What Is a Swash in Typography?
By Maya Chen, lettering designer and type educator · Checked by Jordan Hale · · How we review content
A swash is a decorative extension of a letter: a long entry stroke, a looping tail, an extended crossbar, a capital that sweeps out over the letters that follow. The word comes from 17th-century English, meaning a bold, showy movement, as in “swashbuckling”.
In type, swash glyphs were first cut for italic capitals in 16th- and 17th-century printing. They are common today in italic and script fonts, where they bring the character of a calligrapher’s pen to the capitals and to the tails of certain lowercase letters.
Kinds of swash
| Kind | Where it appears | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Swash capital | The start of a word or sentence | A sweeping Q with a tail under the next letters |
| Terminal swash | End of a word | A long exit stroke on e, d or s |
| Entry swash | Start of a lowercase letter | A hairline stroke running in from the left |
| Descender swash | Below the baseline | An extended descender on g, y or j |
Because swashes extend into the space around a letter, they are mostly used sparingly. Swash capitals in a long run of text look busy, and a swash at the end of a word can collide with the next one or with the line below, since descender swashes need generous leading.
Swashes as OpenType features
In an OpenType font, swashes are alternates that must be enabled. The relevant feature tags are swsh (swash), cswh (contextual swash), init and fina (initial and final forms) and salt (stylistic alternates). They are accessed through the font menu of a design application, or from CSS with font-feature-settings: "swsh" 1. Ligature-like rules can replace a letter by its swash form only at the start or end of a word, which is how script fonts add flourish without crowding.
None of this changes the characters. The text is still “Quiet”; the font draws a different glyph for the Q. This is also the reason why a copy of swash text carries no swashes: only the plain characters are copied.
Swash in lettering
A swash is a letterer’s most natural resource, since the designer is not limited by a font’s alternates. To draw one:
- Build the word first in plain letters, with guidelines. The swash comes after.
- Choose where it will go: the first letter, the last letter, or a tail that can reach under neighbouring letters. One or two per word is enough.
- Draw the swash as a smooth, tapering stroke with a consistent curve. Rotate the paper to find the natural arc.
- Check that it does not create a false join, a stroke which makes two letters seem to touch where they should not.
- Balance it. A big swash on the left of a word needs visual weight on the right.
Our what is lettering guide explains the build-up method behind this, and the cursive letters pages show the handwritten forms that many swashes stylise.
Swash and fancy Unicode text
Plain text cannot carry a swash. Unicode contains script and bold script alphabets (𝒮𝓌𝒶𝓈𝒽 and 𝓢𝔀𝓪𝓼𝓱), and they look ornate, but each is an ordinary letter with no alternate forms. Ornament characters such as ❦ (floral heart) can add a flourish beside a name, as the decorations in our text decorator do, but they are separate symbols placed next to letters, not swashes of the letters themselves.
Common confusions
- A swash is not a ligature. A ligature joins letters; a swash extends one.
- Swash is not italic. Many italics have no swashes and many swash fonts are upright.
- A swash is not the same as a script font, though script fonts are where you meet it most.
Frequently asked questions
What are swash capitals?
How do I turn on swashes in a font?
Does fancy Unicode text have swashes?
Is a swash the same as a flourish?
Related terms
- What Is a Script Font?A script font is a typeface whose letters imitate handwriting or pen calligraphy, usually slanted and often joined. Formal scripts follow calligraphic models; casual scripts imitate brush or marker handwriting.
- What Is a Ligature in Typography?A ligature is a single glyph that replaces two or more letters that would otherwise collide, such as fi, fl or ffi. Standard ligatures are applied automatically by the font; discretionary ones are decorative and optional.
- What Is a Glyph in Fonts?A glyph is a specific visual shape stored in a font, such as one drawing of the letter a. A character is the abstract unit of text, and a code point is the number Unicode assigns to it; fonts map characters to glyphs.
- What Is a Descender?A descender is the part of a letter that extends below the baseline, as in g, j, p, q and y. The depth these strokes reach, the descender line, limits how tightly lines of text can be stacked.
- Typography & Lettering GlossaryThe Typography & Lettering Glossary defines twenty terms that type designers and letterers use every day, from kerning and x-height to serif, ligature and blackletter. Each entry gives a precise definition, then shows what the idea means for hand lettering and for the styled Unicode text our generators produce.
- What Is an Ampersand? Origin of the & SymbolThe ampersand is the symbol & meaning "and". It began as a handwritten ligature of the Latin word et, its name comes from the old schoolroom phrase "and per se and", and many typefaces draw it in strikingly elaborate ways.