Greek is an alphabetic European script that, even if it is not written, always looks somewhat familiar especially in its typographic form. serif = ακρότυπο (akrótipo: tip of the branch).serif = ακρέμων (akrémon: tip of the branch, formal form of the above).serif = ακρεμόνας (akrémonas: tip of the branch).serif = σέριφ (transliteration of the word “serif”).** We have ended up nominating six words for serifs: four from the Hegrade forum discussion in 2006 and two bonuses: Of course that isn’t a very safe assumption if you see curved and overshooting kappas, but then again, ‘x’ can do that too. * The x-height has translated in Greek (in half of the examples) as the kappa-height. So I will list here the terms that seem to be in common use in graphic design schools, with the caution that these terms might never have been used by printers or calligraphers. This is the situation that remains today. The discussion petered out, with, for example, four terms for serif** - some everyday, some arcane - with no agreement as to which was to be recommended. A significant number of terms commonly used in English were presented alongside suggestions for Greek terms. Many terms survive, however, and we list a few that are encountered in the text.”Īround 2006 there was a concerted effort to agree on terminology, especially on the internet forum Hegrade. However, the three dimensional character has been supplanted by the two dimensional pixelography. One might be tempted to introduce modern terminology that is consistent and accurate. As a consequence the terms that have survived are often of unknown origin (as is ‘serif’, say) and if the origin is known the evolution of the term in use bears little resemblance to its root (as with ‘punch’). “It must be borne in mind that typographic terms have been introduced and used by practitioners with little if any theoretical background. The latter gave us, in the appendix of the proceedings publication, a “glossary of terms” with the following note of caution: In both conferences there were attempts to establish a typographic glossary in Greek. In the 1990s there were two significant conferences about Greek typography: in 1992 the “DIDOT Program” in Thessaloniki, and in 1995 “Greek letters: from tablets to pixels” in Athens. Almost all printing terms and glossaries of typographic terms in Greek nowadays have been established by non-Greeks, took place outside of Greece, and have been simply translated into Greek language.* The difficulty has been getting all the modern groups to agree to use a standard set of terms. We can identify at least these: typeface designers, typographic designers, calligraphers, teachers of handwriting for children, design teachers, printers, graphic designers, palaeographers, etc. There are many professions that need terminology for everyday purposes. Thus Western type designers and scholars have shied away from anatomical terms in favour of labelling entire models after their creators without significant analysis of their construction and aesthetic relationships. While Greek uppercase, at least as far as fonts are concerned, can be analysed on the same basis as Latin, the lowercase has often been regarded as somewhat ‘exotic’. In the Latin world there have been many endeavours to anatomize the shapes of letters, from Albrecht Dürer’s geometry of capitals in the 16th century to Stephen Coles’s excellent book, The Anatomy of Type, as recently as 2012.
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