I must have taken a dumb pill this evening. That didn’t clear things up for me one bit.

there was a great post on an aiga mes­sage board a few years ago- http://​www.​aiga.​org/​c​o​n​t​e​n​t​.​c​f​m​/​t​h​e​y​r​e​-​n​o​t​-​fonts
in which some­one said the fol­low­ing:

“a font is a quan­tity, not an entity”

The way I remem­ber it is that refer­ring to, say, Hel­vetica as a nice font is like saying that my wife wore a nice wardrobe on our wed­ding day. I expect equal pun­ish­ment should be meted out in response to either state­ment.

according to living legend Matthew Carter the most beau­ti­ful size of Centaur

Accord­ing to to living legend Sir Matthew Carter the most beau­ti­ful size of every type­face! :)

A col­league of mine uses the term “type font” all the time. It sounds very wrong to me and bugs the hell out of me. Yes, I should get a life but until then does anyone know if the term has any his­tory. Is it right in some way or just plain wrong, as I sus­pect?

Richard, I have never heard or read from any respected typog­ra­pher who uses the word “type font”. Per­haps the term came out of the pho­to­com­pos­i­tor era, maybe picked up in the ’70s and ’80s — like bad archi­tec­ture and fash­ion — and then mer­ci­fully dropped by the major­ity.

This reminds me of an old post on Inspi­ra­tionBit, about when it’s a type­face, when it’s a font:

http://​www.​inspi​ra​tionbit.​com/​w​h​e​n​-​i​s​-​i​t​-​w​r​o​n​g​-​t​o​-​c​a​l​l​-​a​-​t​y​p​e​f​a​c​e​-font/

I like Jon Tan’s expla­na­tion about this:

http://​jon​tan​ger​ine.​com/​l​o​g​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​8​/​t​y​p​e​f​a​c​e​-​-font

There is a nice dis­cus­sion about the issue on Jon Tan’s blog: http://​jon​tan​ger​ine.​com/​l​o​g​/​2​0​0​8​/​0​8​/​t​y​p​e​f​a​c​e​-​-font

Thanks for link­ing to Jon Tan’s entry on the sub­ject; very inter­est­ing expla­na­tion indeed. :)

Jon Tan’s inter­pre­ta­tion seems to be a little dif­fer­ent than this one. He’s says that the type­face is (also?) the type family, and fonts are the indi­vid­ual mem­bers of the typeface/type family. I like your font def­i­n­i­tion better, the font is the car­rier; either metal type, or the soft­ware. Would it be rea­son­able to say that the type family con­sists of all the indi­vid­ual type­faces? For exam­ple: Hel­vetica is the type family, Hel­vetica Bold Italic is the type­face.

David, thanks for link­ing to my post re: font vs. type­face. I too liked Jon Tan’s inter­pre­ta­tion the best.

Yes, you’ve got it, Kevin. Though for clar­ity I try to say “the Hel­vetica family” when refer­ring to the var­i­ous styles and weights.

The dis­tinc­tion between type­face and type family is a clas­sic grey area in type ter­mi­nol­ogy, which I was going address in the next episode of Typog­ra­phy Basics. Basi­cally there are people that say type­face and type family basi­cally mean the same thing, while others insist that a type­face is a single vari­ant or style within a type family. There is no clear con­sen­sus. If you have a little patience it will be rewarded very soon. 8)

Also, I have received a very nice sketch by Peter Bruhn which I will turn into a graph, show­ing visu­ally which is which. I hope that will make it clear for hcab­bos. ;)

“fonte” is the french for “melted”

As I under­stand it, “fondre” is French for “melt” and “fondu” for “melted”.

It’s entirely pos­si­ble that “font” is the result of a non-​French speaker hear­ing “fondre” and inter­pret­ing it as “font”.

