Operation Manual

Working with Text 127
offering a "g" with and without a closed
loop.
Small Caps/Petite Caps
A small cap "A" should use a special
glyph, which typically looks like a
capital "A", but is shorter, but has the
same stem widths etc. as the capital, so it
can't be achieved by just scaling the
capital. Petite caps are like small caps
but even smaller.
Case sensitive forms
These are variants of punctuation such
as brackets that, for example, are
designed to align more nicely with
capitals. These would generally sit a
little higher in the line, because most
capitals don’t have descenders.
Superscripts and subscripts
These are smaller raised or lowered
versions of characters; the scaling issues
are the same as for Small Caps. Some
fonts also provide Ordinals, which are a
form of superscript intended to be used
for the letters in "2
nd
", or forms that are
intended to be used in chemical or
mathematical notation.
Fractions
In text like "1/3", the digits before the
slash are made smaller and raised, and
the digits after the slash are made
smaller and may be lowered. A special
narrow version of the slash may be used.
Old style figures
These are digits that have a bit more
character (at right); they often sit lower
in the line. Compare with the more usual
"lining" figures that are more uniform
(at left).