Italic type in the context of "Roman type"

A, or a, is the first letter and the first vowel letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, and others worldwide. Its name in English is a (pronounced /ˈeɪ/ AY), plural aes.

It is similar in shape to the Ancient Greek letter alpha, from which it derives. The uppercase version consists of the two slanting sides of a triangle, crossed in the middle by a horizontal bar. The lowercase version is often written in one of two forms: the double-storey |a| and single-storey |ɑ|. The latter is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children, and is also found in italic type.

In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface, defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design.For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts "Roman" (or "regular"), "bold" and "italic"; each of these exists in a variety of sizes. In traditional printing, fonts were physically created using metal or wood type, with a font for each size.

In the digital description of fonts (computer fonts), the terms font and typeface are often used interchangeably. For example, when used in computers, each style is stored in a separate digital font file. Most are scalable fonts, so all sizes of a style are encompassed in one font.

Modern typographers view typography as a craft with a very long history tracing its origins back to the first punches and dies used to make seals and coinage currency in ancient times. The basic elements of typography are at least as old as civilization and the earliest writing systems—a series of key developments that were eventually drawn together into one systematic craft. While woodblock printing and movable type had precedents in East Asia, typography in the Western world developed after the invention of the printing press by Johannes Gutenberg in the mid-15th century. The initial spread of printing throughout Germany and Italy led to the enduring legacy and continued use of blackletter, roman, and italic types.

Micro (Greek letter μ, mu, non-italic) is a unit prefix in the metric system denoting a factor of one millionth (10). It comes from the Greek word μικρός (mikrós), meaning "small".

It is the only SI prefix which uses a character not from the Latin alphabet. In Unicode, the symbol is represented by U+03BC μ GREEK SMALL LETTER MU or the legacy symbol U+00B5 µ MICRO SIGN. The prefix "mc" is also commonly used; for example, "mcg" denotes a microgram (whereas mg denotes a milligram).

The letter F with hook (uppercase Ƒ, lowercase: ƒ) is a letter of the Latin script, based on the italic form of f; or on its regular form with a descender hook added. A very similar-looking letter, ⟨ʄ⟩ (a dotless j with a hook and a horizontal stroke), is used in the IPA for a voiced palatal implosive.

Aldus Pius Manutius (/məˈnjuːʃiəs/; Italian: Aldo Pio Manuzio; c. 1449/1452 – 6 February 1515) was an Italian printer and humanist who founded the Aldine Press. Manutius devoted the later part of his life to publishing and disseminating rare texts. His interest in and preservation of Greek manuscripts mark him as an innovative publisher of his age dedicated to the editions he produced. Aldus Manutius introduced the small portable book format with his enchiridia, which revolutionized personal reading and are the predecessor of the modern paperback book. He also helped to standardize use of punctuation including the comma and the semicolon.

Manutius wanted to produce Greek texts for his readers because he believed that works by Aristotle or Aristophanes in their original Greek form were pure and unadulterated by translation. Before Manutius, publishers rarely printed volumes in Greek, mainly due to the complexity of providing a standardized Greek typeface. Manutius published rare manuscripts in their original Greek and Latin forms. He commissioned the creation of typefaces in Greek and Latin resembling the humanist handwriting of his time, typefaces that are the first known precursor of italic type. As the Aldine Press grew in popularity, Manutius's innovations were quickly copied across Italy despite his efforts to prevent the piracy of Aldine editions.

Blackletter (sometimes black letter or black-letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule or Gothic type, is a family of scripts used in calligraphy and typefaces.

Blackletter was used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish until the 1870s, Finnish until the turn of the 20th century, Estonian and Latvian until the 1930s, and for the German language until the 1940s, when Adolf Hitler officially banned it in 1941. Fraktur is a notable script of this type, and sometimes the entire group of blackletter faces is referred to as Fraktur. Blackletter is not to be confused with the Old English language, which predates blackletter by many centuries and was written in the insular script or in Futhorc runes. Along with Italic type and Roman type, blackletter served as one of the major typefaces in the history of Western typography.

A swash is a typographical flourish, such as an exaggerated serif, terminal, tail, entry stroke, etc., on a glyph.The use of swash characters dates back to at least the 16th century, as they can be seen in Ludovico Vicentino degli Arrighi's La Operina, which is dated 1522. As with italic type in general, they were inspired by the conventions of period handwriting. Arrighi's designs influenced designers in Italy and particularly in France.