State-of-the-art digital typographic systems have solved virtually all the demands of traditional typography and have expanded the possibilities with many new features. The two lists below provide information about many features

Digital Typographic Systems

OpenType

OpenType

OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior...

, a font format devised by Microsoft

Microsoft

Microsoft Corporation is an American public multinational corporation headquartered in Redmond, Washington, USA that develops, manufactures, licenses, and supports a wide range of products and services predominantly related to computing through its various product divisions...

 and Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems

Adobe Systems Incorporated is an American computer software company founded in 1982 and headquartered in San Jose, California, United States...

, is one modern implementation of typographic features in typefaces, and Apple Inc's Apple Advanced Typography

Apple Advanced Typography

Apple Advanced Typography is Apple Inc's computer software for advanced font rendering, supporting internationalization and complex features for typographers, a successor to Apple's little-used QuickDraw GX font technology of the mid-1990s...

 (AAT) is another. The OpenType format defines a number of typographic features that a particular font may support; some software, such as Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign

Adobe InDesign is a software application produced by Adobe Systems. It can be used to create works such as posters, flyers, brochures, magazines, newspapers and books. In conjunction with Adobe Digital Publishing Suite InDesign can publish content suitable for tablet devices...

 or recent versions of TeX

TeX

TeX is a typesetting system designed and mostly written by Donald Knuth and released in 1978. Within the typesetting system, its name is formatted as ....

, gives users control of these, for example to enable fancy stylistic capital letters (swash caps) or to choose between ranging (full-height) and non-ranging (old-style, or lower-case) digits.

