Ascender

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For the rope-climbing device, see Jumar; for the sports utility vehicle, see Isuzu Ascender.

The ascenders are the parts of the characters that lie above the midline, highlighted in red.
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The ascenders are the parts of the characters that lie above the midline, highlighted in red.

In typography, an ascender is the portion of a letter in a Latin-derived alphabet that extends above the midline of a font. That is, the part of the letter that is taller than the font's x-height.

Ascenders, together with descenders, increase the recognizability of words. For this reason, British highway road signs that must be read quickly no longer use all capital letters.[1]

[edit] References

  1. ^ Sampson, Geoffrey. Writing Systems: A linguistic introduction, pp. 94–95. Stanford, California: Stanford University Press, 1985. ISBN 0-8047-1254-9.
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