As a lin­guaphile as well as a typophile, I think this dis­cus­sion could really use an injec­tion of some­thing that’s pretty well-​established among lin­guists: that is, whether or not it’s nec­es­sary to try to be pre­scrip­tive about the dif­fer­ences in the def­i­n­i­tion of font vs. type­face when it’s in clear con­flict with the descrip­tive real­ity of the sit­u­a­tion.

What I mean to say is whether we as typog­ra­phers like it or not, font has become syn­ony­mous with type­face or type family in the common lex­i­con. And why shouldn’t it? What use is the dis­tinc­tion in most instances? How often do you really need to dis­tin­guish between the face itself and the file that car­ries it? And in the case of the phys­i­cal font set­ting made of the indi­vid­ual lead char­ac­ters, surely that usage is only needed for his­tor­i­cal dis­cus­sions.

The fact is that when some­one refers to a font, you know what they’re talk­ing about. Cor­rect­ing that person and telling them they really mean type­face is likely just a kind of snob­bery, unless there’s a good reason to make the dis­tinc­tion.

Fair enough, but for exam­ple when foundries adver­tize they have that many thou­sand fonts in their library, you mustn’t com­plain there are con­sid­er­ably less type­faces or type fam­i­lies, as every type family con­sists of sev­eral fonts.
It’s not like we’re going to go about cor­rect­ing every­one who may use those terms incor­rectly. I think the least we our­selves as Font­Feed edi­tors can do is use the proper words. That’s why the list are guide­lines for con­trib­u­tors. :)

What use is the dis­tinc­tion in most instances?

Like any trade, type­design­ers and typog­ra­phers use terms that have spe­cific mean­ing. I design a type­face and then i make (or some­one else makes) a font out of that. Those can be two very sep­a­rate activ­i­ties, dif­fer­ent skills, fee struc­tures, processes and even have dif­fer­ent clients. A car­pen­ter and a joiner make dif­fer­ent things from wood, as do mechan­ics or fit­ters from metal.

To me, this dis­tinc­tion is as impor­tant as the dif­fer­ence between wood­wind and brass instru­ments to a tuba player. To the layman it’s all type or music, respec­tively. That is, how­ever, no reason to use fuzzy terms when pre­cise ones exist.

For the record, I knew the dif­fer­ence between the two. It’s just that the quotes ref­er­enced in this post were more elo­quent than help­ful. In con­trast, Tan’s arti­cle was refresh­ing. Thanks to all for post­ing.

Yves, thanks in advance. I’d love to see the graph :)

A type­face is like a work of art, a cre­ation. A font is like this work of art, when it becomes mass pro­duced into prints and gets framed on the wall of peo­ples homes to become named -a paint­ing. I see the names being used by the public inter­changably but maybe a more sophis­ti­cated, edu­cated, art and design savvy indi­vid­ual would use ‘type­face’ instead because this rep­re­sents the cre­ation of the design or the work of art.

It’s really not that dif­fi­cult to keep the two terms clearly defined — font is what you use, and type­face is what you see.

Some­one can design a type­face that might never become a font (in fact, most don’t). A hand-​painted sign might dis­play letter-​forms strik­ingly sim­i­lar to Gara­mond, though no font was used to create the sign.

It can also be argued that the invent­ing of new font tech­nolo­gies (metal to film to vector to out­line and beyond) is an astound­ing engi­neer­ing feat in itself, and not to be con­fused with the cre­ation of new let­ter­forms or glyph sys­tems.

font is what you use, and type­face is what you see.

Bril­liantly con­cise, Nor­bert. Thank you!

I do have a quib­ble with your hand-​painted sign exam­ple, though. I don’t think that qual­i­fies as a type­face either. It’s let­ter­ing. A letter design is a type­face when the intended end result is a font.

I com­pletely agree, Stephen, regard­ing the dif­fer­ence between let­ter­ing and type­face. I was just point­ing out from the viewer’s per­spec­tive that “seeing” let­ter­forms in prac­ti­cal use does not always mean fonts were involved in the pro­duc­tion.

