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Image:Caslonsample.jpg thumb|right|300px|''A Specimen'' of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 ''[[Cyclopaedia''.]]
In
typography, a '''typeface''' consists of a co-ordinated
set of
grapheme (i.e., character) designs. A typeface usually comprises an
alphabet of letters,
numerals, and
punctuation marks. A typeface may also include or consist of
ideograms and
symbols (e.g.,
mathematical or
map making map-making glyphs).
In metal type, the word '''font''' denoted a complete typeface in a particular size (usually measured in points), one weight (e.g., light, book, bold, black), and one ''orientation'' or ''angle'' (e.g. roman, italic, oblique). As regards
digital type, the font is the computer file that stores the
Vector graphics vector paths, before they are brought into being on a screen or a page. Digital fonts do contain unlimited (or application-limited) sizes. Some applications can create additional weights or orientations of a font automatically, but these are not considered typographically correct as human intervention is required to make these adjustments well.
A ''font family'' is a group of related fonts which vary only in weight, orientation, width, etc. For examples, Times is a font family, whereas Times Roman, Times Italic and Times Bold are each fonts. Most font families contain a handful of fonts, though some (e.g. Zapf Dingbats) may contain only one, and others (e.g. Helvetica) may contain dozens of fonts.
The art of designing typefaces, called
type design, is the occupation of a
type designer.
Helvetica, Century Schoolbook, and
Courier (font) Courier are three popular examples of typefaces.
History
A ''font'', from Middle
French language French ''fonte'', meaning "(something that has been) melt(ed) [akin to ''
Fondue'']" and referring to letters of a typeface produced by casting molten metal at a
type foundry, consists of a set of
glyphs (images) representing the
grapheme characters from a particular
character set in a particular typeface. Historically, fonts came in specific sizes (governing the actual height of the characters), and in sorts (governing the quantities of each letter provided). The design of a given character in a font took into account all these factors. In addition, as the spectrum of available designs and requirements of publishers has broadened over the centuries, fonts of specific weight (how dark the text appears—bold or light, for example) and additional specific conditions (most commonly "regular" as opposed to "
Italic type italic" and/or "condensed") have led to "typeface families", collections of closely-related typeface designs that may include hundreds of styles.
English-speaking printers have used the term ''fount'' for centuries to refer to the multipart device used (in its day) to assemble and print in a particular size and typeface design. Type foundries cast virtually all fonts in various
lead alloys from the
1450s until the middle of the
20th century, though
wood served to make a few large fonts (
wood type), especially in the
United States of America. In the 1890s mechanized typesetting emerged and began casting fonts on-the-fly in the form of lines of type of the size and length needed. This became known as "hot metal" type, and it remained profitable and widespread until its demise in the 1970s. The first machine of this type was the
Linotype invented by
Ottmar Mergenthaler.
During a relatively brief transitional period (''circa''
1950s –
1990s), photographic technology, known as "
phototypesetting", produced fonts which came on rolls or discs of film. Photographic typesetting allowed for optical
scaling (geometry) scaling, which meant that designers could produce multiple sizes from a single font (although physical constraints on the reproduction system used still required design-changes at different sizes — for example, ink traps and
spikes to allow for spread of
ink). Manually-operated phototypographic composition systems (using fonts made on rolls of film) allowed fine
kerning between letters without great physical effort for the first time and spawned a large type-design industry in the 1960s and 1970s.
The mid-1970s saw all of the major typeface technologies and all their fonts in use: from the original letterpress process of
Johann Gutenberg Gutenberg to mechanical metal typesetters, phototypositors, computer-controlled phototypesetters, and the earliest digital typesetters, (hulking machines with tiny processors and CRT outputs). From the mid-
1980s, as
digital typography has relentlessly grown, users have almost universally adopted the American spelling ''font'', which nowadays nearly always means a
computer file containing scalable, outline letterforms ("digital fonts"), usually in one of several common formats. Designers of some fonts, such as
Microsoft's
Verdana, intend their product primarily for use on
computer screens.
Digital fonts may encode the image of each character either as a
bitmap, in a bitmap font (seldom used since 1995) or by a higher-level description in terms of lines and curves enclosing a space (an
outline font, also called a "
vector font"). An outline "rasterizer" then fills the enclosed space of an outline font, deciding which pixels to represent as "black" and which as "white". The rasterization proceeds in straightforward fashion at higher resolutions (as for example in
laser printers and in high-end publishing systems) but for
monitor screens, where each individual pixel can mean the difference between legibility and illegibility, digital fonts need
Font hinting hints included to make readable bitmaps at small sizes. Digital fonts today also contain data representing the "
typography" used to compose them, including kerning pairs, component-creation data for accented characters, glyph-substitution rules for Arabic typography and for connecting script faces, and for simple everyday
Ligature_(typography) ligatures like "fl". (Common
page description language description languages that format digital type include
METAFONT,
PostScript,
TrueType and
OpenType. Enablers of these formats, including the rasterizers, appear in Microsoft and Apple Computer
operating systems,
Adobe Systems products and those of several other companies.)
