User Guide

have been called “gothic,” which in Europe refers to black
letters. Helvetica is an example of a sans serif face. The
typeface used for our headings in this manual is a sans
serif face, TFForever.
Serif
Serif letters can be distinguished by the line that crosses
the main strokes of a character. Serifs are the short cross-
strokes at the ends of letters, drawn there to improve
readability of the type. The typeface used in this text is a
serif face, Goudy Oldstyle. Another example of a serif
face is Times.
Style
Styles of a face include modifications such as bold, italic,
condensed, and extended. Each style should be considered
a separate face. The combination of styles makes up a
font. A typestyle provides a way to add emphasis to
written text. Other styles could be defined: Many faces
have condensed and extended versions, and some have
light and heavy versions. Ultra-bold is frequently used for
headline text.
Text type
Text type is used for larger masses of text and should be
highly readable.
x-height
The x-height line marks the top of the lower case letters
without ascenders or descenders, such as “x” and “o.”
This line may be positioned anywhere you wish, since it is
only a guideline. In general, faces with taller x-heights are
perceived as larger and more readable than those with
small x-heights.
Fontographer background
Em square
Fontographer’s em square is used as a normalization
value when generating PostScript and also defines the
precision possible in the font. The ascent and descent
Fontographer User's Manual
C: General information Page #3