I. LETTERING

Lettering, considered the written language of industry, is so important in a drawing that it cannot be dispensed with in the study of drafting. The style of lettering emphasized in each area of drafting depends on the nature of the work. The topographical draftsman uses not only Gothic letters but Roman letters as well. A commercial artist uses all types of lettering. Furniture, machine, structural, electrical, and architectural draftsmen generally use the single-stroke Gothic alphabet and numbers. Lettering skill is acquired through constant practice.

CLASSIFICATION OF LETTER STYLE

Gothic – All letters having the elementary strokes of even width are classified as Gothic.

Roman – All letters having elementary strokes “accented” or consisting of heavy and light lines, are classified as Roman.

Italic – All slanting letters are classified as Italic – these maybe further designated as Roman-Italics, Gothic Italics or Text Italic.

Text – This term includes all styles of Old English, German Text, Bradley Text or others of various trade names – text styles are too illegible for commercial purpose.

STYLES OF LETTER

Today there are various letter styles: Gothic or Sans-serif, Old English or Text, Script, Modern Roman, and Italic. All of these are patterned after the Old Roman letters.

LETTER CASE

Uppercase - A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Lowercase - a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v w x y z

Uppercase or Capital Letters - Uppercase letters are letters that represent the beginning of a sentence or a proper noun.

Lowercase or Small Letters - They're the smaller versions of each letter. For example, this is a lowercase "a" while this its big brother: the capital "A."

GUIDELINES IN LETTERING

Generally, two horizontal guide lines are used in capital letters (called the top and base lines) and three in small or lowercase letters (top, waist, and base lines).

For beginners in lettering, the height or distance between the top and base lines should be one centimeter, gradually becoming shorter as one develops skill in lettering. The shortest height for capital letters should be three millimeters, and the distance between the base and waist lines should be two-thirds the distance from the base to the top guide line.

Inclined guide lines should be about 67 ½ degrees from the horizontal. This can be laid out by following the inclined line which intersects points 2 and 5, as shown in the figure below.

GENERAL PROPORTION OF LETTERS

Normal – normal letters are used if the space where the letters are to be printed or lettered as ample.

Condensed - The compressed lettering are those which are written in the narrow space. These are used when the space is limited. The widths of the condensed letters are less than height.

Extended - The extended lettering are those which are wider than normal letters but of the same height.

COMPOSITION IN LETTERING

Composition in lettering refers to the proper selection of letter styles and sizes, the spacing of the letters and words, and the arrangement of the letterings in the given space.

Letters are spaced by making the white spaces between them appear equal. In other words, spacing is done visually and not mechanically – that is, the clearances between letters is made to appear equal.

a. Visual Spacing - Visual space is the experience of space by an aware observer. It is the subjective counterpart of the space of physical objects.

b. Mechanical Spacing - In mechanical spacing the separate letters are treated as if they were in a box or rectangular block. The spacing is determined by the equalization of the distances between the blocks. This type of spacing, while relatively easy to do, is commonly used only by machine lettering.