descenders

n. person or thing that descends, one who comes down; any lower-case letter with a part that extends below the baseline; part of a letter that extends below the baseline (such as g, p, q, etc.)

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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<text> A lowercase letter that extends below the base line, such as "g", "j", or "p". Also used to denote the part of the letter extending below the base line. Compare ascender.
(1998-03-27)