![Bauer Bodoni Mostra](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/77/Bauer_Bodoni_Mostra.svg)
In
metal
A metal (from Greek μέταλλον ''métallon'', "mine, quarry, metal") is a material that, when freshly prepared, polished, or fractured, shows a lustrous appearance, and conducts electricity and heat relatively well. Metals are typicall ...
typesetting
Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''glyphs'' in digital systems representing ''characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random Ho ...
, a font is a particular
size, weight and style of a
typeface
A typeface (or font family) is the design of lettering that can include variations in size, weight (e.g. bold), slope (e.g. italic), width (e.g. condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.
There are list of type ...
. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece (a "
sort
Sort may refer to:
* Sorting, any process of arranging items in sequence or in sets
** Sorting algorithm, any algorithm for arranging elements in lists
** Sort (Unix), a Unix utility which sorts the lines of a file
** Sort (C++), a function in the ...
") for each
glyph
A glyph () is any kind of purposeful mark. In typography, a glyph is "the specific shape, design, or representation of a character". It is a particular graphical representation, in a particular typeface, of an element of written language. A g ...
. A typeface consists of a range of such fonts that shared an overall design.
In modern usage, with the advent of
computer font
A computer font is implemented as a digital data file containing a set of graphically related glyphs. A computer font is designed and created using a font editor. A computer font specifically designed for the computer screen, and not for print ...
s, the term "font" has come to be used as a synonym for "typeface", although a typical typeface (or "font family") consists of a number of fonts. For instance, the typeface "
Bauer Bodoni
Bodoni is the name given to the serif typefaces first designed by Giambattista Bodoni (1740–1813) in the late eighteenth century and frequently revived since. Bodoni's typefaces are classified as Didone or modern. Bodoni followed the ideas o ...
" (sample shown here) includes fonts "
Roman
Roman or Romans most often refers to:
*Rome, the capital city of Italy
*Ancient Rome, Roman civilization from 8th century BC to 5th century AD
*Roman people, the people of ancient Rome
*''Epistle to the Romans'', shortened to ''Romans'', a letter ...
" (or "Regular"), "
Bold
In typography, emphasis is the strengthening of words in a text with a font in a different style from the rest of the text, to highlight them. It is the equivalent of prosody stress in speech.
Methods and use
The most common methods in W ...
" and ''"
Italic"''; each of these exists in a variety of sizes. The term "font" is correctly applied to any one of these alone but may be seen used loosely to refer to the whole typeface. When used in computers, each style is in a separate digital "font file".
In both traditional typesetting and modern usage, the word "font" refers to the delivery mechanism of the typeface. In traditional typesetting, the font would be made from metal or
wood type
In letterpress printing, wood type is movable type made out of wood. First used in China for printing body text, wood type became popular during the nineteenth century for making large display typefaces for printing posters, because it was lig ...
: to compose a page may require multiple fonts or even multiple typefaces.
Etymology
The word ''font'' (traditionally spelled ''fount'' in
British English
British English (BrE, en-GB, or BE) is, according to Lexico, Oxford Dictionaries, "English language, English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in ...
, but in any case pronounced ) derives from
Middle French
Middle French (french: moyen français) is a historical division of the French language that covers the period from the 14th to the 16th century. It is a period of transition during which:
* the French language became clearly distinguished from t ...
''fonte'' that has been] melted; a
casting (metalworking), casting". The term refers to the process of casting metal type at a
type foundry
A type foundry is a company that designs or distributes typefaces. Before digital typography, type foundries manufactured and sold metal and wood typefaces for hand typesetting, and matrices for line-casting machines like the Linotype and Mono ...
.
Metal type
![Coalbrookdale Company auction poster - 1910](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/f/f2/Coalbrookdale_Company_auction_poster_-_1910.jpg)
In a manual printing (
letterpress
Letterpress printing is a technique of relief printing. Using a printing press, the process allows many copies to be produced by repeated direct impression of an inked, raised surface against sheets or a continuous roll of paper. A worker comp ...
) house the word "font" would refer to a complete set of
metal type
In typesetting, a sort or type is a block with a typographic character etched on it, which is lined up with others to print text. In movable-type printing, the sort or type is cast from a matrix mold and assembled by hand with other sorts be ...
that would be used to
typeset
Typesetting is the composition of text by means of arranging physical ''type'' (or ''sort'') in mechanical systems or ''glyphs'' in digital systems representing '' characters'' (letters and other symbols).Dictionary.com Unabridged. Random H ...
an entire page. Upper- and lowercase letters get their names because of which case the metal type was located in for manual typesetting: the more distant upper case or the closer lower case. The same distinction is also referred to with the terms ''majuscule'' and ''minuscule''.
