Terminal

The way a stroke ends when it has no serif: cut, tapered or rounded. A small detail that sets the temperament of a whole face.

Where a serif face ends its strokes with feet, a sans must simply stop, and how it stops is the terminal: sheared flat, tapered, or rounded into a ball. It sounds microscopic. Repeated across every letter of every word, it becomes the temperament of the page.

Flat cuts read technical and cool; ball terminals bring warmth and a period flavour; angled shears add motion. We look at terminals when a face feels right in a specimen but wrong in situ, because this smallest detail is often what is quietly arguing with the brand.