Baseline (typography)

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In typography and penmanship, the baseline is the line upon which most letters "sit" and under which descenders extend.

In the example to the right, the letter 'p' has a descender; the other letters sit on the (red) baseline.

Most, but not all typefaces are similar in the following ways as regards the baseline:

  • Lined or tabular figures (see Arabic numerals), and capital letters sit entirely above the baseline.
  • The following text figures have descenders: 3 4 5 7 9.
  • The following lowercase letters have descenders: g j p q y.
  • Glyphs with rounded lower extents (0 3 5 6 8 c C G J o O Q U) break the baseline slightly to create the optical illusion that they sit on the baseline.

The vertical distance of the base lines of consecutive lines in a paragraph is also known as line height or leading, although the latter can also refer to the base-line distance minus the font size.

v • d • e
Typography terminology
Page Pagination · Recto and verso · Margin · Column · Canons of page construction · Pull quote Lowercase 'a' in Adobe Caslon
Paragraph Widows and orphans · Leading · River · Baseline · Median · Alignment · Justification
Character Ligature · Letter-spacing · Kerning · Majuscule · Minuscule · Initial · x-height · Ascender · Descender · Diacritics · Counter · Subscript and superscript
Style Serif · Italic · Slab serif · Sans-serif · Blackletter · Script · Dingbat
Punctuation Hanging punctuation · Hyphenation · Curly quotes · En dash · Em dash
Typesetting Type design · Type foundry · Movable type · Calligraphy · Phototypesetting · Letterpress · Typeface · Font · Computer font · Point · Pica · Cicero · Agate · Em · En · Lorem ipsum · Hamburgefonts · Punchcutting · Pangram
Digital typography Font formats · Typesetting software · Character encoding · Rasterization · Hinting
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