Which two letters to use to show the most typographic concepts?

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I’m putting letters on a typographic grid complemented by a chart to show and name typographic concepts.
The list of terms shouldn’t be exhaustive, but should contain the most important ones, e.g.:

  • the different lines (baseline, midline etc.)
  • open and closed counters
  • ascenders and descenders
  • different heights and widths

I don’t have enough space for a full-fledged »Hamburgefonstiv«: two letters is all I get.

Which combination (majuscules or minuscules) can I use that embodies the most typographic concepts?

An example for Chinese text (without numbering) I already finished (inspired by Zippel 2011, ISBN 978-3-87439-818-3):

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Answer

Probably, it doesn’t matter much to your audience whether you use letters they are familiar with, as long as they are clearly recognisable as letters. Hence I suggest Ȩ̂ (E with circumflex and cedilla) and þ̇ (thorn with dot accent):

Anatomy

You get:

  • letter anatomy:

    1. aperture
    2. apex
    3. arm
    4. ascender
    5. bar
    6. beak
    7. bowl or lobe
    8. closed and open counters
    9. descender
    10. neck
    11. overshoot
    12. bilateral and unilateral, bracketed serifs
    13. shoulder
    14. stem
    15. terminal
    16. tie
    17. tittle
    18. vertex/crotch

  • lines and heights:

    • x height
    • cap height
    • baseline
    • ascender and descender lines
    • accent heights

  • several stroke widths

  • glyph categories:

    • uppercase
    • lowercase
    • accent
    • diacritcal mark

As far as I can see, the anatomical components that are missing and not specific to a single letter (there are several terms which only exist to describe the letter g), are leg, spur, teardrop, and tail.

Attribution
Source : Link , Question Author : Philipp , Answer Author : Wrzlprmft

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