OpenType Typographic Features

Long name	tag	type	script	| Description
Above-base Forms	abvf	S1	Indic
Above-base Mark Positioning	abvm	P4,5	Indic
Above-base Substitutions	abvs	S4	Indic
Access All Alternates	aalt	S1,3	any	Used to present user with choice all alternate forms of the character
Akhand	akhn	S4	Indic
Alternate Annotation	nalt	S1,3	any
Alternate Half Widths	halt	P1	CJKV	Re-positions full-width glyphs on half-width spaces
Alternative Fractions	afrc	S4	any	Converts figures separated by slash with alternative nut fraction form
Alternative Vertical Metrics	valt	P1	vert.	Positions shorter characters to be centered vertically with full-height characters
Alternative Vertical Half Metrics	vhal	P1	vert.	Positions characters to be centered vertically with half-height characters
Below-base Forms	blwf	S4	Indic
Below-base Mark Positioning	blwm	P4,5	Indic
Below-base Substitutions	blws	S4	Indic
Capital Spacing	cpsp	P1	cased	Adjusts spacing between letters in all-capitals text
Capitals to Petite Caps	c2pc	S1	cased	Substitutes capital letters with petite caps Petite caps In typography, petite capitals are a stylistic letter form, a variant of small caps. Like small caps, petite caps take the shape of upper-case letters, and are usually of appropriate optical weight to harmonize with other text...
Capitals to Small Caps	c2sc	S1	cased	Substitutes capital letters with small caps Small caps In typography, small capitals are uppercase characters set at the same height and weight as surrounding lowercase letters or text figures...
Case Sensive Forms	case	P1	cased	Replace characters, especially punctuation, with forms better suited for all-capital text
Centered CJK Punctuation	cpct	P1	CJKV	Positions punctuation marks vertically and horizontally
Character Variant 01 - 99	cv01- cv99	S3	any	Multiple variants of a single character, which may not apply to many other characters. See references for voluminous documentation.
Conjunct Forms	cjct	S4	Indic
Conjunct Form After Ro	cfar	S1	Khm.
Contextual Alternates	calt	S6	any	Applies a second substitution feature based on a match of a character pattern within a context of surrounding patterns
Contextual Ligatures	clig	S8	any	Applies a second ligature feature based on a match of a character pattern within a context of surrounding patterns
Contextual Swash	cswh	S8	any	Converts letter to a swashed Swash (typography) A swash is a typographical flourish on a glyph, like an exaggerated serif.Capital swash characters, which extended to the left, were historically often used to begin sentences. There were also minuscule swash characters, which came either extending to the left, to begin words, or to the right to...  version based on characters around the letter
Cursive Positioning	curs	P3	curs.	Precise positioning of a letter's connection to an adjacent one
Denominator	dnom	S1	any	Converts to appropriate fraction denominator form. Invoked by frac.
Discretionary Ligatures	dlig	S4	any	Ligature Ligature Ligature may refer to:* Ligature * Ligature , a characteristic notation style of the Medieval and Renaissance periods of music history* Ligature , a device used to attach a reed to the mouthpiece of a woodwind instrument... s to be applied at the user's discretion
Distance	dist	P2	Indic	Adjusts horizontal positioning between glyphs
Expert Forms	expt	S1	Jap.
Final Glyph on Line Alternates	falt	S3	curs.	Replaces final glyph on the line with an alternate.
Fractions	frac	S4	any	Converts figures separated by slash with diagonal fraction
Terminal Form #2	fin2	S5	Syr.
Terminal Form #3	fin3	S5	Syr.
Full Widths	fwid	S1	CJKV	Substitutes proportionally spaced character with full-width versions (esp. for Latin letters within Chinese)
Glyph Composition/Decomposition	ccmp	S4,2	any	Either calls a ligature replacement on a sequence of characters or replaces a character with a sequence of glyphs. Provides logic that can for example effectively alter the order of input characters.
Halant Forms	haln	S4	Indic
Half Form	half	S4	Indic
Half Widths	hwid	S1,P1	CJKV	Substitutes uniformly-spaced characters with a version of 1/2 width
Hangul	hngl	S1,3	Kor.	Replaces Chinese-style characters with Korean Hangul Hangul Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
Historical Forms	hist	S1	any	Obsolete forms of characters to be applied at the user's discretion
Historical Ligatures	hlig	S1	any	Obsolete ligature Ligature Ligature may refer to:* Ligature * Ligature , a characteristic notation style of the Medieval and Renaissance periods of music history* Ligature , a device used to attach a reed to the mouthpiece of a woodwind instrument... s to be applied at the user's discretion
Horizontal Kana Alternates	hkna	S1	Kana
Hojo Kanji Forms	hojo		Kanji
Initial Forms	init	S1	any	Substitutes a special form of a letter occurring at the beginning of a word (required by Arabic and Syriac)
Isolated Forms	isol	S1	curs.	Substitutes a special form of a letter occurring outside a word (required by Arabic and Syriac)
Italics	ital	S1	Lat.	Replaces letter with corresponding italic Italic type In typography, italic type is a cursive typeface based on a stylized form of calligraphic handwriting. Owing to the influence from calligraphy, such typefaces often slant slightly to the right. Different glyph shapes from roman type are also usually used—another influence from calligraphy...  glyph
JIS 04 Forms	jp04		Jap.
JIS 78 Forms	jp78	S1,3	Jap.
JIS 83 Forms	jp83	S1	Jap.
JIS 90 Forms	jp90	S1	Jap.
Justification Alternates	jalt	S3	curs.
Kerning	kern	P2,8	any	Fine horizontal positioning of one glyph to the next, based on the shapes of the glyphs
Lining Figures	lnum	S1	cased	Replaces numerals with glyphs meant to fit better in all-capitals text
Leading Jamo Forms	ljmo	S4	Kor.
Left Bounds	lfbd	P1	any	Re-positions glyphs at end of line. Called by opbd.
Left-to-right glyph alternates	ltra	S1	ltr	Replaces characters with possibly mirrored forms befitting left-to-right presentation
