Design Nomenclature / Type

Stress

Also called axis, shading

The angle of the line joining the thinnest points of a round stroke — a fossil of the broad-nibbed pen's angle. Humanist and garalde faces have it inclined to the left; transitionals bring it near vertical; didones make it exactly vertical. Most sans faces have no meaningful stress at all, being close to monoline.

Three lowercase o's on one baseline, headed inclined stress, near-vertical, and vertical. Garamond, Baskerville and Bodoni all substitute to Georgia — printed under each — so the three o's are one drawing repeated, at Georgia's own stress, and a footnote says the difference cannot be set here. No axis line is drawn over them.

In practice

Called "axis" as often as stress, which collides with the variable-font sense of axis and with the geometric one. Say stress when you mean the letterform.

Not to be confused with

How this term connects

BowlDidoneGaraldeHairlineHumanist serifObliqueSpineStemTransitionalVariable fontStress
Related Confused with