Identifying Fonts

Know Your Fonts

Old Style:

A style of serif font developed by Renaissance typographers to replace the Blackletter style of type. Based on ancient Roman inscriptions, Old Style fonts are generally characterized

  Examples:

 

Transitional:

The Antiqua or Old Style of type of the 16th and 17th centuries evolved into a serif typestyle known as trasitional  

   Examples:

Modern:

A style of typeface developed in the late 18th century that continued through much of the 19th century. Characterized by high contrast between thick and thin strokes and flat, hairline serifs, Modern fonts are harder to read than previous and later typestyles developed for text.

    Examples: 

Slab Serif:

A type of serif font that evolved from the Modern style. The serifs are square and larger, bolder than serifs of previous typestyles. Considered a sub-classification of Modern in some type classification systems and its own class in other systems, Slab Serif is further divided into: Clarendon, Typewriter, Slab Serif or Geometrics (a separate sub-category of Slab Serif), Fat Face (a fattened Didone/Modern style).

 Examples:

Sans Serif:

In typography, a sans-serif, sans serif, gothic, san serif or simply sans typeface is one that does not have the small projecting features called "serifs" at the end of strokes. The term comes from the French word sans, meaning "without".

 Examples:

 

Dissecting a Font: 

 

Stroke Weight: 

 The thickness of lines in a font character. The HP LaserJet defines stroke weights from Ultra Thin (-7) to Ultra Black (+7), with Medium, or Text, as normal (0)

 Stress:

The diagonal, vertical, or horizontal thick-to-thin transition in the stroke of a letter  

Small Caps:

Small capitals (usually abbreviated small caps) are uppercase (capital) characters set at the same height and weight as surrounding lowercase (small) letters or text figures.

Lining Figures: 

A modern style of numerals where all figures are of the same height (and typically larger than Old Style Figures in the same font) and rest on the baseline. Some fonts come with both Old Style and Lining Figures.

Non-Aligning Figures:

Also called Old Style figures, are Arabic numerals varying in height and position. Some sit on the baseline while others descend beneath the baseline.

Ligatures:

Two or more letters combined into one character make a ligature. In typography some ligatures represent specific sounds or words such as the AE or æ diphthong ligature. Other ligatures are primarily to make type more attractive on the page such as the fl and fi ligatures.

Type Measurement:

A common unit of measurement in typography. Em is traditionally defined as the width of the uppercase M in the current face and point size. It is more properly defined as simply the current point size. For example, in 12-point type, em is a distance of 12 points. em dash.