Among Bembo's more distinctive characteristics, the capital Q's tail starts from the glyph's centre, the uppercase J has a slight hook, and there are two versions of uppercase R, one with a longer tail following Griffo and one with a shorter tail.[30] Many lowercase letters show subtle, sinuous curves; the termination of the arm of both the r and the e flare slightly upward and outward. The lowercase c has a subtle forward slant. Characters h, m, and n have a slight returned curve on their final stem, so the right-hand stem of the h is not quite vertical. In italic, the k has an elegantly curved stroke in the lower-right and descenders on the p, q and y end with a flat horizontal stroke.[31] In the 1950s, Monotype noted that its features included: "serifs fine slab, fine-bracketed and in l.c. prolonged to right along baseline."[32] This meant that many of the serifs (especially the horizontals, for example on the 'W') are fine lines of quite uniform width, rather than forming an obvious curve leading into the main form of the letter.
Bembo does not attempt to faithfully copy all the features of Renaissance printing, instead blending them with a twentieth-century sensibility and the expectations of contemporary design. A notable eccentricity of Griffo's type was an asymmetrical 'M' that does not seem to have a serif at top right, so odd it has been suggested it may have been the result of faulty casting of type, that was nonetheless often copied in French imitations by Garamond and his contemporaries.[11] Monotype's revival declined to follow this, or the curving capital 'Y' used by Manutius in the tradition of the Greek letter upsilon, sometimes called a 'palm Y'.[d] (Nesbitt has described the capitals as 'a composite design in the spirit of [Griffo's] type.'[36]) Monotype also cut italic capitals sloped to match the lower-case, whereas in Tagliente's time capital letters were always drawn upright in the Roman inscriptional tradition. The expansive ascenders of Tagliente's type were shortened and the curl to the right replaced with more conventional serifs. The bold (Monotype's invention, since Griffo and his contemporaries did not use bold type) is extremely solid, providing a very clear contrast to the regular styles, and Monotype also added lining (upper-case height) figures as well as the text figures (at lower-case height) used in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.[37] Mosley suggests that the numerals of Bembo were based on those Monotype had already developed for the typeface Plantin.[38]