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118-449: In metal typesetting , a font ( American English ) or fount ( Commonwealth English ) is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface , defined as the set of fonts that share an overall design. For instance, the typeface Bauer Bodoni (shown in the figure) includes fonts " Roman " (or "regular"), " bold " and " italic "; each of these exists in a variety of sizes . In the digital description of fonts ( computer fonts ),

236-680: A Fenghua county officer Ma Chengde ( 馬称德 ) in Zhejiang, made 100,000 wooden movable types and printed the 43-volume Daxue Yanyi ( 《大學衍義》 ). Wooden movable types were used continually in China. Even as late as 1733, a 2300-volume Wuying Palace Collected Gems Edition ( 《武英殿聚珍版叢書》 ) was printed with 253,500 wooden movable types on order of the Qianlong Emperor , and completed in one year. A number of books printed in Tangut script during

354-426: A Yuan dynasty governmental official of Jingde County , Anhui Province , China, re-invented a method of making movable wooden types. He made more than 30,000 wooden movable types and printed 100 copies of Records of Jingde County ( 《旌德縣志》 ), a book of more than 60,000 Chinese characters . Soon afterwards, he summarized his invention in his book A method of making moveable wooden types for printing books . Although

472-495: A font in a different style from the rest of the text, to highlight them. It is the equivalent of prosody stress in speech. The most common methods in Western typography fall under the general technique of emphasis through a change or modification of font: italics , boldface and SMALL CAPS . Other methods include the alteration of LETTER CASE and spacing as well as color and *additional graphic marks*. The human eye

590-462: A 700 weight and 600 as Semibold or Demibold, the Go numerical weights match the actual progression of the ratios of stem thicknesses: Normal:Medium = 400:500; Normal:Bold = 400:600". The terms normal , regular and plain (sometimes book ) are used for the standard-weight font of a typeface. Where both appear and differ, book is often lighter than regular , but in some typefaces it is bolder. Before

708-463: A Roman alphabet) 12pt 14A 34a, meaning that it would be a size 12- point font containing 14 uppercase "A"s, and 34 lowercase "a". The rest of the characters would be provided in quantities appropriate for the distribution of letters in that language. Some metal type characters required in typesetting, such as dashes , spaces and line-height spacers, were not part of a specific font, but were generic pieces that could be used with any font. Line spacing

826-436: A body of text being reproduced with reusable characters: it may have been produced by pressing pre-formed hieroglyphic "seals" into the soft clay. A few authors even view the disc as technically meeting all definitional criteria to represent an early incidence of movable-type printing. Bones, shells, bamboo slips, metal tablets, stone tablets, silk, as well as other materials were previously used for writing. However, following

944-455: A bolder font by rendering the outline a second time at an offset, or smearing it slightly at a diagonal angle. The base weight differs among typefaces; that means one font may appear bolder than another font. For example, fonts intended to be used in posters are often bold by default while fonts for long runs of text are rather light. Weight designations in font names may differ in regard to the actual absolute stroke weight or density of glyphs in

1062-474: A common substitute form of emphasis where the medium lacks support for boldface, such as old typewriters , plain-text email , SMS and other text-messaging systems. Socially, the use of all-caps text in Roman languages has become an indicator of shouting when quoting speech. It was also often used in the past by American lawyers to flag important points in a legal text. Coinciding with the era of typewriter use,

1180-560: A different impression than intended. In Chinese , emphasis in body text is supposed to be indicated by using an " emphasis mark " (着重號／着重号), which is a dot placed under each character to be emphasized. This is still taught in schools but in practice it is not usually done, probably due to the difficulty of doing this using most computer software. Consequently, methods used for emphasis in Western text are often used instead, even though they are considered inappropriate for Chinese (for example,

1298-485: A different region with different ambient temperature and humidity. For example, a thin design printed on book paper and a thicker design printed on high-gloss magazine paper may come out looking identical, since in the former case the ink will soak and spread out more. Grades are offered with characters having the same width on all grades, so that a change of printing materials does not affect copy-fit. Grades are common on serif fonts with their finer details. Fonts in which