Unlike a digital typeface, a metal font would not include a single definition of each character, but commonly used characters (such as vowels and periods) would have more physical type-pieces included. A font when bought new would often be sold as (for example in a Roman alphabet) 12pt 14A 34a, meaning that it would be a size 12-
point
Point or points may refer to:
Places
* Point, Lewis, a peninsula in the Outer Hebrides, Scotland
* Point, Texas, a city in Rains County, Texas, United States
* Point, the NE tip and a ferry terminal of Lismore, Inner Hebrides, Scotland
* Point ...
font containing 14 uppercase "A"s, and 34 lowercase "A"s.
The rest of the characters would be provided in quantities appropriate for the
distribution Distribution may refer to:
Mathematics
*Distribution (mathematics), generalized functions used to formulate solutions of partial differential equations
* Probability distribution, the probability of a particular value or value range of a vari ...
of letters in that language. Some metal type characters required in typesetting, such as
dashes
The dash is a punctuation mark consisting of a long horizontal line. It is similar in appearance to the hyphen but is longer and sometimes higher from the baseline. The most common versions are the endash , generally longer than the hyphen b ...
, spaces and line-height spacers, were not part of a specific font, but were generic pieces that could be used with any font. Line spacing is still often called "
leading
In typography, leading ( ) is the space between adjacent lines of type; the exact definition varies.
In hand typesetting, leading is the thin strips of lead (or aluminium) that were inserted between lines of type in the composing stick to incre ...
", because the strips used for line spacing were made of
lead
Lead is a chemical element with the symbol Pb (from the Latin ) and atomic number 82. It is a heavy metal that is denser than most common materials. Lead is soft and malleable, and also has a relatively low melting point. When freshly cu ...
(rather than the harder alloy used for other pieces). This spacing strip was made from lead because lead was a softer metal than the traditional forged metal type pieces (which was
part lead, antimony and tin) and would compress more easily when "locked up" in the printing "chase" (i.e. a carrier for holding all the type together).
In the 1880s–1890s, "hot lead" typesetting was invented, in which type was cast as it was set, either piece by piece (as in the
Monotype
Monotyping is a type of printmaking made by drawing or painting on a smooth, non-absorbent surface. The surface, or matrix (printing), matrix, was historically a copper etching plate, but in contemporary work it can vary from zinc or glass to ac ...
technology) or in entire lines of type at one time (as in the
Linotype technology).
Characteristics
In addition to the character height, when using the mechanical sense of the term, there are several characteristics which may distinguish fonts, though they would also depend on the
script
Script may refer to:
Writing systems
* Script, a distinctive writing system, based on a repertoire of specific elements or symbols, or that repertoire
* Script (styles of handwriting)
** Script typeface, a typeface with characteristics of handw ...
(s) that the typeface supports. In European
alphabetic scripts, i.e.
Latin
Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...
,
Cyrillic
, bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця
, fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs
, fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic
, fam3 = Phoenician
, fam4 = G ...
and
Greek
Greek may refer to:
Greece
Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe:
*Greeks, an ethnic group.
*Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family.
**Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...
, the main such properties are the
stroke width, called weight, the
style or angle and the
character width.
The regular or standard font is sometimes labeled ''roman'', both to distinguish it from ''bold'' or ''thin'' and from ''italic'' or ''oblique''. The keyword for the default, regular case is often omitted for variants and never repeated, otherwise it would be ''Bulmer regular italic'', ''Bulmer bold regular'' and even ''Bulmer regular regular''. ''Roman'' can also refer to the language coverage of a font, acting as a shorthand for "Western European".
Different fonts of the same typeface may be used in the same work for various degrees of readability and
emphasis, or in a specific design to make it be of more visual interest.
Weight
The weight of a particular font is the thickness of the character outlines relative to their height.
![Helvetica Neue typeface weights](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/0/00/Helvetica_Neue_typeface_weights.svg)
A typeface may come in fonts of many weights, from ultra-light to extra-bold or black; four to six weights are not unusual, and a few typefaces have as many as a dozen. Many typefaces for office, web and non-professional use come with a normal and a bold weight which are linked together. If no bold weight is provided, many renderers (browsers, word processors, graphic and DTP programs) support a bolder font by rendering the outline a second time at an offset, or smearing it slightly at a diagonal angle.
The base weight differs among typefaces; that means one font may appear bolder than another font. For example, fonts intended to be used in posters are often bold by default while fonts for long runs of text are rather light. Weight designations in font names may differ in regard to the actual absolute stroke weight or density of glyphs in the font.
