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====ascender and descender==== | ====ascender and descender==== | ||
An ascender is part of an alphabetic character that rises above the main body of some letters, such as the vertical line that extends above the circular part of the letter b. | |||
====ascent and descent==== | ====ascent and descent==== |
Revision as of 00:52, 29 November 2011
abbreviation
A shortened representation of a word or phrase, that may include symbols as well as alphabetic characters.
allograph
A distinct form of an alphabetic letter or symbol in writing. In Irish manuscripts, it is common to see more than one allograph of a letter on the same page.
ascender and descender
An ascender is part of an alphabetic character that rises above the main body of some letters, such as the vertical line that extends above the circular part of the letter b.
ascent and descent
baseline
ceann faoi eite
character
compendium
See #abbreviation
contraction
See #abbreviation
cue height
See x height
descender
diacritic
digraph
glyph
grapheme
A basic unit in the writing system of a (written) language. Like ‘character’, a ‘grapheme’ is an abstract term, but unlike ‘character’, it relates to the representation of phonemes. For instance, aoi represents one grapheme in modern Irish, but is composed of three different characters. Similarly, a character may be used for more than one grapheme.
letter
conceptually distinct from characters, graphemes and glyphs. A, a, a and a represent four different characters of the same letter.
ligature
majuscule
minim
minuscule and majuscule
- A minuscule is a small alphabetic character; the majority of the text of a manuscript is made up of minuscule letters.
- A majuscule is a large alphabetic character, often used at the beginning of a sentence in Irish manuscripts.
nomina sacra
Latin for ‘sacred names’.
subscript
superscript and subscript
suspension stroke
Tironian notes
A system of shorthand writing symbols attributed to Cicero's secretary Marcus Tullius Tiro, who lived in Rome in the 1st century BCE.
Unicode
x height
Malcolm B. Parkes and Peter A. Stokes use the term ‘cue-height’ as the palaeographical equivalent.