Typography Glossary

Hand j Also H/J. Typesetting abbreviation for hyphenation and justification.

Hairline The thinnest part of a letter other than the serif. Joins are frequently hairlines. Also, a fine line or rule, the thinnest that can be reproduced in printing.

Half-bitting The manipulation of the edges of graphic images so as to minimise the effects of aliasing and reconstruction errors. Also called dentation.

Half tone A method of simulating continuous-tone images with a device that has a small number of output tones, colours, or intensities. The patterns used are called dithers.

Heading Text that introduces sections of text, set off from the text by differences in size, typeface, or position.

Helvetica A popular sans serif typeface.

Hershey fonts A public-domain set of typefaces specified as strokes, originally for pen-and-ink plotters, still used in rasterized bitmap form.

Hertz A unit of frequency, cycles per second. Abbreviated Hz.

Hinting The process of defining outlines for digital type when resolution is low or sizes are small.

Hints When a character is described in outline format the outline has unlimited resolution. If you make it ten times as big, it is just as accurate as if it were ten times as small. However, to be of use, we must transfer the character outline to a sheet of paper through a device called a raster image processor (RIP). The RIP builds the image of the character out of lots of little squares called picture elements (pixels). The problem is, a pixel has physical size and can be printed only as either black or white. Look at a sheet of graph paper. Rows and columns of little squares (think: pixels). Draw a large `O' in the middle of the graph paper. Darken in all the squares touched by the O. Do the darkened squares form a letter that looks like the O you drew? This is the problem with low resolution (300 dpi). Which pixels do you turn on and which do you leave off to most accurately reproduce the character? All methods of hinting strive to fit (map) the outline of a character onto the pixel grid and produce the most pleasing/recognizable character no matter how coarse the grid is.

Humanist Type Style Letterforms which originate from the humanists of the Italian Renaissance.

Hyperacuity A perceptual phenomenon in which spatial frequencies much higher than usual are detected.

Hypertext A system proposed by Ted Nelson and others in which a rich structure of interconnections is created and used within on-line electronic documents. e.g. the World Wide Web

Hyphenation The splitting of a word across lines, as an aid to uniform line breaking.

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A BRIEF HISTORY OF TYPE
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MIXING TYPE
TYPOGRAPHY SOFTWARE
TYPE CHOICE

Sources:

Rubinststein, Richard. [1988] Digial Typography: An Introduction to Type and Composition for Computer System Design. Addison-Wesley Publishing Company.
Blue Dot's typoGRAPHIC.
The comp.fonts FAQ.

There have been .
© Kevin Woodward 1997.

	Hand j	Also H/J. Typesetting abbreviation for hyphenation and justification.
	Hairline	The thinnest part of a letter other than the serif. Joins are frequently hairlines. Also, a fine line or rule, the thinnest that can be reproduced in printing.
	Half-bitting	The manipulation of the edges of graphic images so as to minimise the effects of aliasing and reconstruction errors. Also called dentation.
	Half tone	A method of simulating continuous-tone images with a device that has a small number of output tones, colours, or intensities. The patterns used are called dithers.
	Heading	Text that introduces sections of text, set off from the text by differences in size, typeface, or position.
	Helvetica	A popular sans serif typeface.
	Hershey fonts	A public-domain set of typefaces specified as strokes, originally for pen-and-ink plotters, still used in rasterized bitmap form.
	Hertz	A unit of frequency, cycles per second. Abbreviated Hz.
	Hinting	The process of defining outlines for digital type when resolution is low or sizes are small.
	Hints	When a character is described in outline format the outline has unlimited resolution. If you make it ten times as big, it is just as accurate as if it were ten times as small. However, to be of use, we must transfer the character outline to a sheet of paper through a device called a raster image processor (RIP). The RIP builds the image of the character out of lots of little squares called picture elements (pixels). The problem is, a pixel has physical size and can be printed only as either black or white. Look at a sheet of graph paper. Rows and columns of little squares (think: pixels). Draw a large `O' in the middle of the graph paper. Darken in all the squares touched by the O. Do the darkened squares form a letter that looks like the O you drew? This is the problem with low resolution (300 dpi). Which pixels do you turn on and which do you leave off to most accurately reproduce the character? All methods of hinting strive to fit (map) the outline of a character onto the pixel grid and produce the most pleasing/recognizable character no matter how coarse the grid is.
	Humanist Type Style	Letterforms which originate from the humanists of the Italian Renaissance.
	Hyperacuity	A perceptual phenomenon in which spatial frequencies much higher than usual are detected.
	Hypertext	A system proposed by Ted Nelson and others in which a rich structure of interconnections is created and used within on-line electronic documents. e.g. the World Wide Web
	Hyphenation	The splitting of a word across lines, as an aid to uniform line breaking.