Attempts to systematize a range of weights led to a numerical classification first used by
Adrian Frutiger
Adrian Johann Frutiger ( ; 24 May 1928 – 10 September 2015) was a Swiss typeface designer who influenced the direction of type design in the second half of the 20th century. His career spanned the hot metal, phototypesetting and digital t ...
with the
Univers
Univers () is a large sans-serif typeface family designed by Adrian Frutiger and released by his employer Deberny & Peignot in 1957. Classified as a Grotesque (typeface classification), neo-grotesque sans-serif, one based on the model of nineteen ...
typeface: 35 ''Extra Light'', 45 ''Light'', 55 ''Medium'' or ''Regular'', 65 ''Bold'', 75 ''Extra Bold'', 85 ''Extra Bold'', 95 ''Ultra Bold'' or ''Black''.
Deviants of these were the "6 series" (italics), e.g. ''46 Light Italics'' etc., the "7 series" (condensed versions), e.g. ''57 Medium Condensed'' etc., and the "8 series" (condensed italics), e.g. 68 ''Bold Condensed Italics''.
From this brief numerical system it is easier to determine exactly what a font's characteristics are, for instance "Helvetica 67" (HE67) translates to "Helvetica Bold Condensed".
![Regular and bold](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/63/Regular_and_bold.png)
The first algorithmic description of fonts was made by
Donald Knuth
Donald Ervin Knuth ( ; born January 10, 1938) is an American computer scientist, mathematician, and professor emeritus at Stanford University. He is the 1974 recipient of the ACM Turing Award, informally considered the Nobel Prize of computer sc ...
in his
Metafont description language and interpreter.
The
TrueType
TrueType is an outline font standard developed by Apple in the late 1980s as a competitor to Adobe's Type 1 fonts used in PostScript. It has become the most common format for fonts on the classic Mac OS, macOS, and Microsoft Windows operating sy ...
font format introduced a scale from 100 through 900, which is also used in
CSS
Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) is a style sheet language used for describing the presentation of a document written in a markup language such as HTML or XML (including XML dialects such as SVG, MathML or XHTML). CSS is a cornerstone techno ...
and
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark o ...
, where 400 is regular (roman or plain).
The
Mozilla Developer Network
MDN Web Docs, previously Mozilla Developer Network and formerly Mozilla Developer Center, is a documentation repository and learning resource for web developers. It was started by Mozilla in 2005 as a unified place for documentation about open web ...
provides the following rough mapping to typical font weight names:
Font mapping varies by font designer. A good example is Bigelow and Holmes's
Go Go font family. In this family, the "fonts have CSS numerical weights of 400, 500, and 600. Although CSS specifies 'Bold' as a 700 weight and 600 as Semibold or Demibold, the Go numerical weights match the actual progression of the ratios of stem thicknesses: Normal:Medium = 400:500; Normal:Bold = 400:600".
The terms ''normal'', ''regular'' and ''plain'' (sometimes ''book'') are used for the standard-weight font of a typeface. Where both appear and differ, ''book'' is often lighter than ''regular'', but in some typefaces it is bolder.
Before the arrival of computers, each weight had to be drawn manually. As a result, many older multi-weight families such as
Gill Sans
Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards.
Gill Sans is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate font of London Underground. ...
and
Monotype Grotesque
Monotype Grotesque is a family of sans-serif typefaces released by the Monotype Corporation for its hot metal typesetting system. It belongs to the grotesque or industrial genre of early sans-serif designs. Like many early sans-serifs, it forms ...
have considerable differences in weights from light to extra-bold. Since the 1980s, it has become common to use automation to construct a range of weights as points along a trend,
multiple master or other parameterized font design. This means that many modern digital fonts such as
Myriad
A myriad (from Ancient Greek grc, μυριάς, translit=myrias, label=none) is technically the number 10,000 (ten thousand); in that sense, the term is used in English almost exclusively for literal translations from Greek, Latin or Sinospher ...
and
TheSans
Thesis is a large typeface family designed by Luc(as) de Groot. The typefaces were designed between 1994 and 1999 to provide a modern humanist family. Each typeface is available in a variety of weights as well as in italic. Originally released by ...
are offered in a large range of weights which offer a smooth and continuous transition from one weight to the next, although some digital fonts are created with extensive manual corrections.
As digital font design allows more variants to be created faster, a common development in professional font design is the use of "grades": slightly different weights intended for different types of paper and ink, or printing in a different region with different ambient temperature and humidity. For example, a thin design printed on book paper and a thicker design printed on
high-gloss magazine paper may come out looking identical, since in the former case the ink will soak and spread out more. Grades are offered with characters having the same width on all grades, so that a change of printing materials does not affect copy-fit. Grades are common on serif fonts with their finer details.
Fonts in which the bold and non-bold letters have the same width are “
duplexed”.
