In typography, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font. The line that descenders reach down to is known as the beard line.
For example, in the letter y, the descender would be the "tail," or that portion of the diagonal line which lies below the v created by the two lines converging. In the letter p at right, it is the stem reaching down past the o.
In most fonts, descenders are reserved for lowercase characters such as g, j, q, p, y, and sometimes f. Some fonts, however, also use descenders for some numerals (typically 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9). Such numerals are called old-style numerals. (Some italic fonts, such as Computer Modern italic, put a descender on the numeral 4 but not on any other numerals. Such fonts are not considered old-style.) Some fonts also use descenders for the tails on a few uppercase letters such as J and Q.
The parts of characters that extend above the x-height of a font are called ascenders.
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Other articles related to "descender, descenders":
... Abkhazian Che with descender (Ҿ ҿ italics Ҿ ҿ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script ... Its form is derived from the Cyrillic letter Abkhazian Che (Ҽ ҽ Ҽ ҽ) by the addition of a descender ... Abkhazian Che with descender is used in the alphabet of the Abkhazian language, where it represents the retroflex ejective affricate /ʈ͡ʂʼ/ ...
... Ge with descender (Ӷ ӷ italics Ӷ ӷ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script formed from the Cyrillic letter Ge (Г г Г г) by adding a descender ... Ge with descender is used in the alphabets of the following languages (for details consult the articles on the languages) Language Pronunciation Abkhaz voiced velar ...
... Ka with descender (Қ қ italics Қ қ) is a letter of the Cyrillic script used in a number of non-Slavic languages spoken on the territory of the former Soviet Union, including the Turkic languages Kazakh ... was spelled with the Latin alphabet, and the corresponding letter was the Latin letter K with descender (Ⱪ ⱪ) ...
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