Ascender

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This article is about ascenders in typography. For the font company, see Ascender Corporation. For the rope-climbing device, see Ascender (climbing). For the sports utility vehicle, see Isuzu Ascender.
The ascenders are the parts of the characters that lie above the midline.
The ascenders are the parts of the characters that lie above the midline.

In typography, an ascender is the portion of a letter in a Latin-derived alphabet that extends above the mean line of a font. That is, the part of the letter that is taller than the font's x-height.

Ascenders, together with descenders, increase the recognizability of words. For this reason, British highway road signs that must be read quickly no longer use all capital letters.[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Sampson, Geoffrey. Writing Systems: A linguistic introduction, pp. 94–95. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8047-1254-9.


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