Design Nomenclature / Type
Terminal
Also called finial
- Type
- 2D
The end of any stroke that does not finish in a serif. Named by shape: ball (Baskerville's a), teardrop, beak (the sharp spur on Perpetua's C), sheared, flared. A finial is specifically a tapered terminal, typical of italics and scripts. Terminal shape and terminal angle together set a face's aperture.
In practice
Sans faces have terminals, not serifs — the two words get swapped constantly. If it finishes the stroke without crossing it, it is a terminal.
Not to be confused with
- SerifThe finishing stroke crossing or projecting from the end of a main stroke. Serifs vary along two axes that matter: bracketed or unbracketed, and blunt, wedge, slab or hairline. They are structural, not decorative — they close a stroke, control its optical length, and lock the horizontal rhythm of a line.
- ApertureThe opening through which a partly enclosed counter connects to the space around the letter — the gap between the terminals of c and s, the mouth of a, e and the top of n. Open apertures keep c distinct from o and e from a under blur and at small sizes; closed, folded-in apertures lose those distinctions first.