"Font family" redirects here. For the HTML attribute, see Font family (HTML).

For the Marvel Comics antihero, see Typeface (comics).

A Specimen of typeset fonts and languages, by William Caslon, letter founder; from the 1728 Cyclopaedia.

In typography, a typeface is a set of one or more fonts, in one or more sizes, designed with
stylistic unity, each comprising a coordinated set of glyphs. A typeface usually comprises
an alphabet of letters, numerals, and punctuation marks; it may also
include ideograms and symbols, or consist entirely of them, for example,mathematical or map-
making symbols.

The term typeface is frequently conflated with font; the two terms had more clearly differentiated
meanings before the advent of desktop publishing. The distinction between font and typeface is
that a font designates a specific member of a type family such as roman, boldface, or italic type,
while typeface designates a consistent visual appearance or style which can be a "family" or
related set of fonts. For example, a given typeface such as Arial may include roman, bold, and
italic fonts.[1] In the metal type era, a font also meant a specific point size, but with digital scalable
outline fonts this distinction is no longer valid, as a single font may be scaled to any size.

The art and craft of designing typefaces is called type design. Designers of typefaces are
called type designers, and often typographers. In digital typography, type designers are also
known as font developers or font designers.
The size of typefaces and fonts is traditionally measured in points;[2] point has been defined
differently at different times, but now the most popular is the Desktop Publishing point of 1⁄72 in
(0.0139 in/0.35 mm). When specified in typographic sizes (points, kyus), the height of an em-
square, an invisible box which is typically a bit larger than the distance from the
tallest ascender to the lowest descender, is scaled to equal the specified size.[3] For example,
when setting Helvetica at 12 point, the em square defined in the Helvetica font is scaled to 12
points or 1⁄6 in (0.17 in/4.3 mm). Yet no particular element of 12-point Helvetica need measure
exactly 12 points.

Frequently measurement in non-typographic units (feet, inches, meters) will be of the cap-height,
the height of the capital letters. Font size is also commonly measured in millimeters (mm) and qs
(a quarter of a millimeter, kyu in romanized Japanese) and inches.

Contents
[hide]

• 1 Terminology

• 2 History

• 3 Digital type

• 4 Typeface anatomy

o 4.1 Serifs

o 4.2 Proportion

o 4.3 Font metrics

• 5 Types of typefaces

o 5.1 Roman typefaces

 5.1.1 Serif typefaces

 5.1.2 Sans serif typefaces

 5.1.3 Script typefaces

 5.1.4 Ornamental typefaces

 5.1.4.1 Mimicry typefaces

o 5.2 Blackletter typefaces

o 5.3 Gaelic typefaces

o 5.4 Monospaced typefaces

o 5.5 Symbol typefaces

• 6 Display type

• 7 Texts used to demonstrate typefaces

 • 8 Legal aspects

• 9 See also

• 10 References

• 11 Further reading

• 12 External links

[edit]Terminology

In professional typography, the term typeface is not interchangeable with the word font, which
was historically defined as a given alphabet and its associated characters in a single size. For
example, 8-point Caslon Italic was one font, and 10-point Caslon Italic was another. Historically,
fonts came in specific sizes determining the size of characters, and in quantities of sorts or
number of each letter provided. The design of characters in a font took into account all these
factors.

As the range of typeface designs increased and requirements of publishers broadened over the
centuries, fonts of specific weight (blackness or lightness) and stylistic variants (most
commonly regular or roman as distinct to italic, as well as condensed) have led to font families,
collections of closely related typeface designs that can include hundreds of styles. A font family is
typically a group of related fonts which vary only in weight, orientation, width, etc., but not design.
For example, Times is a font family, whereas Times Roman, Times Italic and Times Bold are
individual fonts making up the Times family. Font families typically include several fonts, though
some, such as Helvetica, may consist of dozens of fonts.

The first "extended" font families, which included a wide range of widths and weights in the same
general style emerged in the early 1900s, starting with ATF's Cheltenham (1902–1913), with an
initial design by Bertram Grosvenor Goodhue, and many additional faces designed byMorris
Fuller Benton.[4] Later examples include Futura, Lucida, ITC Officina. Some became superfamilies
as a result of revival, such asLinotype Syntax, Linotype Univers; while others have alternate
styling designed as compatible replacements of each other, such as Compatil,Generis.

