Drew Ink The year

Ball terminal

A terminal that ends in a round blob, common on the a, c, f, r and y of old-style and transitional serifs.

Ball terminal: the lowercase a, c and r of Caslon's Double Pica roman, each ending its stroke in a round drop.
Caslon's Double Pica roman, 1734, William Caslon.
Public domainPublic domain: Caslon's broadsheet of about 1734, out of copyright everywhere since Caslon died in 1766; Commons tags the file public domain and a faithful photograph of a flat sheet carries no new copyright; this crop is the Double Pica roman, the largest text size on the sheet.
Cropped to the Double Pica roman. Retrieved 2026-09-10.
Ball terminal: the a, c and r of Baskerville's roman, the drops rounder than Caslon's.
Baskerville's roman, 1757, the terminals, John Baskerville, printer.
Public domainPublic domain: Baskerville's Virgil of 1757, out of copyright everywhere since Baskerville died in 1775; Commons tags the scan public domain and a faithful scan of a flat page carries no new copyright; this crop is the upper half of the page.
Page 24 of the scan, cropped to the upper lines. Retrieved 2026-09-10.
Ball terminal: R r S long-s s T t U V u v from Fournier's roman of 1766, the r ending in a round drop.
Fournier's r with its ball terminal, 1766, Pierre-Simon Fournier, punchcutter and printer.
Public domainPublic domain: Printed in Paris in 1766 by Fournier, who died in 1768; out of copyright everywhere; Commons tags the file public domain, and this house reads a faithful reproduction of a flat public-domain page as carrying no new copyright.
Cropped to one row of the alphabet. Retrieved 2026-09-10.

Near it

TerminalFinialGaraldeTransitional

What it is made of

what it isa terminal that swells into a disc, as on an a, c, f, r or y in many text faces
measured from the source, and the measurement is a nilthere is not one and there cannot bea stroke in this foundry carries a SINGLE SCALAR w. There is nowhere in the data to write a width that changes along a stroke, so this cannot exist here and its absence is the engine rather than an omission. read from the shelf's own stroke data rather than measured off its ink