In
typography and
handwriting, an ascender is the portion of a
minuscule letter in a Latin-derived alphabet that extends above the
mean line of a
font. That is, the part of a lower-case letter that is taller than the font's
x-height.
Ascenders, together with
descender
In typography and handwriting, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font.
For example, in the letter ''y'', the descender is the "tail", or that portion of the diagonal line which lies below the ''v' ...
s, increase the recognizability of words. For this reason, many situations that require high legibility such as road signs avoid using solely
capital letters (i.e.
all-caps
In typography, all caps (short for "all capitals") refers to text or a font in which all letters are capital letters, for example: "THIS TEXT IS IN ALL CAPS". All caps may be used for emphasis (for a word or phrase). They are commonly seen in l ...
).
Studies made at the start of the construction of the British
motorway network concluded that words with mixed-case letters were much easier to read than "all-caps" and a special font was designed for motorway signs. These then became universal across the UK. See
Road signs in the United Kingdom.
In many fonts intended for body text, such as
Bembo and
Garamond
Garamond is a group of many serif typefaces, named for sixteenth-century Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, generally spelled as Garamont in his lifetime. Garamond-style typefaces are popular and particularly often used for book printing and bo ...
, ascenders rise above the
cap height of the capital letters.
References
{{Typography terms
Typography