Typographic Design: Form and Communication, 5th Edition

Glossary

A.A. Abbreviation for “author's alteration,” used to flag a mistake or correction by the author.

ABA form. Design principle of form interrelationships, involving repetition and contrast.

Accents. Small marks over, under, or through a letterform, indicating specific punctuation or changes in stress.

Agate. Vertical unit used to measure space in newspaper columns, originally five-and-one-half point type. Fourteen agate lines equal approximately one inch.

Alert Box. A message box that appears on a computer screen with information for the user, for example, a “bomb message” when a computer crashes.

Alignment. Precise arrangement of letterforms upon an imaginary horizontal or vertical line.

Alphabet length. Horizontal measure of the lowercase alphabet in a type font, used to approximate the horizontal measure of type set in that font.

Ampersand. Typographic character (&) representing the word and.

Antialiasing. The blurring of a jagged line or edge on a screen or output device to give the appearance of a smooth line.

Application program. Computer software used to create and modify documents.

Area Composition. The organization of typographic and other graphic elements into their final positions by electronic means (keyboard, graphics tablets, and electronic pens, etc.), eliminating the need for hand assembly or pasteup.

Ascender. Stroke on a lowercase letter that rises above the mean-line.

ASCII code. Abbreviation for American Standard Code of Information Interchange. The numbers ...