Font Anatomy

Font Anatomy

Glyphs/Characters
Baseline
Decender & Ascenders
X height - measurement of the baseline & the top lowercase letters
Cap Line - marks the height of the upper case letters but not the upper most reaches of the font
Accent Line - marks the furthest possible distance between the baseline & the top of the glyphs
Decent Line - marks the furthest possible distance between the baseline & the bottom of the glyphs
The distance between Accent Line & Decent Line is called line height/leading.
Tracking
Measure - width of the body of text
Columns, wrap
Serif - small finishing strokes  on the end of the character
Sanserif in frech means without serif
Kerning
Ligatures -specially designed combinations of certain letters which ordinarily don't sit well next to each other

Notes

The leading/line height is greater than the horizontal space in-between the word's/tracking
A line of text should be 2 to 3 alphabets long or 52 to 78 characters including spaces, 66 characters is ideal but for columns it should be reduced slightly
Serif make a font more readable as they guide the eye between letters
Sanserif are actually more readable because they are less cluttered
Children books often use sanserif
Serif is certainly decorative but in small font sizes it can look confusing