I need your help!

[Laurence Horn]

>I am writing a children's story, and have anthropomorphized letters
>of the alphabet.  I have a need to make my letters move their "arms,
>legs, and dots," as well as any other letter "body" part that might
>be able to move.
>
>Are there names for the different parts of a letter, such as the
>legs of an A, or the individual two lines of a T, etc. etc.

Well, for H I can imagine (especially during and just after football
season) using "upright" for the two verticals and "crossbar" for the
horizontal, and I can also imagine extending this to the mono-upright
T.  The dot on the i (or on the j) is often called...a "dot".  I
think I've come across "transverse" for some of the horizontal lines.

That's about as fur as I can go, unless you count "serif".

Larry Horn

>   What about the dot on an i, as well as the curve on the bottom of
>the letter J?  My linguistics professors at UWEC suggested I contact
>this listserv --- that you fine folks have all the right answers!
>Is there a reference I can find for these names, or does one of you
>have a handy cheat sheet for this?
>
>If the parts don't have names (and what doesn't have a name in this
>world?  :-) if you think you have a couple good names to use for
>parts, feel free to share these as well...I'm more than happy to use
>really neat fictitious names as well.
>
>Thanks in advance for any help you can give!  Most of all, my
>characters thank you too!
>
>chris shaw
>
>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org