American English Alphabet 1 Showing Ascenders and Descenders
Ascender (typography)

Looking at the image to the left you can see that lower case letters b, d, i, j, k, l, t, are ascenders. Lower case letters g, j, p, q, and y are Descenders. In some fonts the ascenders may extend slightly above the capital letters. Some fonts may have Capital characters with descenders, such as "Q."

Lower case letters are linguistically allographs of upper case letters. In reality, the different fonts are allographs. Allographs are the different ways individuals write the same letter. Machine printed material will lesson a learners difficulty to read while an individual's handwriting can greatly inhibit the readability for the new learner.