LETTERING

 What are the main requirements of lettering?

 1) The knowledge of shape and proportion of each letter.

 2) The knowledge of the order and direction of the strokes used in        making letters.

 3) The knowledge of the general composition of letters.

 4) The knowledge of rules for combining letters into words and           words into sentences.

 What is lettering?

        The art of writing the alphabets A, B, C … and numbers such as 0, 1, 2, 3….. etc. is known as lettering.

 What do you mean by composition of letters?

       The composition means the composing of letters into words and  words into sentences. The letters are so arranged that the open area  between two letters of a word appears equal to the eye judgment.

 What do you mean by uniformity of letters?

        The uniformity of lettering means keeping the height, inclination,  spacing and strength of letters to be same. It is very essential for  good lettering in engineering drawing.

 What do you mean by normal, compressed and  extended  lettering?

 Normal lettering:  The normal lettering has normal height and  width and is used for  general purposes. The width of the normal  letter is about 0.67 times of the height of  the letter.

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

 What are the guidelines and why they are necessary in  lettering?

         The lines which are used to regulate the height and inclination to the  letters and numerals are known as guidelines. These are to be drawn  at random. The guidelines are used to regulate the uniformity of the  letters.

 What do you mean by single stroke letters?

         Single stroke letters means that the thickness of the line of the letter  should be such as is obtained in one stroke of the pencil. Single  stroke letters are of two types.

 1) Vertical

 2) Inclined (75⁰ with horizontal)

                                   

 What is the gothic and roman lettering?

 Gothic lettering: The lettering in which all the alphabets are of  uniform width or thickness is known as gothic lettering. It can be  divided into following groups.

 (i) Vertical or Upright vertical gothic lettering

 (ii) Inclined or Italic gothic lettering

 Roman lettering: The lettering in which all the alphabets are  composed of thick and thin elements is known as roman lettering  and can either be vertical or inclined.

 What do you mean by freehand lettering?

         The art of writing the alphabets without the use of drawing  instrument is called freehand lettering. The freehand lettering is of  the following types.

• ·       Vertical or upright freehand gothic lettering.

• ·       Single stroke vertical freehand gothic lettering.

• ·       Lowercase vertical freehand gothic lettering.

• ·       Inclined or italic freehand gothic lettering.

• ·       Single stroke italic freehand gothic lettering.

• ·       Lower case italic freehand gothic lettering.

                                 

Composed by:  R.Satheesh, M.E., Asst Prof., email: rsatheeshemail@gmail.com.