Style
Slope
In European typefaces, especially Roman ones, a slope or slanted style is used to emphasize important words. This is called
''italic'' type or
oblique type
Oblique type is a form of type that slants slightly to the right, used for the same purposes as italic type. Unlike italic type, however, it does not use different glyph shapes; it uses the same glyphs as roman type, except slanted. Oblique and it ...
. These designs normally slant to the right in left-to-right scripts. Oblique styles are often called italic, but differ from "true italic" styles.
Italic styles are more flowing than the normal typeface, approaching a more
handwritten,
cursive
Cursive (also known as script, among other names) is any style of penmanship in which characters are written joined in a flowing manner, generally for the purpose of making writing faster, in contrast to block letters. It varies in functionalit ...
style, possibly using
ligatures more commonly or gaining
swash
Swash, or forewash in geography, is a turbulent layer of water that washes up on the beach after an incoming wave has broken. The swash action can move beach materials up and down the beach, which results in the cross-shore sediment exchange. T ...
es.
Although rarely encountered, a typographic face may be accompanied by a matching calligraphic face (''cursive'', ''script''), giving an exaggeratedly italic style.
![Cyrillic cursive](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/7/71/Cyrillic_cursive.svg)
In many sans-serif and some serif typefaces, especially in those with strokes of even thickness, the characters of the italic fonts are only ''slanted'', which is often done algorithmically, without otherwise changing their appearance. Such ''
oblique
Oblique may refer to:
* an alternative name for the character usually called a slash (punctuation) ( / )
* Oblique angle, in geometry
*Oblique triangle, in geometry
*Oblique lattice, in geometry
* Oblique leaf base, a characteristic shape of the b ...
'' fonts are not true italics, because lowercase letter shapes do not change, but are often marketed as such. Fonts normally do not include both oblique and italic styles: the designer chooses to supply one or the other.
![Straight italic within italics](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/c/c5/Straight_italic_within_italics.png)
Since italic styles clearly look different to regular (roman) styles, it is possible to have "upright italic" designs that take a more cursive form but remain upright;
Computer Modern
Computer Modern is the original family of typefaces used by the typesetting program TeX. It was created by Donald Knuth with his Metafont program, and was most recently updated in 1992. Computer Modern, or variants of it, remains very widely us ...
is an example of a font that offers this style. In Latin-script countries, upright italics are rare but are sometimes used in mathematics or in complex documents where a section of text already in italics needs a "double italic" style to add emphasis to it. For example, the Cyrillic
minuscule
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
"т" may look like a smaller form of its
majuscule
Letter case is the distinction between the letters that are in larger uppercase or capitals (or more formally ''majuscule'') and smaller lowercase (or more formally ''minuscule'') in the written representation of certain languages. The writing ...
"Т" or more like a roman small "m" as in its standard italic appearance; in this case the distinction between styles is also a matter of local preference.
Other style attributes
In Frutiger's nomenclature the second digit for upright fonts is a 5, for italic fonts a 6 and for condensed italic fonts an 8.
The two
Japanese syllabaries,
katakana
is a Japanese syllabary, one component of the Japanese writing system along with hiragana, kanji and in some cases the Latin script (known as rōmaji). The word ''katakana'' means "fragmentary kana", as the katakana characters are derived fr ...
and
hiragana
is a Japanese syllabary, part of the Japanese writing system, along with ''katakana'' as well as ''kanji''.
It is a phonetic lettering system. The word ''hiragana'' literally means "flowing" or "simple" kana ("simple" originally as contrast ...
, are sometimes seen as two styles or typographic variants of each other, but usually are considered separate character sets as a few of the characters have separate
kanji
are the logographic Chinese characters taken from the Chinese family of scripts, Chinese script and used in the writing of Japanese language, Japanese. They were made a major part of the Japanese writing system during the time of Old Japanese ...
origins and the scripts are used for different purposes. The
''gothic'' style of the roman script with broken letter forms, on the other hand, is usually considered a mere typographic variant.
Cursive-only scripts such as
Arabic
Arabic (, ' ; , ' or ) is a Semitic languages, Semitic language spoken primarily across the Arab world.Semitic languages: an international handbook / edited by Stefan Weninger; in collaboration with Geoffrey Khan, Michael P. Streck, Janet C ...
also have different styles, in this case for example
Naskh and
Kufic
Kufic script () is a style of Arabic script that gained prominence early on as a preferred script for Quran transcription and architectural decoration, and it has since become a reference and an archetype for a number of other Arabic scripts. It ...
, although these often depend on application, area or era.
There are other aspects that can differ among font styles, but more often these are considered intrinsic features of the typeface. These include the look of digits (
text figures
Text figures (also known as non-lining, lowercase, old style, ranging, hanging, medieval, billing, or antique figures or numerals) are numerals designed with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the ...
