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In typography
Typography

Typography is the art and techniques of typesetting, type design, and modifying type glyphs. Type glyphs are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques....
, a descender is the portion of a letter
Grapheme

In typography, a grapheme is the fundamental unit in writing systems. Graphemes include letter , Chinese characters, numerals, punctuation marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems....
 in a Latin alphabet that extends below the baseline
Baseline (typography)

In typography and penmanship, the baseline is the line upon which most letters "sit" and below which descenders extend.In the example to the right, the letter 'p' has a descender; the other letters sit on the baseline....
 of a font
Typeface

In typography, a typeface is a set of one or more fonts, in one or more sizes, designed with stylistic unity, each comprising a coordinated set of glyphs....
.

For example, in the letter y, the descender would be the "tail," or that portion of the diagonal
Diagonal

A diagonal can refer to a line joining two nonconsecutive vertices of a polygon or polyhedron, or in informal contexts any upward or downward sloping line....
 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 numeral
Numeral

The term numeral can refer to:* Numeral system, a system of mathematical notation for writing numbers* Number names, the words used in a language or writing system to represent numbers...
s (typically 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9).






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In typography
Typography

Typography is the art and techniques of typesetting, type design, and modifying type glyphs. Type glyphs are created and modified using a variety of illustration techniques....
, a descender is the portion of a letter
Grapheme

In typography, a grapheme is the fundamental unit in writing systems. Graphemes include letter , Chinese characters, numerals, punctuation marks, and all the individual symbols of any of the world's writing systems....
 in a Latin alphabet that extends below the baseline
Baseline (typography)

In typography and penmanship, the baseline is the line upon which most letters "sit" and below which descenders extend.In the example to the right, the letter 'p' has a descender; the other letters sit on the baseline....
 of a font
Typeface

In typography, a typeface is a set of one or more fonts, in one or more sizes, designed with stylistic unity, each comprising a coordinated set of glyphs....
.

For example, in the letter y, the descender would be the "tail," or that portion of the diagonal
Diagonal

A diagonal can refer to a line joining two nonconsecutive vertices of a polygon or polyhedron, or in informal contexts any upward or downward sloping line....
 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 numeral
Numeral

The term numeral can refer to:* Numeral system, a system of mathematical notation for writing numbers* Number names, the words used in a language or writing system to represent numbers...
s (typically 3, 4, 5, 7, and 9). Such numerals are called old-style numerals. (Some italic
Italic type

In typography, italic type refers to cursive typefaces based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. The influence from calligraphy can be seen in their usual slight slanting to the right....
 fonts, such as Computer Modern italic
Computer Modern

Computer Modern is the family of typefaces used by default by the typesetting program TeX. It was created by Donald Knuth with his METAFONT program, and was most recently updated in 1992....
, 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.

The parts of characters that extend above the x-height
X-height

In typography, the x-height or corpus size refers to the distance between the baseline and the mean line in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the letter x in the font , as well as the u, v, w, and z....
 of a font are called ascender
Ascender

In typography, an ascender is the portion of a Lower_case grapheme in a Latin-derived alphabet that extends above the mean line of a typeface. That is, the part of a lower-case letter that is taller than the font's x-height....
s.