In Norway they use the word font and in Sweden they say typ­snitt (type­face) nomat­ter if you see it or not:-)

Very inter­est­ing Yves, some­thing I’ve never actu­ally thought about before. I like the song & mp3 anal­ogy

These dis­tinc­tions are very nice but nonethe­less it’s not pos­si­ble to impose def­i­n­i­tions like this onto lan­guage. Com­puter users who are not typog­ra­phers already use the word ‘font’ when we might prefer ‘type­face’ – and will no doubt do so more and more in the future.

When I hear some­one say (about let­ter­forms in print, or on the screen) “that’s a nice font” I can under­stand per­fectly clearly what they mean. Which makes me wonder if there is really any point in making this dis­tinc­tion: there are plenty of other things where terms are used with sim­i­lar impre­ci­sion, yet this doesn’t cause us any prob­lems with com­pre­hen­sion.

We (typog­ra­phers) can often come across as pedants when we think we are acting as pro­tec­tors of ‘stan­dards’. To para­phrase the old terrorist/freedom fighter dichotomy, we might even say that ‘one man’s font is another man’s type­face’.

As a graphic designer, I know what most of my clients mean when they use the word “font.” And, seeing as the client is always right (even when they’re wrong), I give them a pass. How­ever, I would expect a vendor in the indus­try to use the term cor­rectly. If I ask a vendor what font they used in a sec­tion of a par­tic­u­lar project, I do not want to hear, “Gara­mond” — I want to hear, “Berthold Gara­mond italic, 12 point.”

The cor­rect hier­ar­chy of typo­graphic ter­mi­nol­ogy, as I learned it, is broken down into the four Fs.

FOUNDRY: The designer and/or man­u­fac­turer of sets of type. Berthold Direct Cor­po­ra­tion is a type foundry.

FAMILY: Related type­faces from the same foundry. Berthold Gara­mond is a type family.

FACE: The style of the type (reg­u­lar, medium, bold, etc.). Berthold Gara­mond reg­u­lar is one type­face while Berthold Gara­mond italic is a dif­fer­ent type­face.

FONT: A type­face at a spe­cific size. Berthold Gara­mond italic, 10 point is one font while Berthold Gara­mond italic, 12 point is a dif­fer­ent font.

Excel­lent arti­cle. Gives me some­thing to think about. Per­son­ally, I use the word… ::hangs head:: …font.

As I know and I think I know this thing well, as I read a lot on this sub­ject, a font comes from the old days of metal type­set­ting, when
all the metal pieces that shared the same char­ac­ter­is­tics: type size,
and type style(roman or italic, light or bold or heavy or black, con­densed or normal or extended), where put toghether by means of having them together for prac­tice. So they formed a FONT. So a font is a type face in spe­cific size and spe­cific type­style!
Jacci Howard Bear is very clear about this:
“Back in the days when all type­faces were made of little pieces of metal that had to be arranged one char­ac­ter at a time in a big tray for use in a print­ing press, the word font referred to one spe­cific style of type in a single size. 12-point Times New Roman and 72-point Times New Roman were two com­pletely dif­fer­ent fonts, one small, one large.”
I am very unhappy that a lot of good authors are ambiguos about this, when a hun­dred years ago or not even so long things very clear.

My def­i­n­i­tion is this: The type or type­face is the design of the let­ters in a font. A font is the sum total col­lec­tion of glyphs hewn in the type’s design and assem­bled in one source, or font. Check the ety­mol­ogy of Font in a decent dic­tio­nary such as the Shorter Oxford Eng­lish Dic­tio­nary, and it turns out the origin of “font” is “source”. So a font is a source of letter or type sorts crafted in accor­dance with a par­tic­u­lar type­face design.

> That is, how­ever, no reason to use fuzzy terms when pre­cise ones exist.

Erik, you have com­pletely ignored the very sound and sen­si­ble rea­son­ing Miles offered, and with­out good reason. Clear def­i­n­i­tions and pre­ci­sion of ref­er­ence are all very well, but rel­e­vance and con­text count too.

