For the cycling term, see
Bicycling terminology. In
typography, a descender is the portion of a
letter in a Latin-derived alphabet that extends below the
baseline of a
font.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 most fonts, descenders are reserved for
lowercase characters such as g, p, and y. 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.
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