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In 
' has two closed counters.
The digit ' 4' also has two typographic variants: the closed-top variant '4' has a closed counter, and an open-top (e.g. handwritten) '
' has an open counter.
Fonts designed for legibility often have very open apertures, keeping the strokes widely separated from one another to reduce ambiguity. This may be especially important in situations such as signs to be viewed at a distance, materials intended to be viewed by people with vision problems, or small print, especially on poor-quality paper. Fonts with open apertures include My Type Design Philosophy by Martin Majoor
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In typography
Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line-spacing ( leading), and ...
, a counter is the area of a letter that is entirely or partially enclosed by a letter form or a symbol
A symbol is a mark, sign, or word that indicates, signifies, or is understood as representing an idea, object, or relationship. Symbols allow people to go beyond what is known or seen by creating linkages between otherwise very different conc ...
(the counter-space/the hole of). The stroke that creates such a space is known as a "bowl". Latin letters
The Latin script, also known as Roman script, is an alphabetic writing system based on the letters of the classical Latin alphabet, derived from a form of the Greek alphabet which was in use in the ancient Greek city of Cumae, in southern Italy ...
containing closed counters include A, B, D, O, P, Q, R, a, b, d, e, g, o, p, and q. Latin letters containing open counters include c, f, h, s etc. The digits 0, 4, 6, 8, and 9 also possess a counter. An aperture is the opening between an open counter and the outside of the letter.
The lowercase ' g' has two typographic variants: the single-storey 'g' has one closed counter and one open counter (and hence one aperture); the double-storey '' has two closed counters.
The digit ' 4' also has two typographic variants: the closed-top variant '4' has a closed counter, and an open-top (e.g. handwritten) '' has an open counter.
Open and closed apertures
Different typeface styles have different tendencies to use open or more closed apertures. This design decision is particularly important for sans-serif typefaces, which can have very wide strokes making the apertures very narrow indeed.
Fonts designed for legibility often have very open apertures, keeping the strokes widely separated from one another to reduce ambiguity. This may be especially important in situations such as signs to be viewed at a distance, materials intended to be viewed by people with vision problems, or small print, especially on poor-quality paper. Fonts with open apertures include Lucida Grande
Lucida Grande is a humanist sans-serif typeface. It is a member of the Lucida family of typefaces designed by Charles Bigelow and Kris Holmes. It is best known for its implementation throughout the macOS user interface from 1999 to 2014, as w ...
, Trebuchet MS
Trebuchet MS is a humanist sans-serif typeface that Vincent Connare designed for Microsoft Corporation in 1996. Trebuchet MS was the font used for the window titles in the Windows XP default theme, succeeding MS Sans Serif and Tahoma. Release ...
, Corbel
In architecture, a corbel is a structural piece of stone, wood or metal jutting from a wall to carry a superincumbent weight, a type of bracket. A corbel is a solid piece of material in the wall, whereas a console is a piece applied to the s ...
and Droid Sans, all designed for use on low-resolution displays, and Frutiger, FF Meta
FF Meta is a humanist sans-serif typeface family designed by Erik Spiekermann and released in 1991 through his FontFont library. According to Spiekermann, FF Meta was intended to be a "complete antithesis of Helvetica", which he found "boring an ...
and others designed for print use. This design trend has become increasingly common with the spread of humanist sans-serif
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...
designs since the 1980s and the 1990s and the use of computers requiring new fonts which are legible on-screen.
Grotesque
Since at least the 18th century (in French and German as well as English), grotesque has come to be used as a general adjective for the strange, mysterious, magnificent, fantastic, hideous, ugly, incongruous, unpleasant, or disgusting, and thus ...
or neo-grotesque
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called " serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than se ...
sans-serif fonts like Helvetica
Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann.
Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) ...
use very closed apertures, folding up stroke ends to make them closer together. This gives these designs a distinctive, compact appearance, but may make similar letterforms hard to distinguish. Closed letterforms on highly condensed grotesque designs such as Impact
Impact may refer to:
* Impact (mechanics), a high force or shock (mechanics) over a short time period
* Impact, Texas, a town in Taylor County, Texas, US
Science and technology
* Impact crater, a meteor crater caused by an impact event
* Impac ...
and Haettenschweiler
Haettenschweiler is a sans-serif typeface in the grotesque style that is very bold and condensed. It is intended for headlines and display text.
Schmalfette Grotesk
Versions of the font that are now commonly used are descend from an upper-case onl ...
make characters such as ''8'' and ''9'' almost indistinguishable at small print sizes. Designer Nick Shinn has suggested that the cause of this design trend, similar to the Didone serif typefaces of the nineteenth century, may have been the desire to distribute the pressure of the printing press on the type, reducing wear./ref>
See also
*Figure space
A figure space or numeric space is a typographic unit equal to the size of a single numerical digit. Its size can fluctuate somewhat depending on which font is being used. This is the preferred space to use in numbers. It has the same width as a d ...
* Thin space
In typography, a thin space is a space character whose width is usually or of an em. It is used to add a narrow space, such as between nested quotation marks or to separate glyphs that interfere with one another. It is not as narrow as the hair ...
* Paren space
A paren space is a blank typographic unit equal to the size of a parenthesis. Its size can fluctuate somewhat depending on which font is being used.
See also
*Em (typography)
*En (typography)
*Figure space
A figure space or numeric space is a t ...
* Counterpunch (typography)
Punchcutting is a craft used in traditional typography to cut letter punches in steel as the first stage of making metal type. Steel punches in the shape of the letter would be used to stamp matrices into copper, which were locked into a mould sh ...
References
Typography Whitespace {{typ-stub