Typeface anatomy
Typographers have derived a comprehensive vocabulary for describing and discussing the appearances of typefaces. Some vocabulary applies only to a subset of all
writing system scripts.
Serifs
One can sub-divide fonts into two main categories: those of '''
serif''' and '''
sans-serif''' fonts.
Serifs comprise the small features at the end of strokes within letters. The printing industry refers to typeface without serifs as '''sans-serif''' (from
French language French ''sans'': "without"), or as ''grotesque'' (or, in
German language German, ''grotesk'').
Great variety exists among both serif and sans-serif fonts; both groups contain faces designed for setting large amounts of body text, and others intended primarily as decorative. The presence or absence of serifs forms only one of many factors to consider when choosing a font.
Typefaces with serifs are often considered easier to read in long passages than those without. Studies on the matter are ambiguous, suggesting that most of this effect is due to the greater familiarity of serif typefaces. As a general rule, printed works such as newspapers and books almost always use serif fonts, at least for the text body. Web sites do not have to specify a font and can simply respect the browser settings of the user. But of those websites that do specify a font, most use modern sans-serif fonts such as Verdana, because it is commonly believed that, in contrast to the case for printed material, sans-serif fonts are easier than serif fonts to read on computer screens due to their lower resolution.
Proportionality
Image:Proportional_monospace_font_widths.png 300px|right
A '''proportional''' font displays glyphs using varying widths, while a '''non-proportional''' or '''fixed-width''' or '''monospace''' font uses fixed glyph-widths.
Most people generally find proportional fonts nicer-looking and easier to read; and thus they appear more commonly in professionally published printed material. For the same reason,
GUI computer applications (such as
word processors and
web browsers) typically use proportional fonts. However, many proportional fonts contain fixed-width figures so that columns of numbers stay aligned.
However, non-proportional fonts function better than proportional fonts for some purposes because their characters line up in nice, neat columns. Most non-electronic
typewriters and text-only computer displays use only non-proportional fonts. Most computer programs which have a text-based interface (
terminal emulators, for example) use only non-proportional fonts in their configuration. Most
computer programmers prefer to use monospace fonts while editing
source code.
ASCII art requires a non-proportional font for proper viewing. In a
web page, the <pre> </pre>
HTML tag most commonly specifies non-proportional fonts. In
LaTeX, the ''verbatim'' environment uses non-proportional fonts.
Any two lines of typical text with the same number of characters in each line in non-proportional font should display as equal in width, while the same two lines in proportional font may have radically different widths. This comes about because wide characters' glyphs (WQZMDOHU) use more linear space and narrow characters' glyphs (itl[]1|I) use less linear space than the average-width glyph when using a proportional font.
Editors read manuscripts in fixed-width fonts for ease of editing. The publishing industry considers it discourteous to submit a manuscript in a proportional font.
Measurements
Image:Vertical_typographic_terms.png right|400px|The characters "Aghfy", set in ''Palatino'' to illustrate the concepts of baseline, x-height, body size, descent and ascent.
Most, if not all,
script (styles of handwriting) scripts share the notion of a baseline: an imaginary horizontal line on which characters rest. In some scripts, parts of glyphs lie below the baseline. The ''descent'' spans the distance between the baseline and the lowest descending glyph in a typeface, and the part of a glyph that descends below the baseline has the name "
descender". Conversely, the ''ascent'' spans the distance between the baseline and the top of the glyph that reaches farthest from the baseline. The ascent and descent may or may not include distance added by accents or diacritical marks.
In the
Latin script Latin,
Greek script Greek and
Cyrillic script Cyrillic writing system scripts, one can refer to the distance from the baseline to the top of regular lowercase glyphs as the ''x-height'', and the part of a glyph rising above the x-height as the "
ascender". The height of the ascender can have a dramatic effect on the readability and appearance of a font. The ratio between the x-height and the ascent often serves to characterise typefaces.
Types of fonts
Since a plethora of typefaces has been created over the centuries, they are commonly categorized according to their appearance. At the highest level, one can differentiate between ''serif'', ''sans-serif'', ''script'', ''blackletter'', ''display'', ''monospace'', and ''symbol'' fonts. Historically, the first fonts were blackletter, followed by serif, then sans-serif and then the other types of font.
=Serif fonts
=
{{main|Serif}}
Serif, or "roman", typefaces are named for the features at the ends of their strokes.
Times Roman and
Garamond are common examples of serif typefaces. Serif fonts are probably the most used classification in printed materials, including most books, newspapers and magazines.
