ES 11 Engineering Drawing I
Pencil Lettering
Lettering
Lettered text is often necessary to completely describe an object or
to provide detailed specifications. Lettering should be legible, be
easy to create, and use styles acceptable for traditional drawing
and CAD drawing.
Engineering drawings use single-stroke sans serif letters because
they are highly legible and quick to draw. (Sans serif means
without serifs, or spurs.) The sans serif letters used for drawings
are also referred to as Gothic.
Pencil Lettering
There are three necessary aspects of learning to letter:
• Knowing the proportions and forms of the letters (to make good
letters, you need to have a clear mental image of their correct
shape)
• Spacing of letters and words for legibility
• Practice
Pencil Lettering
All letters should be CAPITAL and be dense black, not gray or
blurred. Use a sharp, soft pencil, to make lettering dark and
sharp.
Don’t worry about making the exact letter strokes unless you
find it difficult to make the letters look right, but do use them as
a reference if you are having trouble drawing uniform,
symmetrical letters.
Use extremely light, horizontal guidelines to regulate the height
of letters. A few light vertical or inclined lines randomly placed
help you visually keep the letters uniformly vertical or inclined.
Pencil Lettering
Draw vertical strokes downward with a finger movement.
Draw horizontal strokes from left to right with a wrist movement
and without turning the paper.
Draw curved strokes and inclined strokes with a downward
motion.
Left-handers: Traditional lettering strokes were designed for right handed people. Experiment
with each letter to develop a system of strokes that works best for you.
Pencil Lettering
Spacing between Letters
Uniform spacing between letters is done by eye and space
your lettering so that background areas appear equal.
Spacing between Words
Space letters closely within words to make each word a
compact unit, but space words well enough apart to clearly
separate them from adjacent words. For both uppercase
and lowercase lettering, make spaces between words
approximately equal to a capital O.
Pencil Lettering
Spacing between Rows
Be sure to leave space between rows of lettering, usually
equal to the letter height. Rows spaced too closely are
hard to read. Rows spaced too far apart do not appear to
be related.
Pencil Lettering
Vertical Letters and Numerals
The letter shapes are probably a little wider than your
usual writing. Hand lettering and text added to engineering
drawings is typically upper case. Lowercase letters are rarely used
except for large volumes of notes or when there is some other
particular need for it.
Keep in mind that only one style of lettering or font, should
be used throughout a drawing.
ALL LETTERS ARE DRAWN FREE HAND
Pencil Lettering
Fractions
Fractions are shown twice the height of the corresponding
whole numbers. Make the numerator and the denominator each
about three-fourths as high as the whole number to allow enough
space between them and the fraction bar.
• Never let numerals touch the fraction bar.
• Center the denominator under the numerator.
• Avoid using an inclined fraction bar, except when lettering in
a narrow space, as in a parts list.
• Make the fraction bar slightly longer than the widest part of
the fraction
Pencil Lettering
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Pencil Lettering