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1416-590: A dot is placed above each Hangul syllable block or Hanja to be emphasized. In Armenian the շեշտ ( šešt ) sign ( ՛ ) is used. On websites and other Internet services, as with typewriters , rich text is not always available. Asterisks are sometimes used for emphasis (as in "That was *really* bad"). Less commonly, underscores may be used, resembling underlining ("That was _really_ bad"). Periods can be used between words (as in "That. was. really. bad.") to emphasize whole sentences, mimicking when somebody slows down their speech for impact. In some cases,

1534-597: A drawer about 2 inches high, a yard wide, and about two feet deep, with many small compartments for the various letters and ligatures. The most popular and accepted of the job case designs in America was the California Job Case , which took its name from the Pacific coast location of the foundries that made the case popular. Traditionally, the capital letters were stored in a separate drawer or case that

1652-528: A few of the characters have separate kanji origins and the scripts are used for different purposes. The gothic style of the roman script with broken letter forms, on the other hand, is usually considered a mere typographic variant. Cursive-only scripts such as Arabic also have different styles, in this case for example Naskh and Kufic , although these often depend on application, area or era. There are other aspects that can differ among font styles, but more often these are considered intrinsic features of

1770-401: A flat surface of type. The forme is mounted on a printing press , a thin coating of viscous ink is applied, and impressions are made on paper under great pressure in the press. "Sorts" is the term given to special characters not freely available in the typical type case, such as the "@" mark. Emphasis (typography) In typography , emphasis is the strengthening of words in a text with

1888-420: A font style is intended for large-size display use , or ink traps might be added to the design if it is to be printed at small size on poor-quality paper. This was a natural feature in the metal type period for most typefaces, since each size would be cut separately and made to its own slightly different design. As an example of this, experienced Linotype designer Chauncey H. Griffith commented in 1947 that for

2006-604: A full space was used between the letters of an emphasized word and also one before and one after the word. For black letter type boldface was not feasible, since the letters were very dark in their standard format, and on (most) typewriters only a single type was available. Although letter-spacing was common, sometimes different typefaces (e.g. Schwabacher inside Fraktur ), underlining or colored, usually red ink were used instead. Since blackletter type remained in use in German speaking parts of Europe much longer than anywhere else,

2124-405: A large range of weights which offer a smooth and continuous transition from one weight to the next, although some digital fonts are created with extensive manual corrections. As digital font design allows more variants to be created faster, a common development in professional font design is the use of "grades": slightly different weights intended for different types of paper and ink, or printing in

2242-481: A metal movable type system. Gutenberg, as a goldsmith , knew techniques of cutting punches for making coins from moulds. Between 1436 and 1450 he developed hardware and techniques for casting letters from matrices using a device called the hand mould . Gutenberg's key invention and contribution to movable-type printing in Europe, the hand mould, was the first practical means of making cheap copies of letterpunches in

2360-440: A newspaper. On the other hand, Palatino has large width to increase readability. The " billing block " on a movie poster often uses extremely condensed type in order to meet union requirements on the people who must be credited and the font height relative to the rest of the poster. Optical sizes refer to different versions of the same typefaces optimised for specific font sizes. For instance, thinner stroke weight might be used if

2478-485: A particular font is the thickness of the character outlines relative to their height. A typeface may come in fonts of many weights, from ultra-light to extra-bold or black; four to six weights are not unusual, and a few typefaces have as many as a dozen. Many typefaces for office, web and non-professional use come with a normal and a bold weight which are linked together. If no bold weight is provided, many renderers (browsers, word processors, graphic and DTP programs) support

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2596-461: A printed text by the reader. In Arabic, it is traditional to emphasize text by drawing a line over the letters. This is seen in the Quran , where the word at which Sujud Tilawa is performed is overlined. Sometimes quotation marks are used for emphasis. However, this clashes with the general understanding of how the marks are properly used, particularly scare quotes , and can leave the reader with