Left-to-right mirrored forms	ltrm	S1	ltr	Replaces characters with forms befitting left-to-right presentation (except mirrored forms)
Localized Forms	locl	S1	any	Substitutes character with the preferred form based on script language
Mark Positioning	mark	P4,5	any	Fine positioning of a mark glyph to a base character
Mark-to-mark Positioning	mkmk	P6	any	Fine positioning of a mark glyph to another mark character
Mathematical Greek	mgrk	S1	any	Replaces Greek characters with special forms for use in mathematics.
Medial Forms	medi	S1	any	Substitutes a special form of letters between other letters in words (required by Arabic and Syriac)
Medial Form #2	med2	S5	Syr.
mset	mset	S5	curs.	Deprecated. Used in Windows 95 for positioning of Arabic marks.
NLC Kanji Forms	nlck		Kanji
Nukta Forms	nukt	S4	Indic
Numerator	numr	S1	any	Converts to appropriate fraction numerator form. Invoked by frac.
Oldstyle Figures	onum	S1	any	Replaces numerals with old-style numerals
Optical Bounds	opbd	P1	any	Re-positions glyphs at beginning and end of line, for precise justification of text.
Ordinals	ordn	S6,4	Lat.	Replaces characters with ordinal Ordinal indicator In written languages, an ordinal indicator is a sign adjacent to a numeral denoting that it is an ordinal number, rather than a cardinal number. The exact sign used varies in different languages.- English :...  forms for use after numbers
Ornaments	ornm	S3,1	any
Petite Caps	pcap	S1	cased	Substitute lower-case letters with their petite caps Petite caps In typography, petite capitals are a stylistic letter form, a variant of small caps. Like small caps, petite caps take the shape of upper-case letters, and are usually of appropriate optical weight to harmonize with other text...  analogs
Pre-base Forms	pref	S4	Khm.	(and other similar scripts: Myanmar, Malayalam, Telugu)
Pre-base Substitutions	pres	S4,5	Indic
Post-base Substitutions	psts	S4	Indic	(any alphabetic?)
Post-base Forms	pstf	S4	Khm.	(and Gurmukhi, Malayalam)
Proportional Alternates	palt	P1	CJKV	Re-positions otherwise monospace characters according to glyph width
Proportional Alternate Vertical Metrics	vpal	P1	vert.	Re-positions glyphs vertically to be centered on proportional full-height characters
Proportional Figures	pnum	S1	any	Replaces numerals with glyphs of proportional width
Proportional Kana	pkna	S1	Kana
Proportional Widths	pwid	S1	CJKV	Replaces uniformly-spaced glyphs with proportional ones
Quarter Widths	qwid	S1	CJKV	Replaces uniformly-spaced glyphs with quarter-width ones (punctuation etc.)
Randomize	rand	S3	any	Replaces chararacter with random forms (meant to simulate handwriting)
Rakar Forms	rkrf	S4	Indic
Reph Form	rphf	S4	Indic
Required Ligatures	rlig	S3	curs.	Ligature Ligature Ligature may refer to:* Ligature * Ligature , a characteristic notation style of the Medieval and Renaissance periods of music history* Ligature , a device used to attach a reed to the mouthpiece of a woodwind instrument... s required for correct text display (esp. in Arabic and Syriac)
Right Bounds	rtbd	P1	any	Re-positions glyphs at beginning of line. Called by opbd.
Right-to-left glyph alternates	rtla	S1	rtl	Replace characters with forms befitting right-to-left presentation (except mirrored forms)
Right-to-left mirrored forms	rtlm	S1	rtl	Replace characters with possibly mirrored forms befitting right-to-left presentation
Ruby Notation Forms	ruby	S1	CJKV
Scientific Inferiors	sinf	S1	any
Simplified Forms	smpl	S1	CJKV	Replaces Chinese characters with their simplified versions
Optical size	size		any	Not a lookup: feature's table provides to applications information about the appearance and intent of the font, to aid in font selection.
Slashed Zero	zero	S1	any	Replaces 0 figure with slashed 0
Small Caps	smcp	S1	cased	Substitutes lower-case letters with small caps Small caps In typography, small capitals are uppercase characters set at the same height and weight as surrounding lowercase letters or text figures...  versions
Standard Ligatures	liga	S4	any	Replaces (by default) sequence of characters with a single ligature Ligature Ligature may refer to:* Ligature * Ligature , a characteristic notation style of the Medieval and Renaissance periods of music history* Ligature , a device used to attach a reed to the mouthpiece of a woodwind instrument...  glyph
Stylistic Alternates	salt	S1,3	any	Replaces character with stylistic alternative
Stylistic Sets	ss01- ss20	S1	any	Replaces character with a one from a font-specific set of stylistic alternatives
Subscript	subs	S1	any	Replaces character with subscript version
Superscript	sups	S1	any	Replaces character with superscript version
Swash	swsh	S1,3	any	Replaces character with swashed Swash (typography) A swash is a typographical flourish on a glyph, like an exaggerated serif.Capital swash characters, which extended to the left, were historically often used to begin sentences. There were also minuscule swash characters, which came either extending to the left, to begin words, or to the right to...  version
Tabular Figures	tnum	S1	any	Replaces numerals with glyphs of uniform width
Terminal Forms	fina	S1	any	Substitutes a special form of a letter at end of words (required by Arabic and Syriac)
Third Widths	twid	S1,P1	CJKV	Substitutes uniformly-spaced character with a version of 1/3 width (punctuation, etc.)
Titling Alternates	titl	S1	any	Replaces characters with forms suited for large type, as in titles
Traditional Forms	trad	S1,3	CJKV	Replaces Chinese characters with their traditional versions
Traditional Name Forms	tnam	S1	Jap.
Trailing Jamo Forms	tjmo	S4	Kor.
Unicase	unic	S1	cased	Replaces lowercase and uppercase letters with a set of single case glyphs
Vattu Variants	vatu	S4	Indic
Vertical Alternates	vert	S1	vert.	A subset of vrt2: prefer the latter feature.
Vertical Alternates and Rotation	vrt2	S1	vert.	Replaces characters with forms suitable for vertical writing, possibly by rotating 90°
Vertical Kana	vkna	S1	Kana
Vertical Kerning	vkrn	P2,8	vert.	Fine vertical positioning of characters based on shape
Vowel Jamo Forms	vjmo	S4	Kor.

