O with swash below the baseline

Sverre Stausland Johnsen

In Robert Slimbach's italic Adobe Jenson Pro fonts, the swash glyph for the uppercase character 'O' extends below the baseline (see left word in the picture below). At least to my untrained eye, this looks a bit odd, and I'm not sure if I can get used to it (the non-swash glyph is shown on the right for comparison). I've noticed that the swash glyph for 'O' also slightly extends below the baseline in Slimbach's Brioso font (where it looks much more appropriate), but not in fonts like Arno and Minion.

I haven't found any information about how the swash glyph for 'O' is traditionally drawn or what the various traditions or variants are. Could someone here enlighten me? Do people agree that the 'O' in the word on the left below looks 'wrong'?

Chris Lozos

Do all of the swash glyphs drop in the Jenson or only the 'O'? It seems to me that if all swash caps have the same baseline that this would be just fine. I have designed a face [dez Petranian] that has a few different sets of swash caps.  One of the sets has all the caps dropped and a bit larger than normal.

Sverre Stausland Johnsen

I would say no, the only swash capital whose body appears to descend below the baseline is the 'O'. Is this traditional or a glitch?

Chris Lozos

It looks to me as if they are balancing the size of the O to better fit with the more robust swash capitals.  I actually wish the E was also larger and dropped.

John Hudson

It is common for both C and O to be taller in Renaissance style swash letters. This derives, of course, from the Italian chancery cursive hand.

Deleted Account

...and S. Though I wish someone would encode a "long uppercase S", so we'd have something to make our uppercase German S outta.;)

Chris Lozos

I think S zet!  ;-P

Florian Hardwig

Capital long s

Deleted Account

Smiley face.