2714-470: A scale from 100 through 900, which is also used in CSS and OpenType , where 400 is regular (roman or plain). The Mozilla Developer Network provides the following rough mapping to typical font weight names: Font mapping varies by font designer. A good example is Bigelow and Holmes's Go Go font family. In this family, the "fonts have CSS numerical weights of 400, 500, and 600. Although CSS specifies 'Bold' as

2832-592: A single page, movable type printing allowed for the quick assembly of a page of text. Furthermore, these new, more compact type fonts could be reused and stored. Wang Zhen used two rotating circular tables as trays for laying out his type. The first table was separated into 24 trays in which each movable type was categorized based on a number corresponding with a rhyming pattern. The second table contained miscellaneous characters. The set of wafer-like metal stamp types could be assembled to form pages, inked, and page impressions taken from rubbings on cloth or paper. In 1322,

2950-506: A smaller form of its majuscule "Т" or more like a roman small "m" as in its standard italic appearance; in this case, the distinction between styles is also a matter of local preference. In Frutiger's nomenclature the second digit for upright fonts is a 5, for italic fonts a 6 and for condensed italic fonts an 8. The two Japanese syllabaries , katakana and hiragana , are sometimes seen as two styles or typographic variants of each other, but usually are considered separate character sets as

3068-544: A surface by rolling the seal on wet clay. Seals and stamps may have been precursors to movable type. The uneven spacing of the impressions on brick stamps found in the Mesopotamian cities of Uruk and Larsa , dating from the 2nd millennium BC , has been conjectured by some archaeologists as evidence that the stamps were made using movable type. The enigmatic Minoan Phaistos Disc of c.  1800 –1600 BC has been considered by one scholar as an early example of

3186-472: A trough level with fine sandy [clay] of the reed-growing seashore. Wood-cut letters are pressed into the sand, then the impressions become negative and form letters [moulds]. At this step, placing one trough together with another, one pours the molten bronze down into an opening. The fluid flows in, filling these negative moulds, one by one becoming type. Lastly, one scrapes and files off the irregularities, and piles them up to be arranged. A potential solution to

3304-490: A type he was working on intended for newspaper use, the 6 point size was not 50% as wide as the 12 point size, but about 71%. Optical sizing declined in use as pantograph engraving emerged, while phototypesetting and digital fonts further made printing the same font at any size simpler. A mild revival has taken place in recent years, although typefaces with optical sizes remain rare. The recent variable font technology further allows designers to include an optical size axis for

3422-400: A typeface, which means end users can manually adjust optical sizing on a continuous scale. Examples of variable fonts with such an axis are Roboto Flex and Helvetica Now Variable . Optical sizes are more common for serif fonts, since their typically finer detail and higher contrast benefits more from being bulked up for smaller sizes and made less overpowering at larger ones. Furthermore, it

3540-508: A word, unless essential, for example the Modern Language Association "discourages the use of italics in academic prose to emphasize or point, because they are unnecessary—most often, the unadorned words do the job without typographic assistance". Although emphasis is useful in speech, and so has a place in informal or journalistic writing, in academic traditions it is often suggested that italics are only used where there

3658-423: Is a convention that says "set this text in italic type ", traditionally used on manuscript or typescript as an instruction to the printer . Its use to add emphasis in modern documents is a deprecated practice. In web pages, hyperlinks are often displayed with underlines – to identify them as such rather than to emphasize them. Underlining is also used for secondary emphasis, i.e. marks added to

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3776-540: Is a printed "check" of the Jin dynasty with two square holes for embedding two bronze movable-type characters, each selected from 1,000 different characters, such that each printed paper note has a different combination of markers. A copper-block printed note dated between 1215 and 1216 in the collection of Luo Zhenyu 's Pictorial Paper Money of the Four Dynasties , 1914, shows two special characters—one called Ziliao ,