OpenType features may be applicable only to certain language scripts or specific languages, or in certain writing modes.
The script column above indicates such dependencies.

abbrev.	applicable in
any	any script
cased	bicameral scripts Letter case In orthography and typography, letter case is the distinction between the larger majuscule and smaller minuscule letters...  (those with a case distinction) such as Greek, Latin, and Cyrillic
curs.	cursive Cursive Cursive, also known as joined-up writing, joint writing, or running writing, is any style of handwriting in which the symbols of the language are written in a simplified and/or flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing easier or faster...  mode; required in Arabic and Syriac
vert.	vertical mode; especially used in CKJV
ltr	left-to-right mode
rtl	right-to-left mode
mono	monospaced mode
CJKV	Chinese, Japenese, Korean, Vietnamese -- especially in display of block ideographic characters
Indic	Indic scripts
Jap.	Japanese only
Kanji	Japanese Kanji Kanji Kanji are the adopted logographic Chinese characters hanzi that are used in the modern Japanese writing system along with hiragana , katakana , Indo Arabic numerals, and the occasional use of the Latin alphabet...  only
Kana	Kana Kana Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...  only (Japanese, Ainu)
Kor.	Korean only
Lat.	Latin-based scripts only
Khm.	Khmer script Khmer script The Khmer script is an alphasyllabary script used to write the Khmer language . It is also used to write Pali among the Buddhist liturgy of Cambodia and Thailand.... , and often other similar, Brahmi-based ones
Syr.	Syriac only