) and the minuscules, which may be smaller versions of the capital letters (''
small caps
In typography, small caps (short for "small capitals") are characters typeset with glyphs that resemble uppercase letters (capitals) but reduced in height and weight close to the surrounding lowercase letters or text figures. This is technicall ...
'') although the script has developed characteristic shapes for them. Some typefaces do not include separate glyphs for the cases at all, thereby abolishing the
bicamerality. While most of these use uppercase characters only, some labeled ''
unicase
A unicase or unicameral alphabet has just one case for its letters. Arabic, Brahmic scripts like Telugu, Kannada, Malayalam, Tamil, Old Hungarian (Hungarian Runic), Hebrew, Iberian, Georgian, and Hangul are unicase writing systems, while (modern ...
'' exist which choose either the majuscule or the minuscule glyph at a common height for both characters.
Titling font
A display typeface is a typeface that is intended for use at large sizes for headings, rather than for extended passages of body text.
Display typefaces will often have more eccentric and variable designs than the simple, relatively restrained ...
s are designed for headlines and displays, and have stroke widths optimized for large sizes.
Width
![Avenir Next regular and condensed widths](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/6/6d/Avenir_Next_regular_and_condensed_widths.png)
Some typefaces include fonts that vary the width of the characters (''stretch''), although this feature is usually rarer than weight or slope. Narrower fonts are usually labeled ''compressed'', ''condensed'' or ''narrow''. In Frutiger's system, the second digit of condensed fonts is a 7.
Wider fonts may be called ''wide'', ''extended'' or ''expanded''.
Both can be further classified by prepending ''extra'', ''ultra'' or the like. Compressing a font design to a condensed weight is a complex task, requiring the strokes to be slimmed down proportionally and often making the capitals straight-sided. It is particularly common to see condensed fonts for sans-serif and slab-serif families, since it is relatively practical to modify their structure to a condensed weight. Serif text faces are often only issued in the regular width.
These separate fonts have to be distinguished from techniques that alter the
letter-spacing
Examples of headline letter spacing
In typography, letter spacing, character spacing or tracking is an optically consistent adjustment to the space between letters to change the visual density of a line or block of text. Letter spacing is distin ...
to achieve narrower or smaller words, especially for
justified text alignment.
Most typefaces either have
proportional or
monospaced
A monospaced font, also called a fixed-pitch, fixed-width, or non-proportional font, is a font whose letters and characters each occupy the same amount of horizontal space. This contrasts with variable-width fonts, where the letters and spac ...
(for example, those resembling
typewriter
A typewriter is a mechanical or electromechanical machine for typing characters. Typically, a typewriter has an array of keys, and each one causes a different single character to be produced on paper by striking an inked ribbon selectivel ...
output) letter widths, if the script provides the possibility. Some superfamilies include both proportional and monospaced fonts. Some fonts also provide both
proportional and fixed-width (''tabular'') digits, where the former usually coincide with lowercase text figures and the latter with uppercase
lining figures
Text figures (also known as non-lining, lowercase, old style, ranging, hanging, medieval, billing, or antique figures or numerals) are numerals designed with varying heights in a fashion that resembles a typical line of running text, hence the ...
.
The width of a font will depend on its intended use.
Times New Roman
Times New Roman is a serif typeface. It was commissioned by the British newspaper ''The Times'' in 1931 and conceived by Stanley Morison, the artistic adviser to the British branch of the printing equipment company Monotype, in collaboration wit ...
was designed with the goal of having small width, to fit more text into a newspaper. On the other hand,
Palatino
Palatino is the name of an old-style serif typeface designed by Hermann Zapf, initially released in 1949 by the Stempel foundry and later by other companies, most notably the Mergenthaler Linotype Company.
Named after the 16th-century Italia ...
has large width to increase readability. The "
billing block
Billing is a performing arts term used in referring to the order and other aspects of how credits are presented for plays, films, television, or other creative works. Information given in billing usually consists of the companies, actors, direct ...
" on a movie poster often uses extremely condensed type in order to meet union requirements on the people who must be credited and the font height relative to the rest of the poster.
Optical size
![Unterschiedliche Schriftformen pro Schriftgrösse](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/de/Unterschiedliche_Schriftformen_pro_Schriftgr%C3%B6sse.jpg)
Some professional digital typefaces include fonts that are optimised for certain sizes, for instance by using a thinner stroke weight if they are intended for
large-size display use, or by using
ink trap
An ink trap is a feature of certain typefaces designed for printing in small sizes. At an ink trap, the corners or details are removed from the letterforms. When the type is printed, ink naturally spreads into the removed area. Without ink traps, t ...
s if they are to be printed at small size on poor-quality paper. This was a natural feature in the metal type period for most typefaces, since each size would be cut separately and made to its own slightly different design.
