Last week, I defined typography. A while ago, I covered the basic typographic guidelines in my post on alignment. Here, I'll dive into type anatomy. Each character (defined as any number, letter or punctuation mark in a typeface) is made up of various pieces. Just like you have hands and feet, characters have specific body parts.

You say toe-may-toe, I say toe-mah-toe. You say GIF (hard g), I say JIF (soft g). (For the record, it's pronounced "JIF.") The world of type is full of terms that are constantly misused. Don't get me wrong, I still struggle with choosing the right terminology too. So I wanted to define some of the most common terms, for your benefit and mine.