OpenType lookup table types, used in the "type" column in the above table. Note that often a feature can be implemented by more than one type of table, and that sometimes the specification fails to explicitly indicate the table type.

abbrev.	type	description
S1	GSUB 1	simple substitution of one glyph with another
S2	GSUB 2	multiple substitution of one character by several glyphs
S3	GSUB 3	variant selection
S4	GSUB 4	ligatures
S5	GSUB 5	contextual substitution
S6	GSUB 6	chained contextual substitution
S7	GSUB 7	extension for GSUB tables past 64kB
S8	GSUB 8	reverse chained contextual substitution
P1	GPOS 1	positioning of single glyph
P2	GPOS 2	positioning of pair of glyphs
P3	GPOS 3	cursive attachment
P4	GPOS 4	positioning of mark glyphs relative to base
P5	GPOS 5	positioning of mark glyphs relative to ligature
P6	GPOS 6	positioning of mark glyphs relative to another mark glyph
P7	GPOS 7	contextual positioning
P8	GPOS 8	extended contextual positioning
P9	GPOS 9	extension for GPOS tables past 64kB

AAT Typographic Features

Features that take one value, mutual exclusive from the rest:

• Annotation nalt
  • No Annotation
  • Box Annotation
  • Rounded Box Annotation
  • Circle Annotation
  • Inverted Circle Annotation
  • Parenthesis Annotation
  • Period Annotation
  • Roman Numeral Annotation
  • Diamond Annotation
• Character Alternatives
  • No Alternates
  • … rand; aalt, calt, falt, jalt, salt, ssXX, hkna/vkna, rtla, vrt2
• Character Shape half, ruby; ljmo, vjmo, tjmo
  • Traditional Characters trad
  • Simplified Characters smpl
  • JIS 1978 Characters jp78
  • JIS 1983 Characters jp83
  • JIS 1990 Characters jp90
  • Traditional Characters, Alternative Set 1…5 tnam, hojo, nlck
  • Expert Characters expt, locl
• CJK Roman Spacing
  • Half-width hwid, halt
  • Proportional pwid, palt
  • Default Roman
  • Full-width Roman fwid
• Cursive Connection init, medi/med2, fina/fin2/fin3; haln, nukt, vatu, rphf, pres, pstf/psts
  • Unconnected isol
  • Partially Connected calt, clig
  • Cursive curs
• Design Complexity
  • Design Level 1
  • Design Level …
• Diacritics
  • Show Diacritics
  • Hide Diacritics
  • Decompose Diacritics ccmp
• Fractions
  • No Fractions
  • Vertical Fractions afrc
  • Diagonal Fractions frac, dnom, numr
• Ideographic Spacing
  • Full Width fwid
  • Proportional pwid, palt
• Kana Spacing
  • Full Width fwid
  • Proportional pwid, palt
• Letter Case case
  • Upper & Lower Case
  • All Caps
  • All Lower Case
  • Small Caps smcp, pcap
  • Initial Caps c2sc, c2pc
  • Initial Caps and Small Caps
• Number Case
  • Lower Case Numbers onum
  • Upper Case Numbers lnum
• Number Spacing
  • Monospaced Numbers tnum
  • Proportional Numbers pnum
• Ornament Sets ornm
  • None
  • Dingbats
  • Pi Characters
  • Fleurons
  • Decorative Borders
  • International Symbols
  • Math Symbols mgrk
• Text Spacing
  • Proportional pwid, palt
  • Monospace fwid
  • Half-width hwid, halt
  • Normal
• Vertical Position
  • No Vertical Position
  • Superiors supr
  • Inferiors subs, sinf
  • Ordinals ordn

Features that take a number of values:

• Ligatures
  • Required Ligatures rlig, clig
  • Common Ligatures liga
  • Rare Ligatures hlig, dlig
  • Logos
  • Rebus Pictures
  • Diphthong Ligatures
  • Squared Ligatures
  • Squared Ligatures, Abbreviated
• Mathematical Extras
  • Hyphen to Minus (‘-’ → ‘−’)
  • Asterisk to Multiply (‘*’ → ‘×’)
  • Slash to Divide (‘/’ → ‘÷’)
  • Inequality Ligatures
  • Exponents
• Smart Swash
  Swash
  Swash, in geography, is a turbulent layer of water that washes up on the beach after an incoming wave has broken. The swash action can move beach material up and down on the beach, which results in the cross-shore sediment exchange. The time-scale of swash motion varies from seconds to minutes...
  
  es swsh, cswh
  • Word Initial Swashes
  • Word Final Swashes
  • Line Initial Swashes
  • Line Final Swashes falt
  • Non-Final Swashes jalt
• Style Options
  • No Style Options
  • Display Text size
  • Engraved Text
  • Illuminated Caps
  • Titling Caps titl
  • Tall Caps
• Transliteration locl
  • No Transliteration
  • Hanja
    Hanja
    Hanja is the Korean name for the Chinese characters hanzi. More specifically, it refers to those Chinese characters borrowed from Chinese and incorporated into the Korean language with Korean pronunciation...
    
     to Hangul
    Hangul
    Hangul,Pronounced or ; Korean: 한글 Hangeul/Han'gŭl or 조선글 Chosŏn'gŭl/Joseongeul the Korean alphabet, is the native alphabet of the Korean language. It is a separate script from Hanja, the logographic Chinese characters which are also sometimes used to write Korean...
    
    
  • Hanja to Hangul, Alternative Set 1…3
  • Hiragana
    Hiragana
    is a Japanese syllabary, one basic component of the Japanese writing system, along with katakana, kanji, and the Latin alphabet . Hiragana and katakana are both kana systems, in which each character represents one mora...
    
     to Katakana
    Katakana
    is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji, and in some cases the Latin alphabet . The word katakana means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana scripts are derived from components of more complex kanji. Each kana represents one mora...
    
    
  • Katakana to Hiragana
  • Kana
    Kana
    Kana are the syllabic Japanese scripts, as opposed to the logographic Chinese characters known in Japan as kanji and the Roman alphabet known as rōmaji...
    
     to Romanization
    Romanization
    In linguistics, romanization or latinization is the representation of a written word or spoken speech with the Roman script, or a system for doing so, where the original word or language uses a different writing system . Methods of romanization include transliteration, for representing written...
    
    
  • Romanization to Hiragana
  • Romanization to Katakana
• Typographic Extras
  • Hyphen
    Hyphen
    The hyphen is a punctuation mark used to join words and to separate syllables of a single word. The use of hyphens is called hyphenation. The hyphen should not be confused with dashes , which are longer and have different uses, or with the minus sign which is also longer...
    
    s to Em Dash
    Dash
    A dash is one of several kinds of punctuation mark. Dashes appear similar to hyphens, but differ from them primarily in length, and serve different functions. The most common versions of the dash are the en dash and the em dash .-Common dashes:...
    
     (‘--’ → ‘—’)
  • Hyphen to En Dash (‘-’ → ‘–’)
  • Unslashed Zero zero
  • Form Interrobang
    Interrobang
    The interrobang, interabang , , is a nonstandard punctuation mark used in various written languages and intended to combine the functions of the question mark and the exclamation mark or exclamation point . The glyph is a superimposition of these two marks...
    
    (‘!?’/‘?!’ → ‘‽’)
  • Smart Quotes (‘"'"’ → ‘“’”’)
  • Periods to Ellipsis (‘...’ → ‘…’)

Binary features that can only be turned on:

• All Typographic Features
• Linguistic Rearrangement
• Overlapping Characters
• Vertical Substitution

External links

• Adobe Feature Tag Registry - OpenType layout tag specs
• Microsoft OpenType Layout tag registry
• Apple Font Feature Registry - AAT layout tag specs
• OpenType User Guide for Adobe Fonts
• Fontfont OpenType user guide