As an example of this, experienced Linotype designer
Chauncey H. Griffith
Chauncey H. Griffith (1879–1956) was an American printer and typeface designer.
Griffith was born in a small town near Ironton, Ohio, and began his career as a compositor and pressman in Lexington, Kentucky, where his family moved when he was ...
commented in 1947 that for a type he was working on intended for newspaper use, the 6 point size was not 50% as wide as the 12 point size, but about 71%. However, it declined in use as
pantograph
A pantograph (, from their original use for copying writing) is a mechanical linkage connected in a manner based on parallelograms so that the movement of one pen, in tracing an image, produces identical movements in a second pen. If a line dr ...
engraving, and especially phototypesetting and digital fonts made printing the same font at any size simpler. A mild revival has taken place in recent years. Optical sizes are more common for serif fonts, since their typically finer detail and higher contrast benefits more from being bulked up for smaller sizes and made less overpowering at larger ones.
There are several naming schemes for such variant designs. One such scheme, invented and popularized by
Adobe Systems
Adobe Inc. ( ), originally called Adobe Systems Incorporated, is an American multinational computer software company incorporated in Delaware
and headquartered in San Jose, California. It has historically specialized in software for the crea ...
, refers to the variant fonts by the applications they are typically used for, with the exact point sizes intended varying slightly by typeface:
; Poster: Extremely large sizes, usually larger than 72 point
; Display: Large sizes, typically 19–72 point
; Subhead: Large text, typically about 14–18 point
; (Regular): Usually left unnamed, typically about 10–13 point
; Small Text (''SmText''): Typically about 8–10 point
; Caption: Very small, typically about 4–8 point
Metrics
''Font metrics'' refers to
metadata
Metadata is "data that provides information about other data", but not the content of the data, such as the text of a message or the image itself. There are many distinct types of metadata, including:
* Descriptive metadata – the descriptive ...
consisting of numeric values relating to size and space in the font overall, or in its individual glyphs. Font-wide metrics include
cap height
In typography, cap height is the height of a capital letter above the baseline for a particular typeface.http://pfaedit.sourceforge.net/glossary.html Glossary of (some) Typographic Terms It specifically is the height of capital letters that are f ...
(the height of the capitals),
x-height
upright 2.0, alt=A diagram showing the line terms used in typography
In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the let ...
(the height of the lowercase letters) and
ascender height,
descender
In typography and handwriting, a descender is the portion of a letter that extends below the baseline of a font.
For example, in the letter ''y'', the descender is the "tail", or that portion of the diagonal line which lies below the ''v'' c ...
depth, and the font
bounding box
In geometry, the minimum or smallest bounding or enclosing box for a point set in dimensions is the box with the smallest measure (area, volume, or hypervolume in higher dimensions) within which all the points lie. When other kinds of measure a ...
. Glyph-level metrics include the glyph bounding box, the advance width (the proper distance between the glyph's initial pen position and the next glyph's initial pen position), and sidebearings (space that pads the glyph outline on either side). Many digital (and some metal type) fonts are able to be
kerned so that characters can be fitted more closely; the pair "Wa" is a common example of this.
Some fonts, especially those intended for professional use, are duplexed: made with multiple weights having the same character width so that (for example) changing from regular to bold or italic does not affect word wrap.
Sabon
Sabon is an old-style serif typeface designed by the German-born typographer and designer Jan Tschichold (1902–1974) in the period 1964–1967. It was released jointly by the Linotype, Monotype, and Stempel type foundries in 1967. The design of ...
as originally designed was a notable example of this. (This was a standard feature of the Linotype hot metal typesetting system with regular and italic being duplexed, requiring awkward design choices as italics normally are narrower than the roman.)
A particularly important basic set of fonts that became an early standard in digital printing was the
Core Font Set included in the
PostScript
PostScript (PS) is a page description language in the electronic publishing and desktop publishing realm. It is a dynamically typed, concatenative programming language. It was created at Adobe Systems by John Warnock, Charles Geschke, Doug Br ...
printing system developed by Apple and Adobe. To avoid paying licensing fees for this set, many computer companies commissioned "metrically compatible" knock-off fonts with the same spacing, which could be used to display the same document without it seeming clearly different.
Arial
Arial (also called Arial MT) is a sans-serif typeface and set of computer fonts in the neo-grotesque style. Fonts from the Arial family are included with all versions of Microsoft Windows from Windows 3.1 on, some other Microsoft software appli ...
and
Century Gothic
A century is a period of 100 years. Centuries are numbered names of numbers in English#Ordinal numbers, ordinally in English and many other languages. The word ''century'' comes from the Latin ''centum'', meaning ''one hundred''. ''Century'' is s ...
are notable examples of this, being functional equivalents to the PostScript standard fonts
Helvetica
Helvetica (originally Neue Haas Grotesk) is a widely used sans-serif typeface developed in 1957 by Swiss typeface designer Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann.
