Glyph design: the lowercase j

o
i
a

b
l
n

d p q
e
f
v
h u m
r

c
j
t
y
w
x

k
z

g
s

The letter ‘j’ can be built straight from the ‘i’—in fact, long ago the two letters were one. The only difference is that the ‘j’ has a slightly curved tail descending below the baseline.

Components of a lowercase ‘j’

The top half of the letter is exactly identical to the ‘i’. The bottom half can be made from the hook of an ‘f’, though in most serif type, the two arcs of stem appear very different (in sans serif type, it is common for the ‘j’ to simply be a rotated ‘f’ with a tittle and no crossbar).

The tail of the ‘j’ is less curved than the hook on the ‘f’. The onset of the curve is also much earlier and less steep than that of the ‘f’. The letter is  generally no more than three-quarters as wide as the ‘f’ (not counting serifs) and can be quite a bit thinner even, since the tail rarely hooks around like in the ‘f’. The terminal of the tail rarely has any blobbing, though it occasionally does, usually in more modern serif type.

Here is a test text containing the new ‘j’, as well as the ‘w’ and ‘y’ from the last post.