Typeface superfamilies began to emerge when foundries began to include typefaces with
significant structural differences, but some design relationship, under the same general family
name. Arguably the first superfamily was created when Morris Fuller Benton created Clearface
Gothic for ATF in 1910, a sans serif companion to the existing (serifed) Clearface. The
superfamily label does not include quite different designs given the same family name for what
would seem to be purely marketing, rather than design, considerations: Caslon
Antique, FuturaBlack and Futura Display are structurally unrelated to the Caslon and Futura
families, respectively, and are generally not considered part of those families by typographers,
despite their names.

Additional or supplemental glyphs intended to match a main typeface have been in use for
centuries. In some formats they have been marketed as separate fonts. In the early 1990s,
the Adobe Systems type group introduced the idea of expert set fonts, which had a standardized
set of additional glyphs, including small caps, old style figures, and additional superior
letters, fractions and ligatures not found in the main fonts for the typeface. Supplemental fonts
have also included alternate letters such as swashes, dingbats, and alternate character sets,
complementing the regular fonts under the same family.[5] However, with introduction of font
formats such as OpenType, those supplemental glyphs were merged into the main fonts, relying
on specific software capabilities to access the alternate glyphs.

Since Apple's and Microsoft's operating systems supported different character sets in the platform
related fonts, some foundries used expert fonts in a different way. These fonts included the
characters which were missing on either Macintosh or Windows computers, e.g. fractions,
ligatures or some accented glyphs. The goal was to deliver the whole character set to the
customer regardless of which operating system was used.

[edit]History

Main article: History of Western typography

Type foundries have cast fonts in lead alloys from the 1450s until the present,
although wood served as the material for some large fonts called wood type during the 19th
century, particularly in the United States. In the 1890s the mechanization of typesetting allowed
automated casting of fonts on the fly as lines of type in the size and length needed. This was
known as continuous casting, and remained profitable and widespread until its demise in the
1970s. The first machine of this type was the Linotype machine, invented by Ottmar
Mergenthaler.

During a brief transitional period (c. 1950s – 1990s), photographic technology, known
as phototypesetting, utilized tiny high-resolution images of individual glyphs on a film strip (in the
form of a film negative, with the letters as clear areas on an opaque black background). A high-
intensity light source behind the film strip projected the image of each glyph through an optical
system, which focused the desired letter onto the light-sensitive phototypesetting paper at a
specific size and position. This photographic typesetting process permitted optical scaling,
allowing designers to 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 encountered in the printing stage. Manually operated
photocomposition systems using fonts on filmstrips allowed fine kerning between letters without
the physical effort of manual typesetting, and spawned an enlarged type design industry in the
1960s and 1970s.

The mid-1970s saw all of the major typeface technologies and all their fonts in use: letterpress,
continuous casting machines, 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 grown, users have almost universally adopted the American
spelling font, which nowadays nearly always means a computer file containing scalable outline
letterforms (digital font), in one of several common formats. Some typefaces, such as Verdana,
are designed primarily for use on computer screens.

[edit]Digital type
Main article: Computer font

Digital fonts store the image of each character either as a bitmap in a bitmap font, or by
mathematical description of lines and curves in anoutline font, also called a vector font. When an
outline font is used, a rasterizing routine (in the application software, operating system or printer)
renders the character outlines, interpreting the vector instructions to decide which pixels should
be black and which ones white. Rasterization is straightforward at high resolutions such as those
used by laser printers and in high-end publishing systems. For computer screens, where each
individual pixel can mean the difference between legible and illegible characters, some digital
fonts use hinting algorithms to make readable bitmaps at small sizes.

Digital fonts may also contain data representing the metrics used for composition, including
kerning pairs, component creation data for accented characters, glyph substitution rules for
Arabic typography and for connecting script faces, and for simple everyday ligatures like fl.
Common font formats include TrueType, OpenType and PostScript Type 1, while METAFONT is
still used by TeX and its variants. Applications using these font formats, including the rasterizers,
appear in Microsoft and Apple Computer operating systems, Adobe Systemsproducts and those
of several other companies. Digital fonts are created with font editors such
as FontForge, Fontlab's TypeTool, FontLab Studio, Fontographer, or AsiaFont Studio.

