introduction
Disagreement about typography has been rumbling since
Gutenberg and flares
periodically with the introduction of new technologies
such as the rotary press or the internet. Much of that
disagreement has the fervour of religious conflict, given
subjective judgements about aesthetics, the ambiguity
of many of the empirical studies and the ignorance of
many participants.
As a starting point it is useful to consider basic terminology,
although that has blurred with the emergence of 'born
digital' fonts.
In the epoch when printed text was produced using ink
on metal letters type was a generic term
for those letters.
A typeface - such as Times New Roman
or Helvetica - was a particular family of type, distinguished
by a unique design and often created by a master craftsman
such as William Caslon or Frederick Goudy.
A font (sometimes known as fount) was
initially a collection of characters of a specific size
within a specific typeface, eg capitals, small capitals
and lower case of 12pt Garamond. More recently it has
come to have the same meaning as typeface.
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