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):
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):
You get:
-
letter anatomy:
- aperture
- apex
- arm
- ascender
- bar
- beak
- bowl or lobe
- closed and open counters
- descender
- neck
- overshoot
- bilateral and unilateral, bracketed serifs
- shoulder
- stem
- terminal
- tie
- tittle
- 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