[edit]Typeface anatomy
Main article: Typeface anatomy

Typographers have developed a comprehensive vocabulary for describing the many aspects of
typefaces and typography. Some vocabulary applies only to a subset of all scripts. Serifs, for
example, are a purely decorative characteristic of typefaces used for European scripts, whereas
the glyphs used in Arabic or East Asian scripts have characteristics (such as stroke width) that
may be similar in some respects but cannot reasonably be called serifs and may not be purely
decorative.

[edit]Serifs
Sans serif font
Typefaces can be divided into two main
categories: serif and sans
Serif font
serif. Serifscomprise the small features
at the end of strokes within letters. The Serif font with serifs
printing industry refers to typeface highlighted in red
without serifs as sans serif (from
French sans, meaning without), or as grotesque (or, in German, grotesk).

Great variety exists among both serif and sans serif typefaces. 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 is only one of many factors to consider when choosing a
typeface.

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 typefaces, 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 web sites that do
specify a font, most use modern sans serif fonts, 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 the
low-resolution computer screen.

[edit]Proportion

A proportional typeface contains glyphs of varying widths, while amonospaced (non-

proportional or fixed-width) typeface uses a single standard width for all glyphs in the font.

Most people generally find proportional typefaces 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 (tabular) figures so that
columns of numbers stay aligned.

Monospaced typefaces function better for some purposes because their glyphs line up in neat,
regular columns. No glyph is given any more weight than another. Most manually-
operated typewriters and text-only computer displays use monospaced fonts. Most computer
programs which have a text-based interface (terminal emulators, for example) use only
monospaced fonts (or add additional spacing to proportional fonts to fit them in monospaced
cells) in their configuration. Monospaced fonts are commonly used by computer programmers for
displaying and editing source code so that certain characters (for example parentheses used to
group arithmetic expressions) are easy to see.[6]Monospaced fonts may also come as a benefit to
machines doing automatic recognition of text (cf. Optical Character Recognition).

ASCII art usually requires a monospaced font for proper viewing, with the exception of Shift JIS
art which takes advantage of the proportional characters in the MS PGothic font.. In a web page,
the <tt> </tt>, <code> </code> or <pre> </pre> HTML tags most commonly specify
monospaced fonts. In LaTeX, the verbatim environment or the teletype font family
(e.g., \texttt{...} or {\ttfamily ...}) uses monospaced fonts (in TeX,
use {\tt ...}).

Any two lines of text with the same number of characters in each line in a monospaced typeface
should display as equal in width, while the same two lines in a proportional typeface may have
radically different widths. This occurs because in a proportional font, glyph widths vary, such that
wider glyphs (typically those for characters such as W, Q, Z, M, D, O, H, and U) use more space,
and narrower glyphs (such as those for the characters i, t, l, and 1) use less space than the
average.

In the publishing industry, it was once the case that editors read manuscripts in monospaced
fonts (typically Courier) for ease of editing and word count estimates, and it was considered
discourteous to submit a manuscript in a proportional font. This has become less universal in
recent years, such that authors need to check with editors as to their preference, though
monospaced fonts are still the norm.

[edit]Font metrics
The word Sphinx, set in Adobe Caslon Pro to illustrate the concepts of baseline,x-height, body size, descent and
ascent.
See also: Typographic unit and Metric typographic units

Most 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, Greek and Cyrillic (sometimes collectively referred to as LGC) scripts, one can refer
to the distance from the baseline to the top of regular lowercase glyphs (mean line) as the x-
height, and the part of a glyph rising above the x-height as the ascender. The distance from the
baseline to the top of the ascent or a regular uppercase glyphs (cap line) is also known as the
cap height.[7] 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 or cap height often serves to
characterize typefaces.

Typefaces with the same metrics (i.e., with the same glyph dimensions) are said to be "metric-
compatible", that is, they can be substituted for one another in a document without changing the
document's text flow. Several typefaces have been created to be metric-compatible with widely
used proprietary typefaces to allow the editing of documents set in such typefaces in digital
typesetting environments where these typefaces are not available.[8] For instance, the open
source Liberation fonts have been designed as metric-compatible substitutes for widely
used Microsoft fonts.

