The naming of parts…
… can be tricky, but figuring out WHAT the parts of different things are called is an important SearchResearch skill.
Let’s jump right into it (especially since this post is a couple of days late–see at the end for details)…
1. What’s this part of the numeral 1 called? (That is, the thing sticking like a flange off the front. Here I’ve circled it with a yellow dotted oval.)
Or, what’s your favorite context term in English? (I’m always finding new ones. Are there ones you know about that you’d like to share with us?)
… can be tricky, but figuring out WHAT the parts of different things are called is an important SearchResearch skill.
Let’s jump right into it (especially since this post is a couple of days late–see at the end for details)…
1. What’s this part of the numeral 1 called? (That is, the thing sticking like a flange off the front. Here I’ve circled it with a yellow dotted oval.)
Short answer: It’s call an arm, but you could be forgiven for calling it a serif, an ear, or a leg, since they’re all close in meaning.
Here’s what I did to search for this.
My go-to method for looking for the names of parts-of-things is to do an image search with the context term “diagram” — like this:
[ typography parts of a numeral diagram ]
I admit that I rapidly went through a bunch of queries kind of like this:
[ typography font parts diagram ]
[ typography font number diagram ]
and so on until I found that first one which gave me a bunch of diagrams with all of the parts of different characters with neat labels on them. There are MANY such diagrams, and they’re not all consistent, but here’s one that I like from Carson Park Design, Sans and Serif. This is just the relevant bit of their beautiful diagram:
Their PDF has a nice set of examples of different parts of characters, including the definition of an arm (or leg) as a “..a horizontal stroke that is free on one end.”
This is different than a serif which is a stroke added as a stop to the beginning and end of the main strokes of a character. Historically it comes from the way characters were chiseled into stone in Roman typography.
And of course, variations in typeface design can sometimes make it difficult to tell if it’s a serif or an arm / leg / ear.
And, confusingly, some numeral 1s don’t have anything! This is a Gill Sans number 1, which is terrible (in my opinion), especially when its used for part numbers or codes (e.g., I11i)
Odd thing, I love Gill Sans in general, just not the choice about the I’s and the 1s.
2. What this line that connects these two characters called?
Can we use that same context term trick here?
Yes, you can, and it works fine. But I found that the query:
[ typography connected characters examples ]
actually works better. Why? Because here I’m looking for a definition, and not so much a diagram that labels the parts.
In any case, the Sans and Serif diagram we saw before actually has a nice example of what connected characters are called:
Just to check if this is a ligature for S and T, I did the query:
[ ligature “s t” ]
and found a bunch of examples:
On the other hand, if you dig deeply enough (and Miguel Luís clearly pointed out in the comments), you’ll find that this connecting line is called a gadzook, and that the pair of letters + the gadzook is collectively called a ligature.
But as we’ve discussed before, sometimes the language changes even during your own lifetime.
This image is from Chris Do’s beautiful animated video about many typographic terms. https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=45&v=WzVl_ATHUQ0 — check out the swash at 2:00 and the gadzook at 2:56
3. You often see elaborate / decorative characters in type. Collectively, what are these kinds of characters called? (This is handy to know if you want to search for them.)
I admit that this was a bit of an open-ended question. What I was trying to convey was the idea of the extended strokes–the decorative tail on the A and Z, and the little decorative serif-looking thing at the top of the A.
I initially did this search by using a Reverse Dictionary, and searching for:
[ decorative fonts ]
and found a lot of terms, but the first one I didn’t know in the list was “swash.” What does that mean in the context of typography?
I did a define:
[ define swash ]
and found that the second definition is what I was looking for:
This makes sense. Now, armed with “swash” as a new term, I could do a search for:
[ swash typography example ]
and find all kinds of interesting examples, like this one in Zapfino:
It’s a very calligraphic look, which is what swash is all about.
4. Every so often I want to use a character that I KNOW exists, but I don’t know the name, so it’s hard to find and I’m reduced to manual search. Here are a couple of such characters. What are they? More importantly, how did you find out their names?
There are many ways to find these characters. Here’s what I did for each:
1. What’s that upside down A character? I tried the obvious search:
[ upside down A character ]
and found that “…The upside-down A symbol is the universal quantifier from predicate logic.”
It just means “for all” as in the expression, “for all values of X, this statement is true…” For example:
∀ SRS topics X, Remmij will post something on Imgur.com
2. For the ß character, I did a draw-special-character in Google Docs.
As you remember, if you create a new doc in Google Docs, you can “Insert Special Character,” and draw it in the box on the side, like this:
Notice that it tells you what this character is (“Latin Small Letter Sharp S”), although it does note that it also looks like a Greek Beta symbol.
But if I search for:
[ sharp s ]
I land on the Wikipedia page about “Sharp S” (aka Eszett, or Sharfe S).
3. I did the same trick with the 3rd character, and found that it’s called a thorn character. The thorn (more properly, the þorn character) is a letter in the Old English, Gothic, Old Norse and modern Icelandic alphabets. Capital: Þ, Miniscule form: þ
As Luís and Remmij both pointed out, the web site Shapecatcher does exactly this–you draw in the character, and it identifies it for you.
Search Lessons
1. You can search for characters by using the insert special character method in Google Docs. Easy, and it opens up the world’s orthography to you.
2. Context terms can be really useful, especially when looking to labeled diagrams of things that you don’t know. “Diagram” is my favorite, but note that these context terms vary from language to language. You’d use schema in German to find more-or-less the same thing.
What’s your favorite context term in your language?
Or, what’s your favorite context term in English? (I’m always finding new ones. Are there ones you know about that you’d like to share with us?)
Search on!
—
Why is this post delayed?
Well, it’s the conference time of year, and this year I’m in Montreal for the Computer-Human Interaction conference in Montréal, Canada. Just before coming here, I was visiting Dalhousie University in Halifax, just a 90 minute flight away from Montréal.
To make things more complicated, I’m finishing up work on my book… so THAT’s taking time as well.
But I’ll be back next week, on Wednesday, with a new Challenge.
Stay tuned for even more searching…
