Letter Fountain Reading

Small capitals are smaller versions of capital letters. THey are not reduced capitals, but especially designed small capitals which can often be ordered with a certain type family as a so-called Expert of SC font. In height small capitals are slightly bigger than the x-height of lowercase letters and they have a matching weight. They provide a better balanced appearance in cases where capitals would make the look of a bock of text too busy. My font, Didot, does have small capitals. 

Ligatures are combinations of characters that were designed because, in metal typesettings, the overhanging ascender in the letter "f" would crash into an ascender or the dot of an "i" if it directly followed the "f." If extra letter spacing is used in a text these combinations of text have to be set separately. Sans-serif typefaces hardly ever have this problem. Didot does have ligatures, with the "fi" and "fl."

A foot mark is meant to indicate feet and is an angled line. It is different from an apostrophe in that an apostrophe is shaped almost like a number nine. These are similar an inch mark which is made from two foot marks and quote marks are made of two apostrophes. Smart quotes are used to make sure inch marks are not used as quotation marks. 

Hyphens are used as a symbol to break words. The en dash is longer than a hyphen and is used to demarcate the parenthetical thought or to indicate a sudden change of direction. Usually these dashes can be replaced by commas, or the phrase can be bracketed. The en dash is used to indicate range in values as well, such as with years. The em dash is used to demarcate parenthetical thought in English texts, but the dashes are unspaced (without white spaces on either side).