[edit]Types of typefaces
Illustration of different font types and the names of specific specimens

Because an abundance of typefaces have been created over the centuries, they are commonly
categorized according to their appearance. At the highest level (in the context of Latin-script
fonts), one can differentiate Roman, Blackletter, and Gaelic types. Roman types are in the most
widespread use today, and are sub-classified as serif, sans serif, ornamental, and script types.
Historically, the first European fonts were blackletter, followed by Roman serif, then sans serif
and then the other types. The use of Gaelic faces was restricted to the Irish language, though
these form a unique if minority class. Typefaces may be monospaced regardless of whether they
are Roman, Blackletter, or Gaelic. Symbol typefaces are non-alphabetic. The Cyrillic script comes
in two varieties, Roman type (called гражданкий шрифт graždankij šrift) and traditional Slavonic
type (called славянский шрифтslavjanskij šrift).

[edit]Roman typefaces
[edit]Serif typefaces
Main article: Serif

Serif, or Roman, typefaces are named for the features at the ends of their strokes. Times
Roman andGaramond are common examples of serif typefaces. Serif fonts are probably the most
used class in printed materials, including most books, newspapers and magazines. Serif fonts are
often classified into three subcategories: Old Style,Transitional, and Modern. Old Style
typefaces are influenced by early Italian lettering design.[9] Though some argument exists as to
whether Transitional fonts exist as a discrete category among serif fonts, Transitional fonts lie
somewhere between Old Style and Modern style typefaces. Transitional fonts exhibit a marked
increase in the variation of stroke weight and a more horizontal serif compared to Old Style, but
not as extreme as Modern. Lastly, Modern fonts often exhibit a bracketed serif and a substantial
difference in weight within the strokes.

Sample text in Baskerville font

Examples of these are Times, New Baskerville, and Bodoni, respectively.

Roman, italic, and oblique are also terms used to differentiate between upright and italicized
variations of a typeface. The difference between italic and oblique is that the term italic usually
applies to serif faces, where the letter forms are redesigned.[10]
[edit]Sans serif typefaces
Main article: Sans serif

Sans serif (lit. without serif) designs appeared relatively recently in the history of type design. The
evolution of the sans serif font very likely stemmed from the slab serif font. The earliest slab serif
font, Antique, later renamed Egyptian, designed in 1815 by the English typefounder Vincent
Figgins[11] was succeeded one year later by the first sans serif font, created by William Caslon IV.
The evidence of this is clearly shown in the uniform strokes in the letter forms. Sans serif fonts
are commonly but not exclusively used for display typography such as signage, headings, and
other situations demanding legibility above high readability. The text on electronic media offers an
exception to print: most web pages and digitized media are laid out in sans serif typefaces
because serifs often detract from readability at the low resolution ofdisplays.[citation needed]

A well-known and popular sans serif font is Max Miedinger's Helvetica, popularized for desktop
publishing by inclusion with Apple Computer's LaserWriter laserprinter and having been one of
the first readily available digital typefaces. Arial, popularized by Microsoft, is a widely used sans
serif font that is often compared to and substituted for Helvetica. Other fonts such as Futura, Gill
Sans, Univers and Frutiger have also remained popular over many decades.
[edit]Script typefaces
Main article: Script (typefaces)

Script typefaces 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 typefaces; they
are typically used for logos or invitations. Examples include Coronet and Zapfino.
[edit]Ornamental typefaces
Ornamental (also known as novelty or sometimes display) typefaces 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. See below for the historical definition of display typeface.

[edit]Mimicry typefaces

Simulated Hebrew.

A group of decorative typefaces, sometimes called simulation typefaces, have been designed that
represent the characters of the Roman alphabet but evoke another writing system. This group
includes typefaces designed to appear as Arabic, Chinese characters, Cyrillic, Indic
scripts,Greek, Hebrew, Kana, or Thai. These are used largely for the purpose of novelty to make
something appear foreign.

[edit]Blackletter typefaces
Main article: Blackletter

Blackletter fonts, the earliest typefaces 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, schwabacher, and fraktur.

