Typography Anatomy and Glyph Construction

Below is a diagram of typography anatomy. When we learn these terms and understand how to use them, we can create our glyphs and compile them together to create fonts, understand the structure of lettering and spacing, create beautiful typographically sound work, and more.

Ascender

Letters like f, d, t, and k all have ascenders. You can find an ascender as part of a lowercase letter that extends above the x-height.

Descender

The part of lowercase letters such as p and q that extend below the baseline is known as a descender.

Counter

The area of the letter is closed by a stroke such as an o or a. The stroke of the letter that creates a counter is called a “bowl”.

Open Counter

Open counters can be found on the letter y. It's the area letter which is almost closed by a stroke.

Tail

The tail is the name given to the fancy looking descender on a character. These fancy descenders can be found on the tails of the letters g, j, p, q, y and on caps K, R, and Q, Sometimes depending on the font style.