A font is the design of letters and contains their style details.

When you buy a font online you are buying a digital file that you must install on your computer. You can see it best as a small piece of software that will tell you how the letters should look and print.

A lot of times you will an offering a complete family! Sounds great, but what is it? When you are using regular fonts such as Myriad on your computer, you are actually using a font family. If you type in Microsoft Word some text you can easily change it into:

• Italic

• Bold

• Bold Italic

All these variations are different fonts and together they make up a font family.

There are five basic classifications of typefaces: serif, sans serif, script, monospaced, and display.

Serif typefaces include a slight projection finishing off the strokes of its letterforms (called serifs).

Examples: Times, Palatino, Slab Serif, Bodoni, Typewriter

Sans serif (sans means without) typefaced do not include any projections at the end of the strokes of its letterforms.

Examples: Helvetica, Myriad, Arial, Open Sans

Script typefaces are based on the fluid strokes of handwriting, and can range from formal to very casual. They are suitable for display use.

Types of Script Typefaces:

• Formal (Flowing loops and flourishes)

• Casual (brush like appearance)

• Calligraphic (Emulates hand-lettering)

• Blackletter (Formal, strong contrast strokes)

• Handwriting (Casual, mimics modern handwriting)

Monospaced typefaces are non-proportional...every letter takes up the same amount of horizontal space on the page or screen. There are serif and sans serif varieties.

Example: Courier New

Display typefaces vary widely in their appearance, and include both practical and novelty fonts suitable for headlines and titles.

There are a few ways to measure and specify the size of type, depending on where it’s being used and viewed.

Point and Pica are common measures of unit for typography.

Alignment refers to the positioning of text within the page, whether print or digital. Unjustified alignment styles include flush left, flush right, centered; justified alignment refers to a block text that’s been spaced to align along both left and right margins.

At the sentence level, spacing gets more detailed. The placement of words and individual characters can affect legibility, syntax, and overall clarity to the text and the reader experience.

Beware! There are sites imitating dafont!