[edit]Gaelic typefaces
Main article: Gaelic type

Gaelic fonts were first used for the Irish language in 1571, and were used regularly for Irish until
the early 1960s, though they continue to enjoy use in display type and type for signage, being
perceived in Ireland as having cultural value. Their use was effectively confined to Ireland, though
Gaelic typefaces were designed and produced in France, Belgium, and Italy. Gaelic typefaces
make use of insularletterforms, and early fonts made use of a variety of abbreviations deriving
from the manuscript tradition. Early fonts used for the Anglo-Saxon language, also using insular
letterforms, can be classified as Gaelic typefaces, distinct from Roman or Antiqua typefaces.[12]
[13]
Various forms exist, including manuscript, traditional, and modern styles, chiefly distinguished
as having angular or uncial features.[14]

[edit]Monospaced typefaces
Main article: Monospaced font
Monospaced fonts are typefaces in which every glyph is the same width (as opposed to variable-
width fonts, where 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 emulation, and for laying out tabulated
data in plain text documents. Examples of monospaced typefaces are Courier, Prestige
Elite, Fixedsys, and Monaco. There exist Roman, Blackletter, and Gaelic monospaced typefaces.

[edit]Symbol typefaces
Main article: Dingbat

Symbol, or Dingbat, typefaces 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, and Wingdings.

[edit]Display type
Display type refers to the use of type at large sizes, perhaps 30 points or larger. Some typefaces
are considered useful solely at display sizes, and hence are known as display faces. For
typefaces used across a wide range of sizes, in the days of metal type, each size was cut
individually, or even if pantographically scaled would often have adjustments made to the design
for larger or smaller sizes, making a "display" face have distinct differences.

In metal type, if present in smaller sizes, ink traps (small indentations at the junctions of letter
strokes) would be eliminated at display sizes. In smaller point sizes, these ink traps were
intended to fill up when the letterpress was over-inked, providing some latitude in press operation
while maintaining the intended appearance of the type design. At larger sizes, these ink traps
were not necessary, so display faces did not have them. Today's digital typefaces are most often
used for offset lithography, electrophotographic printing or other processes that are not subject to
the ink supply variations of letterpress, so ink traps have largely disappeared from use.

When digital fonts feature a display variation, it is to accommodate other stylistic differences that
may benefit type used at larger point sizes. Such differences, which were standard in metal type,
are rare in digital type, outside of the very high end of type design. They can include: a lower x-
height, higher contrast between thick and thin strokes, less space between letters, and slightly
more condensed letter shapes.[15]

Decades into the desktop publishing revolution, few typographers with metal foundry type
experience are still working, and few digital typefaces are optimized specifically for different sizes,
so the misuse of the term display typeface as a synonym for ornamental type has become
widespread; properly speaking, ornamental typefaces are a subcategory of display typefaces.

[edit]Texts used to demonstrate typefaces

A sentence that uses all of the alphabet (a pangram), such as "The quick brown fox jumps over
the lazy dog", is often used as a design aesthetic tool to demonstrate the personality of a
typeface's characters in a setting (because it displays all the letters of the alphabet). For extended
settings of typefaces graphic designers often use nonsense text (commonly referred to
as greeking), such as lorem ipsum or Latintext such as the beginning of Cicero's In Catilinam.
Greeking is used in typography to determine a typeface's colour, or weight and style, and to
demonstrate an overall typographic aesthetic prior to actual type setting.

[edit]Legal aspects
The examples and perspective in this article deal primarily with the United
States and do not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve
this article and discuss the issue on the talk page. (June 2010)
Main article: Patent and copyright protection of fonts

Under United States law, typeface designs are not subject to copyright. However, novel and non-
obvious typeface designs are subject to protection by design patents. Digital fonts that embody a
particular design are often subject to copyright 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 fonts on computers have software
patents associated with them. In particular, Apple Inc. has patented some of
the hinting algorithms for TrueType, requiring open source alternatives such as FreeType to use
different algorithms.

Although typeface design is not subject to copyright in the United States under the 1976
Copyright Act, the United States District Court for the Northern District of California in Adobe
Systems, Inc. v. Southern Software, Inc. (No. C95-20710 RMW, N.D. Cal. January 30, 1998)
[16]
found that there was original authorship in the placement of points on a computer font's outline;
i.e., because a given outline can be expressed in myriad ways, a particular selection and
placement of points has sufficient originality to qualify for copyright.

Many western countries extend copyright protection to typeface designs.[citation needed] However, this
has no impact on protection in the United States, because all of the major copyright treaties and
agreements to which the U.S. is a party (such as the Berne Convention, theWIPO Copyright
Treaty, and TRIPS) operate under the principle of national treatment, under which a country is
obligated to provide no greater or lesser protection to works from other countries than it provides
to domestically produced works.