About Fonts
For those people who aren’t familiar with fonts. They are simple a design for the alphabet that is a combination of typeface and other qualities such as size, pitch and spacing. There are probably over 1000 of fonts and sizes ranging from 8 to 72. You can take a look at these fonts by opening up your word document and clicking on the window that says Times Roman and next to that window will be a number that is the size of the font. You can choose any style and any size you wish. There is a style and size for any occasion. Some examples of fonts could be Arial, Times Roman and Gautami. You can also underline, bold or italicize your fonts. You can change the color of the font as well.
When you are using a Laser, Ink Jet or the old fashioned Dot matrix printer they offer a wide selection of fonts. These types of printers support different sets of what is called resident fonts but you can also add more fonts if you need to. There is software available if you are looking for the ultimate list of fonts. Some of the fonts include ideograms and symbols this style of font is called Wingdings. There are digital fonts that actually keep the image of each character either as a bitmap or a bitmap font or it stores by mathematical description of lines and curves called a vector font.
The proportional typeface shows glyphs from using different widths. A non proportional or fixed width or monospaced typeface that uses fixed glyphs width. The majority of people prefer proportional fonts easier to read and cleaner looking as well. Monospaced fonts are also nice looking and they line up neat and easy to read as well. An example of monospaced fonts is the type of fonts that used to be produced from the good old fashioned typewriter.
San Serif Fonts
One of the most commonly used fonts is from the Sans- Serif typefaces. These are fonts that do not have any small features called serifs at the end of the stroke. This type of font is generally used in headline making than in a body text. Though you will see in many occasions that the sans serif is featured in body text all depending on the website content. This type of font is said to be very popular in Europe in general. But in most cases the sans serif style of font is used in the standard body on a computer screen because the online screens or monitors show a much cleaner and clearer display of sans serif fonts rather than in serif fonts.
There are four different classes of the sans serif designs. The first one is called the Grotesque which is an early design of typeface. Royal Gothic font style is a great example. The Transitional or Neo-Grotesque is a modern contemporary design of typeface. This style is the most popular in the san serif classes. The Standard, Helvetica and Univers are the most common. This style of font is very plain looking almost a generic look.
 An example of a San Serif font |
The Humanist classes of font are a bit more styled after Calligraphy. The most common styles of the humanist class fonts are Johnston, Gill Sans, Frutuiger and Optima. These fonts are clean and legible they are said to be the most readable fonts out of all of them. The Geometric class of fonts includes Avant Garde, Century, Gothic, Futura, Gotham or Spartan. These letters are a geometric style that is a thicker style typeface than the others. This style is clean, clear and very easy to read. The geometric design is perfect.
The other most commonly used sans serif fonts are MS Sans Serif, Tahoma, Verdana, Lucinda Sans and Franklin Gothic. Any of these styles of fonts are clear and legible but they also translate great being bold or italicized. The only downside in using the Sans Serif of Arial is that the capital I and the lowercase L are exactly the same. But you can obviously tell what the word should be because of the other letters. It is a distraction rather than a problem.
Serif Fonts
The Serif fonts have basically a non structural detail at the end of the keystroke that produces the letters and symbols. The serif fonts are also called seriffed fonts. Modern serif fonts first came about in the late part of the 18th century. They are classified by a very different contrast that goes between thin and thick lines. The modern style fonts have a vertical stress with very straight and thin lines with hardly any brackets. The most common style of modern serif fonts are Bodoni, Century School book or Computer Modern.
 An example of a Serif font |
Another style of serif fonts is called slab fonts; this style of font is a bit different it is also called the Egyptian font, once to you see it that will be what you think of. The ends of the letters tend to have straight style flair. The lines are thicker and they do not have brackets. The slab serif has bold, rectangular letters and they have been called sans serif with serifs. The most common style of fonts are Claredon, Rockwell and Courier. This style of writing dates back to the late 1800’s.
The Transitional serif font was first produced in the middle of the 18th century. The most common types are Times Roman and Baskerville. These two fonts are a cross between modern and old style. They have thicker lines to them but they appear to be less dramatic. Old style serif consists of Venetian, Garamond, Bembo, Goudy Old Style and Palatino. These letters have angles stressing of old style and they command a diagonal lock but when they are combined with bracket serifs they create a detailed more positive word picture for easier reading. No matter what style of font you choose there is a style for everything from birthday cards to friendly letters to contracts and proposals the possibilities are endless.