3894-416: Is now firmly established, and that Chinese-Korean technique, or a report of it traveled westward is almost certain." However, Joseph P. McDermott claimed that "No text indicates the presence or knowledge of any kind of Asian movable type or movable type imprint in Europe before 1450. The material evidence is even more conclusive." Johannes Gutenberg of Mainz , Germany, invented the printing press , using

4012-465: Is often considered archaic in Latin script, and on computers is complicated since fonts are no longer issued by foundries with a standard baseline, so switching font may distort line spacing. It is still possible using some font super families , which come with matching serif and sans-serif variants, though these are not generally supplied with modern computers as system fonts. In Japanese typography, due to

4130-412: Is often desirable for mathematical fonts (i.e., typefaces designed for typesetting mathematical equations) to have two optical sizes below "Regular", typically for higher-order superscripts and subscripts which are very small in sizes. Examples of such mathematical fonts include Minion Math and MathTime 2 . Naming schemes for optical sizes vary. One such scheme, invented and popularised by Adobe, labels

4248-456: Is often omitted for variants and never repeated, otherwise it would be Bulmer regular italic , Bulmer bold regular and even Bulmer regular regular . Roman can also refer to the language coverage of a font, acting as a shorthand for "Western European". Different fonts of the same typeface may be used in the same work for various degrees of readability and emphasis , or in a specific design to make it be of more visual interest. The weight of

4366-419: Is often used in blackletter typesetting and typewriter manuscripts, but by no means restricted to those situations. This letter-spacing is referred to as sperren in German, which could be translated as "spacing out": in typesetting with letters of lead, the spacing would be achieved by inserting additional non-printing slices of metal between the types, usually about an eighth of an em wide. On typewriters

4484-482: Is possible to have "upright italic" designs that take a more cursive form but remain upright; Computer Modern is an example of a font that offers this style. In Latin-script countries, upright italics are rare but are sometimes used in mathematics or in complex documents where a section of text already in italics needs a "double italic" style to add emphasis to it. For example, the Cyrillic minuscule "т" may look like

4602-440: Is relatively practical to modify their structure to a condensed weight. Serif text faces are often only issued in the regular width. These separate fonts have to be distinguished from techniques that alter the letter-spacing to achieve narrower or smaller words, especially for justified text alignment . Most typefaces either have proportional or monospaced (for example, those resembling typewriter output) letter widths, if

4720-411: Is still often called " leading ", because the strips used for line spacing were made of lead (rather than the harder alloy used for other pieces). This spacing strip was made from lead because lead was a softer metal than the traditional forged metal type pieces (which was part lead, antimony and tin ) and would compress more easily when "locked up" in the printing "chase" (i.e. a carrier for holding all

4838-627: Is used analogously to italics in Latin text. Post-print emphasis added by a reader is often done with highlighters which add a bright background color to usual black-on-white text. Syntax highlighting also makes use of text color. There are many designs. With both italics and boldface, the emphasis is correctly achieved by swapping into a different font of the same family; for example by replacing body text in Arial with its bold or italic style. Professional typographic systems, including most modern computers, would therefore not simply tilt letters to

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4956-528: Is very limited in German. This use of spacing is also traditionally found in Polish. German orthographic (or rather typographic) rules require that the mandatory blackletter ligatures are retained. That means, ſt , ch , ck , and tz are still stuck together just as the letter ß , whereas optional, additional ligatures like ff and ſi are broken up with a (small) space in between. Other writing systems did not develop such sophisticated rules since spacing

5074-400: Is very receptive to differences in "brightness within a text body." Therefore, one can differentiate between types of emphasis according to whether the emphasis changes the " blackness " of text, sometimes referred to as typographic color. A means of emphasis that does not have much effect on blackness is the use of italics , where the text is written in a script style, or oblique , where