Most of the font snobs on this thread seem obliv­i­ous to con­text and rel­e­vance, as if they cannot deal with real­ity and refuse to play with a full deck of unmarked cards, like bad chil­dren.

James, what does rel­e­vance and con­text have to do with what we explain in this post? I don’t see why anyone would be against us Font­Feed authors adher­ing to a cer­tain ter­mi­nol­ogy and explain­ing why, espe­cially since we are in no way forc­ing anyone else to do the same. This post is meant to be edu­ca­tional, not dic­ta­to­r­ial. Call them fonts or glyph sets or alphanu­meric thinga­m­a­gogs or what­ever you feel like for all I care. We cer­tainly won’t lose sleep over it.

And it’s type­face snobs, not font snobs.

Read Miles’ post again. He explains why con­text mat­ters and should be the deter­mi­nant of which term is used, depend­ing on the set­ting. It’s simply common sense.

…what does rel­e­vance and con­text have to do with what we explain in this post?

That is so dis­mis­sive. Once again you’re con­ve­niently trying to limit the range of this dis­cus­sion to this dis­cus­sion thread only. Such a black & white view. A flaw has been found in Erik’s ratio­nale and to cover that up you change the range of the dis­cus­sion topic.

And it’s type­face snobs, not font snobs.

Heh! At least you’ve got a sense of humor.

Rel­e­vance: yes!

That is pre­cisely why I insist on the dif­fer­ence. When some­body calls me a font­de­signer or asks me to design a font, I have to con­tra­dict, as this is not what I do. I design a type­face, and then other people get involved in making this into a font, eg run­ning rou­tines that com­bine flying dia­crit­ics into fully accented char­ac­ters, re-​arranging the char­ac­ter set to allow for dif­fer­ent code pages, apply­ing hints, kern­ing, etc. The result is a font, the car­rier of the type­face I designed. As a client will have to pay for the whole process, it helps if he under­stands it, the ensu­ing time con­straints and tech­ni­cal issues.

I wrote my com­ment not in response to any­body else’s, so I did not intend to con­tra­dict Miles. Having worked in this busi­ness for 40 years now has made me more prag­matic than you can imag­ine. Which does not mean that I do not appre­ci­ate clear def­i­n­i­tions for their own sake.

The one def­i­n­i­tion I make sure my graphic stu­dents get is that type­face is the look of the font - what makes it recog­nis­able - made obvi­ous because we all recog­nise each other by look­ing at each other’s face mainly. I used to strug­gle with the def­i­n­i­tion of font but now I’m clear. I do think it is the deliv­ery of the type­face the designer designed. I agree with erik and appre­ci­ate the work that goes into a well designed type­face. My graphic design stu­dents in their igno­rance think that it’s just the look of the type char­ac­ters alone. I try to set them straight.

Thomas Phin­ney just com­pleted an exten­sive survey on these def­i­n­i­tions. Nice to see there is some gen­eral agree­ment.

Things are gen­er­ally sim­pler than we make them. A font in ancient times [as now] was a vessel made for the hold­ing of liq­uids, the rem­nant of which is to be found in churches. My infor­ma­tion is that the type­face when pro­duced in what­ever mate­r­ial, how­ever small, was kept in a ‘font’ [or water­tight vessel] until required by the printer when the type­face was removed from the appro­pri­ately labelled ‘font’ and placed in what became the print­ers tray. QED

great thread—i really like what erik, and every­one actu­ally, has had to say on the sub­ject. my won­der­ful pro­fes­sor, Dina V. at RISD described it this way: font is the cookie-​cutter, type­face is the cookie. i think of it as font=typewriter key, typeface=what it types. but… back in the OLD days (of metal type)?! let­ter­press is alive and well! it’s not the worst thing in the world to be called a font, er a type­face snob—it implies a pas­sion for one’s craft. con­sider how many people who happen to know a cer­tain soft­ware call them­selves “design­ers” or how many frus­trated mar­ket­ing pro­fes­sion­als wish they could “play”.