Technical lettering
Not to be confused with Technical writing.
letter A, the horizontal member is drawn below the geometric center, to maintain equality of areas below and
above the center line. If a horizontal line is drawn exactly
at the center, then the dierence in the areas of the triangle above the line and the trapezium below the line is
much larger. This creates an unusual eect to our eyes.)
Technical lettering is the process of forming letters, numerals, and other characters in technical drawing. It is
used to describe, or provide detailed specications for,
an object. With the goals of legibility and uniformity,
styles are standardized and lettering ability has little relationship to normal writing ability. Engineering drawings
use a Gothic sans-serif script, formed by a series of short
strokes. Lower case letters are rare in most drawings of
machines.
Emphasis should be on the overall beauty of a word,
rather than individual letters.
Most freehand lettering is done in a "gothic" style, i.e.,
with a constant line thickness; either straight gothic,
with vertical strokes perpendicular to the baseline, or inclined gothic, with vertical strokes at about 75.
Methods of forming letters
3 Mechanical lettering
1. Freehand lettering is done without the assistance of
tools. To regulate lettering height, commonly 3 mm
( in), guidelines are drawn.
2. Mechanical lettering is done using tools such as lettering guides, templates, or using a small mechanical pantograph referred to by the Keuel and Esser
trademark Leroy
K & E LEROY lettering set (1959)
3. Modern drawings are lettered with computer-aided
design software.
Mechanical lettering is sometimes done using a
pantograph, a device consisting of four bars (links)
which are pinned to each other to form a parallelogram.
The links can pivot about these pins. The lowermost link
of the parallelogram is xed to two rigid supports. One
vertical link at one end is connected to a prole tracer,
which traces the prole of the letter to be drawn, and
the second vertical link and the other horizontal link are
jointly connected to a pencil that draws the exact shape
of the prole traced.
Freehand lettering
4 Dimensions of letters
Technical Lettering. Similar to ISOCP font, available in Autocad.
The Nominal Size of lettering is dened by the height
(h) of the outline contour of the upper-case (capital).
The letters to be drawn, though freehanded, should be
stable and graceful. In some cases stability is impossible; for example, P and F are unavoidably top-heavy. In
other cases the stability and grace of the letters may be
maintained either by drawing the lower parts of the letters like B,E etc. wider than the upper parts, or by drawing the horizontal line at the center of these letters just
above their geometric axis. (Exception: In case of the
Central Line is the imaginary line in the middle of
each line or line element which is a constitutive part
of a graphic character set.
If we consider d as the width of the line element
and h as the height of the line element, then the two
standard ratios for d/h are: 1/14 and 1/10, which are
1
5
feasible because they result in a minimum number of
line thicknesses.
Location of Central Lines The nominal size (h) and
the spacing between characters (a) shall be taken as
the basis for dening the central line.
Leroy Lettering & Lettering Templates/Guides.
Archived from the original on 2010-09-13. Retrieved 2010-01-06.
Engineering Drawing Practice for Schools and Colleges: SP46(Bureau of Indian Standards)
Range of Nominal Sizes The nominal size is typically one of the sequence 2.5 mm, 3.5 mm, 5 mm, 7
mm, 10 mm, 14 mm, 20 mm. Successive members
of this sequence are approximately in a ratio of the
square root of 2, as in the ISO 216 series of paper
sizes.
A textbook of freehand lettering by Daniels, Frank
Thomas 1865
Lettering Angle The lettering may be vertical (upright) or inclined (sloped) to the right at 75 from
the horizontal.
Topic: Mechanical Lettering in the Engineering
Section of Integrated Publishing Website
The spacing between two characters may be reduced
by half, if this gives a better visual eect.
Various letters are divided into number of parts so
that dimensions will be accurate.
Dimensioning of Letters
The size of letter is described by its height. According to the height of letters, they are classied as Lettering A or Lettering B.
4.1
Lettering A
4.2
Lettering B
REFERENCES
References
Freehand lettering. Integrated Publishing. Retrieved 2008-10-16.
Zurbuch (2005-01-24). Technical Lettering.
Kent State University. Retrieved 2008-10-16.
Unit 3. Retrieved 2008-10-16.
Giesecke, Fredrick; Alva Mitchell; Alva Mitchell;
Henry C. Spencer; Ivan Leroy Hill; John Thomas
Dygdon; James E. Novak; Shawna D. Lockhart
(2008). Technical Drawing 13th Edition. Prentice
Hall. ISBN 978-0-13-513527-3.
K.L. Narayana, [Link], K. Venkata Reddy
(2008). Machine Drawing 3rd Edition. NEW
AGE INTERNATIONAL(P) LIMITED, PUBLISHERS. ISBN 81-224-1917-8.
Text and image sources, contributors, and licenses
6.1
Text
Technical lettering Source: [Link] Contributors: Edward, Cattac, Giraedata, Mdd, Mu301, Daira Hopwood, Rjwilmsi, Tamfang, Cybercobra, UberScienceNerd, Hut 8.5, Magioladitis, CommonsDelinker, Wiae,
Andy Dingley, JimFoster2, The Thing That Should Not Be, Dana boomer, Yobot, AnomieBOT, LilHelpa, Esmu Igors, ClueBot NG,
Snotbot, Widr, Deepon, Helpful Pixie Bot, Shiva01910, [Link], [Link], Monkbot and Anonymous: 15
6.2
Images
File:Leroy_letter_set.jpg Source: [Link] License: CC BY-SA 3.0
Contributors: Own work Original artist: Michael L. Umbricht
File:[Link] Source: [Link] License: CC0 Contributors: Own work
Original artist: [Link]
File:Technical_Lettering.jpg Source: [Link] License: CC0
Contributors: Own work Original artist: [Link]
6.3
Content license
Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0