5192-467: The Goryeo dynasty. The spread of both movable-type systems was, to some degree, limited to primarily East Asia. The creation of the printing press in Europe may have been influenced by various sporadic reports of movable type technology brought back to Europe by returning business people and missionaries to China. Some of these medieval European accounts are still preserved in the library archives of

5310-567: The Northern Song dynasty by the inventor Bi Sheng (990–1051). The earliest printed paper money with movable metal type to print the identifying code of the money was made in 1161 during the Song dynasty. In 1193, a book in the Song dynasty documented how to use the copper movable type. The oldest extant book printed with movable metal type , Jikji , was printed in Korea in 1377 during

5428-599: The Vatican and Oxford University among many others. Around 1450, German goldsmith Johannes Gutenberg invented the metal movable-type printing press, along with innovations in casting the type based on a matrix and hand mould . The small number of alphabetic characters needed for European languages was an important factor. Gutenberg was the first to create his type pieces from an alloy of lead , tin , and antimony —and these materials remained standard for 550 years. For alphabetic scripts , movable-type page setting

5546-577: The Western Xia (1038–1227) period are known, of which the Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union , which was discovered in the ruins of Baisigou Square Pagoda in 1991 is believed to have been printed sometime during the reign of Emperor Renzong of Western Xia (1139–1193). It is considered by many Chinese experts to be the earliest extant example of a book printed using wooden movable type. At least 13 material finds in China indicate

5664-408: The script (s) that the typeface supports. In European alphabetic scripts , i.e. Latin , Cyrillic , and Greek , the main such properties are the stroke width, called weight , the style or angle and the character width . The regular or standard font is sometimes labeled roman , both to distinguish it from bold or thin and from italic or oblique . The keyword for the default, regular case

5782-421: The "8 series" (condensed italics), e.g. 68 Bold Condensed Italics . From this brief numerical system it is easier to determine exactly what a font's characteristics are, for instance "Helvetica 67" (HE67) translates to "Helvetica Bold Condensed". The first algorithmic description of fonts was made by Donald Knuth in his 1986 Metafont description language and interpreter. The TrueType font format introduced

5900-455: The Dutch governmental Algemeene Landsdrukkerij , later: "State-printery" ( Staatsdrukkerij ) decided during a reorganisation to use a standard type-height of 63 points Didot. Staatsdrukkerij-hoogte , actually Belgium-height, but this fact was not widely known . Modern, factory-produced movable type was available in the late 19th century. It was held in the printing shop in a job case ,

6018-678: The Mongol language, some with Chinese words printed between the pages—strong evidence that the books were printed in China. During the Ming dynasty (1368–1644), Hua Sui in 1490 used bronze type in printing books. In 1574 the massive 1000-volume encyclopedia Imperial Readings of the Taiping Era ( 《太平御覧》 ) was printed with bronze movable type. In 1725 the Qing dynasty government made 250,000 bronze movable-type characters and printed 64 sets of

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6136-575: The Netherlands: Johan Enschedé & Zonen , at Haarlem , and Lettergieterij Amsterdam, voorheen Tetterode . They both had their own type-height: Enschedé: 65 23/24 points Didot, and Amsterdam: 66 1/24 points Didot—enough difference to prevent a combined use of fonts from the two typefoundries: Enschede would be too light, or otherwise the Amsterdam-font would print rather bold. This was a way of keeping clients. In 1905

6254-790: The PostScript standard fonts Helvetica and ITC Avant Garde respectively. Some of these sets were created in order to be freely redistributable, for example Red Hat 's Liberation fonts and Google's Croscore fonts , which duplicate the PostScript set and other common fonts used in Microsoft software such as Calibri . It is not a requirement that a metrically compatible design be identical to its origin in appearance apart from width. Although most typefaces are characterised by their use of serifs , there are superfamilies that incorporate serif (antiqua) and sans-serif (grotesque) or even intermediate slab serif (Egyptian) or semi-serif fonts with

