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The line the letters hang from.
Also known as: Headstroke, Head line, Top bar
The horizontal line running along the top of Devanagari writing, joining the letters of a word into a continuous bar.
Joins the letters of a word into a single visual unit and marks the extent of the word.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
Does the work that word spacing does in Latin typesetting: the break in the line is the word break, and Devanagari can therefore be set with much tighter spacing than a Latin text of the same size.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
The single most-asked question about the appearance of Devanagari from outside it, and the feature that visually distinguishes the Devanagari-derived scripts from the southern Brahmic ones, which have no headstroke.
Contexts: Language and transcription, History
An unbroken horizontal line along the top of a written word, from which the letter bodies descend; it breaks at word boundaries and at certain letters that have no headstroke of their own.