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typeface guide
 

ont & typefaces are beautiful and powerful. They have the capacity to enhance or diminish your written words, by the mood they set.

First, let's clear up the difference between fonts and typefaces:

A font is a complete set of characters in a particular size, weight and style of type. Times Roman 12 is one font, Times Roman 12 Bold is another font.

A typeface contains a series of fonts. For instance, Optima Bold, Optima Italic, and Optima Roman are actually 3 fonts (even though people often refer to one entire font family as a "font.")

The next important area is to learn the difference between serif and sans-serif fonts. Serif fonts have little feet at the end of a stroke, and, of course, sans (without) -serif fonts do not.

There are also script or fancy fonts (typefaces). These are excellent for a special effect, but should be used sparingly as they are difficult to read.

Both of these typefaces make an interesting impression, but as you can see, are difficult to read and their use should be limited.

Which brings us to legibility and readability--

  • Legibility is related to the speed and easy with which each letter combination can be recognized.
  • Readability is related to how the type is arranged on a page, the spacing between columns, and other aspects of page design that assist in rendering reading the page effortless.

Using interesting typefaces in your document is easy and fun. After you have written what you want to say, and you have proof read it. choose a typeface that matches the mood of your publication. Try to use different typefaces for the headline and the body.

In print publications it is common and advisable use a sans-serif font for the headline and a serif font for the body text. However, if we are writing for the web, we should try to avoid serif fonts as they tend to be difficult to read on a monitor.

However, with print publications, the serifs in the body text draw our eyes across the page making it easier to read. You can test this - cut and paste this text into a document processing program, e.g., Word or WordPerfect, and change the font. Read this text. Change the font and read again. (In fact, you may wish to test other things, margin size, text color).