Bouma

In typography, a bouma (/ˈboʊmə/ BOH-mə) is the shape of a cluster of letters, often a whole word. It is a reduction of "Bouma-shape", which was probably first used in Paul Saenger's 1997 book Space between Words: The Origins of Silent Reading, although Saenger himself attributes it to Insup & Maurice Martin Taylor. Its origin is in reference to hypotheses by prominent vision researcher Herman Bouma, who studied the shapes and confusability of letters and letter strings.