Stick height
Also known as: ascender height
Stick height is the distance between the top of the stick letters and uppercase letters of a font and the top of the x-height. In other words, how far the sticks of uppercase and stick letters extend above the x-height.
The total size of sticks, tails and the x-height combine to form the corpus. A font with a relatively large stick height will have a relatively low x-height. Letters with fairly short canes and tails (and thus a relatively larger x-height) tend to look more spatial and legible. A font with a large stick height again has the advantage that uppercase letters are more distinguishable from lowercase letters.
For most fonts, tail height and stick height almost match. Large differences are rare. Therefore, the terms are sometimes used interchangeably.
