANSI below).
- ANSI The American National Standards Institute character set of 256 characters (the first 128 are ASCII).
- Double-Byte for extremely large character sets, like those used in Kanji or Chinese, 256 characters is simply not enough (they can have up to 20,000 characters). Double-byte software supports a system-level way of accessing more than the usual 256 (single-byte) characters. A byte, by the way, is a computer numerical representation of a character or number made up of zeros and ones (called bits). There are eight bits in one byte, or 16 bits in a double-byte.
- Expert A collection (may be multiple fonts) that generally includes small caps, oldstyle figures, superior and inferior numbers, additional ligatures, and miscellaneous special characters. Adobe pretty much set this standard with their Expert Collections.
- ISO Latin Sort of the international version of the ASCII set as dictated by the International Standards Organization.
- SCOSF (small caps, old-style figures).
Circus Makeup Once referred to lots of typefaces on a single page. Now it seems pretty commonplace.
Cicero A measurement preference choice in XPress and PageMaker-more popular in Europe than in the US. An old printer's term, a cicero is slightly larger than a pica (0.1776 inches). The sub-unit of the cicero is the didot point-there are 12 of them to each one cicero.
Classification Systems The advent of electronic type design has made it even harder to classify typestyles by design attributes. Type observers have dreamed up all kinds of type categories, from Neo Grotesque San Serif (Akzidenz, ITC Franklin Gothic, Helvetica) to Humanistic (ITC Eras, Gill Sans, Optima), to Glyphic (ITC Barcelona, ITC Serif Gothic, Friz Quadrata). In the late 1950s, Adrian Frutiger proposed a two-digit numbering system for type which first appeared with his Univers family. The first digit denoted weight (from 3-light to 8-heavy), the second width (from 3-extended to 9-condensed). Linotype ultimately released a Helvetica series with these numerical designations, and many other large families are categorized this way.
Ben Bauermeister of ElseWare Corporation came up with the PANOSE System, which is one of the most ambitious way of identifying type styles, and one used by Microsoft Windows to affect type substitutions. The 7-digit classification number covers serif style, proportion, contrast, stroke variation, letterform, midline height and axis, and x height. Using the Panose system, fonts can be mathematically compared, sorted or matched by style.
Maximillian Vox (1894-1974), a French typographer, developed the Vox Type Classification System in early 1950s-it consists of 9 general type categories and is used primarily in Europe.
None of the proposed type classification systems has ever caught on widely in the electronic type community, where the number and variety of type designs is at an all-time high.
Colophon This is the inscription at the back of a book which tells you how the book was produced, and gives you information about the author and/or publisher.
Contrast Not just an adjustment on your monitor, but how we refer to the difference between the thick and thin parts of a particular type design.