Tittle
The dot over a lowercase i or j, and one of the few pieces of type anatomy with a name most people find surprising.
Near it
Ascender
x-heightWhat it is made of
| what it is | the dot on an i or a j, which is a separate mark and not part of the stem | |
| measured on this shelf | the dot is separate ink on all 23 families, and on 20 of them it is exactly ONE STEM WIDTH across; it is square or round to within 3 per cent on all 23 | measured on the fixed shelf, 2026-09-24, which sets the letter at 400px on its baseline in each family's Regular and counts ink, the stem being the median width of the stem's own ink through its middle. The figures this row carried until then were made by hand, by a script that is not in the tree, on a build replaced before it shipped, and could not be made again; the method is written down |
| the three that are not, and the reason is the denominator | Drew Extrude 0.50, Drew Engrave 2.94, Drew Outline 2.50 | Extrude's stem is the letter and the letter behind it, so it is twice the stroke; Engrave and Outline draw the stem as two fine lines round the Regular's, so their stem is a hairline and the dot, drawn the same way, is not. Checked by rendering the i at 400px. Slab and Gazette, which this row listed until 2026-09-24, measure 1.00 once the stem is the stem and not the widest ink, which was the serif |
| the gap between dot and stem | from 0.52 stem widths on Drew Stencil to 2.07 on Drew Hairline | measured on the fixed shelf, 2026-09-28, which sets the letter at 400px on its baseline in each family's Regular and counts ink. A thin face needs more air under its dot or the two read as one mark. The figures this row carried until 2026-09-24 were made by hand, by a script that is not in the tree, on a build replaced before it shipped, and could not be made again; the method is written down |
| and one family has no single stem to measure against | Drew Perforate, whose i is three pieces | the fourth time that face has answered an instrument honestly by breaking it |