Understanding Families, Faces, and Fonts

One of the first things you want to understand when working with typography are the concepts of families, faces, and fonts. This document provides some extra explanations about these items beyond what a basic glossary might provide.

Definitions

Family
A family is a high level typographical classification.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Font_family_(HTML)

TypeFace (Face)
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Typeface

Font
A font is a particular implementation of a typeface. Whereas Courier is a typeface, 12 point bold Courier is a font. There is no precise definition of a font, as different systems define things in different ways. For example, some systems see font underlining as being a unique part of a font, whereas other systems see underlining as merely a decoration on an existing font.

TrueType

How do .ttf (TrueType Font) files fit into this?

Examples

Hierarchy tree


            ////////////////////////////////////////
            // Here is an example of the font heirarchy, so that we can understand how the
            // the data structures below are layed out. We assume here that a face and family
            // are equivalent, whereas strictly speaking this isn't so in the conventions of
            // typography.
            //
            // Arial
            //    Arial.ttf
            //       normal
            //          7 pt
            //          9 pt
            //    ArialBold.ttf
            //       bold
            //          4 pt
            //          5 pt
            //    ArialItalic.ttf
            //       italic
            //          5 pt
            //          8 pt
            // Courier
            //    CourierMultiple.ttf        (note that this .ttf file has multiple font types within it)
            //       bold
            //          8 pt
            //          9 pt
            //       italic
            //          8 pt
            //          9 pt
            ////////////////////////////////////////



End of document