X-height
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
- The correct title of this article is x-height. The initial letter is shown capitalized due to technical restrictions.
- Ex (typography) redirects here. For other uses of the term "ex", see Ex (disambiguation).
In typography, the x-height or corpus size refers to the distance between the baseline and the mean line in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the letter x in the font (which is where the terminology came from), as well as the a, c, e, m, n, o, r, s, u, v, w, and z. However, in modern typography, the x-height is simply a design characteristic of the font, and while an x is usually exactly one x-height in height, this is not always the case.
Lowercase letters whose height is greater than the x-height either have descenders which extend below the baseline, such as y, g, q, and p, or have ascenders which extend above the x-height, such as l, k, b, and d. The ratio of the x-height to the body height is one of the major characteristics that defines the appearance of a font.
The x-height of a given font is called one ex in that font, similarly to the way the width of the uppercase M is called one em.