Helvetica is a neo-grotesque design, one influenced by the famous 19th century (1890s) ...
and
ITC Avant Garde
ITC Avant Garde Gothic is a geometric sans serif font family based on the logo font used in the '' Avant Garde'' magazine. Herb Lubalin devised the logo concept and its companion headline typeface, and then he and Tom Carnase, a partner in Lubalin ...
respectively. Some of these sets were created in order to be freely redistributable, for example
Red Hat
Red Hat, Inc. is an American software company that provides open source software products to enterprises. Founded in 1993, Red Hat has its corporate headquarters in Raleigh, North Carolina, with other offices worldwide.
Red Hat has become ass ...
's
Liberation fonts
Liberation is the collective name of four TrueType font families: ''Liberation Sans'', ''Liberation Sans Narrow'', ''Liberation Serif'', and ''Liberation Mono''. These fonts are metrically compatible with the most popular fonts on the Microsof ...
and Google's
Croscore fonts
The ChromeOS core fonts, also known as the Croscore fonts, are a collection of three TrueType font families: Arimo (sans-serif), Tinos (serif) and Cousine (monospace). These fonts are metrically compatible with Monotype Corporation’s Arial ...
, which duplicate the PostScript set and other common fonts used in
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...
software such as
Calibri
Calibri () is a digital sans-serif typeface family in the humanist or modern style. It was designed by Luc(as) de Groot in 2002–2004 and released to the general public in 2007, with Microsoft Office 2007 and Windows Vista. In Office 2007, it ...
. It is not a requirement that a metrically compatible design be identical to its origin in appearance apart from width.
Serifs
Although most typefaces are characterised by their use of
serif
In typography, a serif () is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface ...
s, there are
superfamilies that incorporate serif (antiqua) and
sans-serif
In typography and lettering, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, or simply sans letterform is one that does not have extending features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. Sans-serif typefaces tend to have less stroke width variation than seri ...
(grotesque) or even intermediate
slab serif
In typography, a slab serif (also called ''mechanistic'', ''square serif'', ''antique'' or ''Egyptian'') typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular ( Rockwell), ...
(Egyptian) or semi-serif fonts with the same base outlines.
A more common font variant, especially of serif typefaces, is that of alternate capitals. They can have
swash
Swash, or forewash in geography, is a turbulent layer of water that washes up on the beach after an incoming wave has broken. The swash action can move beach materials up and down the beach, which results in the cross-shore sediment exchange. T ...
es to go with italic minuscules or they can be of a flourish design for use as
initial
In a written or published work, an initial capital, also referred to as a drop capital or simply an initial cap, initial, initcapital, initcap or init or a drop cap or drop, is a letter at the beginning of a word, a chapter, or a paragraph that ...
s (''drop caps'').
Character variants
![Regular and schoolbook characters](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/3/3c/Regular_and_schoolbook_characters.png)
Typefaces may be made in variants for different uses. These may be issued as separate font files, or the different characters may be included in the same font file if the font is a modern format such as
OpenType
OpenType is a format for scalable computer fonts. It was built on its predecessor TrueType, retaining TrueType's basic structure and adding many intricate data structures for prescribing typographic behavior. OpenType is a registered trademark o ...
and the application used can support this.
Alternative characters are often called stylistic alternates. These may be switched on to allow users more flexibility to customise the font to suit their needs. The practice is not new: in the 1930s,
Gill Sans
Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards.
Gill Sans is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate font of London Underground. ...
, a British design, was sold abroad with alternative characters to make it resemble fonts such as
Futura popular in other countries, while
Bembo
Bembo is a serif typeface created by the British branch of the Monotype Corporation in 1928–1929 and most commonly used for body text. It is a member of the " old-style" of serif fonts, with its regular or roman style based on a design cut a ...
from the same period has two shapes of "R": one with a stretched-out leg, matching its fifteenth-century model, and one less-common shorter version. With modern digital fonts, it is possible to group related alternative characters into stylistic sets, which may be turned on and off together. For example, in
Williams Caslon Text, a revival of the 18th century font
Caslon
Caslon is the name given to serif typefaces designed by William Caslon I (c. 1692–1766) in London, or inspired by his work.
Caslon worked as an engraver of punches, the masters used to stamp the moulds or matrices used to cast metal ty ...
, the default italic forms have many swashes matching the original design. For a more spare appearance, these can all be turned off at once by engaging stylistic set 4.
