What do we call the words that fit only in the middle 2 of the 4 English writing lines?

[atiq124]

English writing is taught on 4 lines. The words like mouse, cease, crease, ease, enormous, season, error, even, euro, sauce, weave, wave, zoom, etc. fit in the middle two lanes only. Is there any name for these kind of words?

 

[emsr2d2]

I'm entirely intrigued by your post, mainly because I don't understand any of it. What do you mean by "English writing is taught on four lines"? Four lines of what? Why did you change "lines" to "lanes" in the second sentence.

 

[atiq124]

I'm entirely intrigued by your post, mainly because I don't understand any of it. What do you mean by "English writing is taught on four lines"? Four lines of what? Why did you change "lines" to "lanes" in the second sentence.

sorry for the confusion, the video link shows what I mean buy English Writing in 4 lines,

Lane is mistake, it should be two lines. thanks for correcting.

 

[probus]

I think this "four lines" business must be peculiar to the school you attend. I have not previously heard of it. Please elaborate on what it means. (Cross-posted with @emsr2d2).

 

[Tarheel]

The video was no help.

 

[atiq124]

This is how we learn writing English in most of the Asian countries, never mind. Let me put it in another way. Actually I am after the words that contain only a, c, e, m, m, o, r, s, u, v, w, x because they all have same height when your are writing them whereas other letters like b, d, f, g, h, j, k, l, p, q, t, y, are either higher or lower than previously mentioned letters when you write them together... I hope I am not confusing it more.

 

[Tarheel]

Your hope is in vain.

 

[Piscean]

There is no word for these that I know of. The part of the letter that goes up to the top line, as in b, d, g, etc, is called the ascender; the part that goes down to the bottom line, as in g, j, p, etc, is called the descender. Not many English people use, or even know, these words.

 

[emsr2d2]

OK, so now I at least understand that you were talking about handwriting English letters. When you said "English writing", I thought you simply meant learning how to construct texts in English!
I'm one of the people that's never heard of the terms Piscean used.

 

[probus]

The kind of writing you are talking about is called cursive script. Many North American schools stopped teaching it after computers became common. As a result a lot of young adults can neither write nor read cursive.

 

[Piscean]

When I learnt to write in the early 1950s, we made our first attempts on slates (really!). When we moved on to paper, we had the four lines printed on the paper.

The kind of writing you are talking about is called cursive script.

Not for us. We started off, at between 4.75 and 6, with learning to write the individual letters that we see in post #3. When we moved from infant school to junior school, at about 7, we learn 'joined-up writing' which I knew later as 'cursive script'.

(And yes, I do remember gas lamps in school, and lamplighters in our street. No, I don't remember Queen Victoria dying.)

 

[jutfrank]

I had to google this.

In typography, those letters (we're talking about letters, not words) that use either descenders or ascenders are generally classed as 'extenders'.

 

[emsr2d2]

Like Piscean, "cursive writing" for me is "joined-up writing". Just learning to write the individual letters separately didn't have a name when I was at school.

 

[jutfrank]

In typography, those letters (we're talking about letters, not words) that use either descenders or ascenders are generally classed as 'extenders'.

Correction: It's the parts of the letters that are known as 'extenders', not the letters themselves.

 

[probus]

My apologies for that nonsensical claim that it was cursive writing. I don't know what I was thinking.

 

[atiq124]

I had to google this.

In typography, those letters (we're talking about letters, not words) that use either descenders or ascenders are generally classed as 'extenders'.

That is brilliant. I am really glad to learn about descenders and ascenders; and fully understand them. That indicates that there are 3rd type of letters that are not part of these two types, like a, e, o, u, v, w, x. Is there any terminology for them? That is the main question. I have also learnt about x-height and cap height terms in letter types.

My further search shows that these letters could be called Medians or x-height letters but not sure.

Ascender (typography) - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[jutfrank]

Read post #14, please.