What’s a Font, Font Family, Typeface, Font-Face?
Image courtesy of Amador Loureiro
Sound knowledge of fonts is a must for any self-publishing writer. In about fifteen or twenty years that may not be as crucial as it is today if and when the communication field makes a wholesale shift to “structured authoring” in which the writers may lose control over how their “content” will be formatted and “presented.”
But as these lines are written, we’re still living in the “unstructured authoring” era when self-publisher book writers not only gather the content but also decide how that content will appear in print, in a PDF file, on-screen, etc. So that’s why they also need to have a good understanding of the fonts and how to use them properly.
Font vs. Font-Family vs. Font-Face vs. Typeface
First, you should be aware that when we commonly refer to a “font” in the daily language we’re usually referring to a “font family.” It is also known as “font-face” or “typeface” (both spelled with and without a hyphen, depending on the author).
A “font-family” or “typeface” includes all letters of a given alphabet in one or more font sizes, all the punctuation marks, all numbers and a selected set of symbols.
For example, “Helvetica,” “Arial,” “Times Roman” are all font families.
Within that “family” there are individual “child” fonts, differing from each other by individual attributes such as “weight,” “style,” “size” etc.
That’s why, technically speaking, “Arial, 12 pt, Italic” is a different font than “Arial, 14 pt, Italic” because they do not have identical attributes (size, in this case). Yet, both still belong to the same “font family,” regardless of their attributes. This is especially true in print documentation.
However, the introduction of computers did change some of these basic definitions. Since size, weight, and style of a font can be changed easily on a computer, the fonts that have different attributes (like weight and size) are referred to these days simply as a “typeface”. For example, “Arial 12 Bold” and “Arial 14 Italic” become “typefaces” in this new on-line design environment.
How to Select Fonts
As a book writer, you should be aware of certain basics about fonts and some basic rules to observe in your documents. The most basic distinction about fonts is whether they have a “serif” or not. That’s why font families are split into two major categories: Serif and Non-Serif fonts.
A serif is a small tail- or wedge-like appendage that extends outward from the end of a letter or symbol. “Times Roman,” for example, is a famous serif font and “Arial” is an equally famous non-serif font.
Letters with serifs. Courtesy of Wikipedia
A non-serif font. Courtesy of Wikipedia
Recommended Rules
1) Select your headlines from NON-SERIF fonts (like Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, Tahoma, Futura, Optima) and your body text from SERIF fonts (like Roman, Times Roman, Times New Roman, Georgia, Bookman). That’s the rule Medium follows.
2) ITALIC is designed to attract attention to itself by virtue of being hard to read. That’s why, in a block of readable text, it makes sense to emphasize a word or a phrase by printing it in Italic.
However, some authors compose a whole page in Italic! That defies the whole purpose of the Italic style.
Every time you use Italic font, be aware that you are making your words harder to read. Thus use it sparingly, like using pepper while cooking.
3) Do not use more than two or a maximum of three typefaces in your technical documents. A profusion of typefaces creates confusion in the reader’s mind. When it comes to fonts, less is always more.
4) Do not assume that all computers have access to every font you have.
All computers, however, come with a set of built-in “system fonts” that are installed automatically by the operating system. The most famous of these system fonts are Arial, Times Roman, and Courier. If you use these three fonts you can rest assured that your document will appear in the receiving end in the same fonts that you have used on your machine.
If, however, you use a hard-to-get fancy font, the reader’s machine will substitute the closest font available to render your document readable.
“Optima” for example may be replaced with “Arial” or “Georgia” replaced with “Times Roman.” Sometimes such substitutions alter the way a page looks, usually for the worse.
Thus, to be safe, stick to the basic “system fonts” when designing a document that you expect to be distributed and read online.
(Copyright-free photo courtesy of Caleb Woods at Unsplash)