=Sans-serif fonts
=
{{main|Sans-serif}}
The
typography typographical phenomenon of sans-serif designs appeared relatively recently in the history of
type design. The two-line English so-called "Egyptian" font, released in
1816 by
William Caslon's foundry in England apparently furnished the first specimen. They serve commonly, but not exclusively, for display typography applications such as signage, headings, and other situations demanding clear meaning but without the need for continuous reading. The text on web pages offers an exception: it appears mostly in sans-serif font because serifs make small letters less readable on a computer monitor.
= Script fonts
=
Script fonts simulate handwriting or
calligraphy. They do not lend themselves to quantities of
body text, as people find them harder to read than many serif and sans-serif fonts; they are typically used for logos or invitations. Examples include
Coronet (typeface) Coronet and
Zapfino.
= Blackletter fonts
=
{{main|Blackletter}}
Blackletter fonts, the earliest fonts used with the invention of the
printing press, resemble the blackletter calligraphy of that time. Many people refer to them as ''gothic script''. Various forms exist including
textualis,
rotunda (script) rotunda,
schwabacher, and
Fraktur (typeface) fraktur.
= Display fonts
=
Display fonts are used exclusively for decorative purposes, and are not suitable for body text. They have the most distinctive designs of all fonts, and may even incorporate pictures of objects, animals, etc. into the character designs. They usually have very specific characteristics (e.g. evoking the Wild West, Christmas, horror films, etc.) and hence very limited uses.
= Monospace fonts
=
Monospace fonts are typefaces in which every character is the same width (usually, font width is variable; the "w" and "m" are wider than most letters, and the "i" is narrower). The first monospaced typefaces were designed for
typewriters, which could only move the same distance forward with each letter typed. Their use continued with early computers, which could only display a single font. Although modern computers can display any desired typeface, monospaced fonts are still important for
computer programming,
terminal emulator terminal emulation, and for laying out tabulated data in
plain text documents. Examples of monospace typefaces are
Courier (font) Courier,
Prestige Elite, and
Monaco (typeface) Monaco.
= Symbol fonts
=
{{main|Dingbat}}
Symbol, or Dingbat, fonts consist of symbols (such as decorative bullets, clock faces, railroad timetable symbols, CD-index, or TV-channel enclosed numbers) rather than normal text characters. Examples include
Zapf Dingbats,
Sonata (typeface) Sonata, and
Wingdings.
Texts used to demonstrate typefaces
A sentence that uses all of the alphabet (a
pangram), such as "
the quick brown fox jumps over a lazy dog", is often used as a design aesthetic tool to demonstrate the personality of a typefaces characters in a setting. For extended settings of typefaces graphic designers often use nonsense text (commonly referred to as "
greeking"), such as
lorem ipsum or
Latin text such as the beginning of
Cicero's
in Catilinam. Greeking is used in typography to determine a typefaces "color", or weight and style, and to demonstrate an overall typographic aesthetic prior to actual type setting.
Legal aspects of typefaces
United States law does not permit the
copyrighting of typeface designs, while allowing the
patenting of unusually novel designs. Digital fonts that embody a particular design often become copyrightable as
computer programs. The names of the typefaces can become
trademarked. As a result of these various means of legal protection, sometimes the same typeface exists in multiple names and implementations.
Some elements of the software engines used to display typefaces on computers have
software patents associated with them. In particular,
Apple Computer has patented some of the
hinting algorithms for
TrueType, requiring open-source alternatives such as
FreeType to use different algorithms.
See also
*
Calligraphy
*
Dingbat
*
Expert font
*
Font family (HTML)
*
Font-management program
*
Type foundry Foundries
*
List of typefaces
*
List of typographic features
*
Sans-serif
*
Serif
*
Emphasis (typography) Typographic Emphasis
*
Typography
*
Typographic units
*
HTML
*
Computer font
Organizations
*
Type Directors Club
*
ATypI, Association Typographique Internationale
External links
-
Typophile Wiki, a user-created encyclopedia of all things type and design-related.
-
An outsider's introduction to Fonts A good piece of introduction to nitty-gritties behind Fonts. Also involves mathematical explanations and has a good collection of further references.
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Luc Devroye List about Typography, compiled by Luc Devroye, over 100 hundred different categories.
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WhatTheFont Font recognition system.
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Identifont, Font identifier.
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25 Best License-Free Quality Fonts compiled by Vitaly Friedman.
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Examples of Old English Fonts Good example of Old English Fonts
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Typeface Terminology, a glossary by William Adams
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One Typeface, Many Fonts, by William Adams
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Typo.cz, information on Central-European typography and typesetting
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Diacritics Project, materials for designing a font with accents
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200+ Free Font Sites, Compilation of freeware font sites
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ABC typography - Introduction to the most famous typefaces
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Caligraft :: Computational calligraphy - Other forms of font rendering
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vblank.ch - Comprehensive information about legal protection of fonts as well as trademarks, design and copyright protection
-
Typotheque - Archive of type related articles, fonts, books
Category:Typesetting
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