Typography has an extremely well-done explanation of typography basics, one of the best brief intros to type I've seen on the web. (There are better books on type—buy Bringhurst if you get serious about this. But this the best short web intro I've seen.)

All this stuff—counters, x-height, kerning—seems really mysterious and unimportant at first, but once you get through Typography's demo, you'll see how important all this stuff is; the scales on your eyeballs will fall, you infidels.

[via Lifehacker]