Comments on: When Is It Wrong To Call A Typeface Font

By: Links do dia « Designlab

Links do dia « Designlab — Sun, 19 Oct 2008 07:01:27 +0000

[...] http://www.inspirationbit.com/.....face-font/ [...]

By: Vivien

Vivien — Wed, 02 Jul 2008 19:42:55 +0000

Thanks for your clarification, Matt. But I think that since we now live in a digital world, my distinction between typeface and font is not that misleading. And I did specify that “Font is the variation of type in styles (bold, italic) and sizes (12pt, 1in).”
Also some typefaces don’t have a “set of fonts”, and contain only one type.

By: Matt

Matt — Mon, 30 Jun 2008 16:20:31 +0000

I have to say that your distinction between typeface and font is a little misleading. You suggest that font is the digital representation of a typeface, as i’m sure you know the terms typeface and font are rather older than the digital age and both have their etymology in the physical world of the typesetter and printer.

Typeface is the collective title for a set of fonts, a font being a specific size and weight. For example Arial is the typeface and Arial 14px bold is the font. To say that Arial is a font is technically incorrect; to say that Times New Roman at 10pt is a font would be correct.

Having said that, the modern use of both words has become interchangeable and only typographic sticklers would get upset by misuse.

By: 13 typefaces every graphic designer needs :: David Airey :: Graphic Designer

13 typefaces every graphic designer needs :: David Airey :: Graphic Designer — Wed, 24 Oct 2007 23:11:18 +0000

[...] When is it wrong to call a typeface a font? [...]

By: Vivien

Vivien — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 06:02:39 +0000

Yes, Ronald, apparently URL is deprecated now, so you better start teaching your colleagues about URI :-)

Simonne, I know what you mean. There are so many brand names that became part of our vocabulary, it’s not even funny. Sometimes my husband doesn’t understand when I say I need a tissue, but he reacts right away when I ask for a Kleenex :-)

Jen, welcome to Inspiration Bit. Feel free to ask me any questions you have about computers. Don’t be afraid of them. Computers have no brains, they are nothing without people/programmers.

By: Jen

Jen — Sat, 16 Jun 2007 04:27:24 +0000

Holy cow there is so much I don’t know about computers it’s scary. Great post, I will have to print the thing out as a reference.

I miss typewriters.

By: Simonne

Simonne — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 09:55:46 +0000

This is useful, I did not know about some of these confusions. This is funny: as a non-native English speaker, I sometimes learn by deduction, and if many people mistake the sense of a word, I may take that for granted, because I don’t have the time to check everything with a dictionary.
However, there are situations in which it is better to intentionally use some words in a mistaken way, in order to make yourself understood very fast. This is an example: I once asked a friend to play the secretary for me, in a big project which supposed that she received a lot of calls from people asking for instructions on how to subscribe to a program. Those people needed to send us a copy of some documents. I told my friend to instruct callers to send us xerox copies. She said it is not correct and she’s not going to do that, because it’s so wrong. I said OK. After the first ten calls, she realized I was right: absolutely all those people asked her if that copy needed to be a xerox one!!! For the sake of efficiency, we had to misuse words.

By: Ronald Huereca

Ronald Huereca — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 23:57:26 +0000

URL is deprecated? Great. Just when the people at work are finally figuring out what URL actually is. :)

I’m with Lauren when people will say, what’s wrong with your Internet. Uhm… Nothing, Internet is fine — it’s my connection that’s slow.

By: Vivien

Vivien — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 22:02:39 +0000

Yes, I also read about the font being comprised from all characters, symbols, etc. Although it is a bit confusing – somebody must design/sketch/create those symbols as well, right? so if Typographers create those symbols, why don’t make them to be a part of a typeface?

Regarding URL vs URI – thanks for the reminder – another big confusion. As it turns out URL is a part of URI, and officially URL is a deprecated term now, so we should use URI, although I rarely hear anyone using it. There was an interesting article about URL vs. URI

Internet vs. ISP – so true. I meant to write about it as well, but then forgot :-)
How many times I had clients calling me and complaining about their email or internet connection being down. Note, that I’m not their ISP, all I did is helped them with their hosting set up and designed their websites. Huh…

Thanks for adding to the list of confusing terms, Lauren.

By: LaurenMarie

LaurenMarie — Wed, 13 Jun 2007 21:24:02 +0000

In my Typographic Workbook, it says font also includes "the upper- and lowercase alphabet, all the symbols, monetary symbols, numerals, punctuation, fractions, mathematical symbols, ligatures, dingbats, superior and inferior characters, small caps and accentuated characters that are necessary for typesetting... The word font includes much more than the term typeface." Phew! It also says "Typefaces are only composed of the letters and sometimes the numbers. A Typeface is much smaller than a font." It didn't say anything about the difference between digital and printed, though. Web v. Internet and Tag v. Attribute - I know those, but I still use them interchangeably! Now what we really should be calling it is the Galactic Network Interweb. Very Web 3.0, is it not? Java v. JavaScript I know and don't swap, but I didn't know that JS was developed by Netscape! Disc v. Disk. Disc = optical storage media (CD, DVD). Disk = magnetic storage media (Hard Drive). Let's also add Internet v. ISP. I'm sure you've heard it before, "The Internet is down again." No, no, your connection is down. URL v. URI. I don't know the difference. I've tried to understand it but my resources must not be very good.