Junicode
Junicode ("Junius-Unicode") is a free ( SIL Open Font License) old-style serif typeface developed by Peter S. Baker of the University of Virginia. The design is based on a 17th-century typeface used in Oxford, England.
Junicode contains many spec ...
, intended for academic publishing, uses ss15 to enable a
variant form of "e" used in medieval Latin. A corporation commissioning a modified version of a commercial font for their own use, meanwhile, might request that their preferred alternates be set to default.
It is common for fonts intended for use in books for young children to use simplified, single-storey forms of the lowercase letters ''a'' and ''g'' (sometimes also ''y'' and ''l''); these may be called ''infant'' or ''schoolbook'' alternates. They are traditionally believed to be easier for children to read and less confusing as they resemble the forms used in handwriting. Often schoolbook characters are released as a supplement to popular families such as
Akzidenz-Grotesk
Akzidenz-Grotesk is a sans-serif typeface family originally released by the Berthold Type Foundry of Berlin. ''german: label=none, italic=no, "Akzidenz"'' indicates its intended use as a typeface for commercial print runs such as publicity, tick ...
,
Gill Sans
Gill Sans is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Eric Gill and released by the British branch of Monotype from 1928 onwards.
Gill Sans is based on Edward Johnston's 1916 "Underground Alphabet", the corporate font of London Underground. ...
and
Bembo
Bembo is a serif typeface created by the British branch of the Monotype Corporation in 1928–1929 and most commonly used for body text. It is a member of the " old-style" of serif fonts, with its regular or roman style based on a design cut a ...
; a well-known font intended specifically for school use is
Sassoon Sans
Rosemary Sassoon (born 1931 and currently residing in Busselton, Western Australia) is an expert in handwriting, particularly that of children. She designed the Sassoon series of typefaces, produced in collaboration with Adrian Williams, which are ...
.
Besides alternate characters, in the metal type era ''
The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid ...
'' commissioned custom condensed single sorts for common long names that might often appear in news headings, such as
"Eisenhower",
"Chamberlain" or
"Rockefeller".
Digits
Fonts can have multiple kinds of digits, including, as described above, proportional (variable width) and tabular (fixed width) as well as lining (uppercase height) and text (lowercase height) figures. They may also include separate shapes for superscript and subscript digits. Professional fonts may include even more complex settings for typesetting digits, such as digits intended to match the height of small caps. In addition, some fonts such as Adobe’s Acumin and
Christian Schwartz
Christian Schwartz (born December 30, 1977 in Concord, New Hampshire, United States) is an American type designer. He has been awarded the German Design Award and the Prix Charles Peignot.
Life
A graduate of the Communication Design program at ...
’s
Neue Haas Grotesk digitisation offer two heights of lining (uppercase height) figures: one slightly lower than cap height, intended to blend better into continuous text, and one at exactly the cap height to look better in combination with capitals for uses such as UK postcodes.
With the OpenType format, it is possible to bundle all these into a single digital font file, but earlier font releases may have only one type per file.
See also
*
Clip font
fonts or split fonts are non-Unicode fonts that assign glyphs of Brahmic scripts, such as Devanagari, at code positions intended for glyphs of the Latin script or to produce glyphs not found in Unicode by using its Private Use Area (PUA).
...
*
Font embedding
Font embedding is the inclusion of font files inside an electronic document. Font embedding is controversial because it allows licensed fonts to be freely distributed.
History
Font embedding has been possible with Portable Document Format (PDF), M ...
*
Graphics
Graphics () are visual images or designs on some surface, such as a wall, canvas, screen, paper, or stone, to inform, illustrate, or entertain. In contemporary usage, it includes a pictorial representation of data, as in design and manufacture ...
*
List of typefaces
This is a list of typefaces, which are separated into groups by distinct artistic differences. The list includes typefaces that have articles or that are referenced. Superfamilies that fall under more than one category have an asterisk (*) after t ...
References
Notes
Further reading
*Blackwell, Lewis. ''20th Century Type.'' Yale University Press: 2004. .
*Fiedl, Frederich, Nicholas Ott and Bernard Stein. ''Typography: An Encyclopedic Survey of Type Design and Techniques Through History.'' Black Dog & Leventhal: 1998. .
*Lupton, Ellen. ''Thinking with Type: A Critical Guide for Designers, Writers, Editors, & Students,'' Princeton Architectural Press: 2004. .
*Headley, Gwyn. ''The Encyclopaedia of Fonts.'' Cassell Illustrated: 2005. .
*Macmillan, Neil. ''An A–Z of Type Designers.'' Yale University Press: 2006. .
{{Typography terms
Typesetting
Typography
Articles containing video clips