6372-581: The Song dynasty through the Qing dynasty. Bi Sheng (990–1051) of the Song dynasty also pioneered the use of wooden movable type around 1040 AD, as described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo (1031–1095). However, this technology was abandoned in favour of clay movable types due to the presence of wood grains and the unevenness of the wooden type after being soaked in ink. In 1298, Wang Zhen ( 王禎 ),

6490-514: The West consists of three stages: The type-height varied in different countries. The Monotype Corporation Limited in London UK produced moulds in various heights: A Dutch printer's manual mentions a tiny difference between French and German Height: Tiny differences in type-height can cause quite bold images of characters. At the end of the 19th century there were only two typefoundries left in

6608-476: The arrival of computers, each weight had to be drawn manually. As a result, many older multi-weight families such as Gill Sans and Monotype Grotesque have considerable differences in weights from light to extra-bold. Since the 1980s, it has become common to use automation to construct a range of weights as points along a trend, multiple master or other parameterized font design. This means that many modern digital fonts such as Myriad and TheSans are offered in

6726-439: The blocks had a limited lifespan. Gutenberg and his associates developed oil-based inks ideally suited to printing with a press on paper, and the first Latin typefaces . His method of casting type may have differed from the hand-mould used in subsequent decades. Detailed analysis of the type used in his 42-line Bible has revealed irregularities in some of the characters that cannot be attributed to ink spread or type wear under

6844-415: The bold and non-bold letters have the same width are " duplexed ". In European typefaces, especially Roman ones, a slope or slanted style is used to emphasize important words. This is called italic type or oblique type . These designs normally slant to the right in left-to-right scripts. Oblique styles are often called italic, but differ from "true italic" styles. Italic styles are more flowing than

6962-546: The bold-style numbers take up the same width as the regular (non-bold) numbers, so a bold-style total lines up below the digits of the sum in regular style. Linguistics professor Larry Trask stated that "It is possible to write an entire word or phrase in capital letters in order to emphasize it", but adds that "On the whole, though, it is preferable to express emphasis, not with capital letters, but with italics." Many university researchers and academic journal editors advise not to use italics, or other approaches to emphasizing

7080-503: The casting, causing variants and anomalies, and that the punch-matrix system came into use possibly around the 1470s. This raises the possibility that the development of movable type in the West may have been progressive rather than a single innovation. Gutenberg's movable-type printing system spread rapidly across Europe, from the single Mainz printing press in 1457 to 110 presses by 1480, with 50 of them in Italy . Venice quickly became

7198-416: The centre of typographic and printing activity. Significant contributions came from Nicolas Jenson , Francesco Griffo , Aldus Manutius , and other printers of late 15th-century Europe. Gutenberg's movable type printing system offered a number of advantages over previous movable type techniques. The lead-antimony-tin alloy used by Gutenberg had half the melting temperature of bronze, making it easier to cast

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7316-464: The characters were cut in relief, completely differently from those cut intaglio. When printing, the bulging characters would have some ink spread on them and be covered by paper. With workers' hands moving on the back of paper gently, characters would be printed on the paper. By the Song dynasty , woodblock printing came to its heyday. Although woodblock printing played an influential role in spreading culture, there were some significant drawbacks. Carving

7434-423: The custom of letter-spacing is sometimes seen as specific to German, although it has been used with other languages, including English. Especially in German, however, this kind of emphasis may also be used within modern type, e.g. where italics already serve another semantic purpose (as in linguistics) and where no further means of emphasis (e.g. small caps) are easily available or feasible. Its professional use today

7552-418: The effect of italic or boldface be imitated by algorithmically altering the original font. The modern Latin-alphabet system of fonts appearing in two standard weights, with the styles being regular (or "Roman"), italic, bold and bold italic is a relatively recent development, dating to the early twentieth century. Modern "Roman" type was developed around the 1470s, while italic type was developed around 1500 and

7670-425: The encyclopedic Complete Classics Collection of Ancient China ( 《古今圖書集成》 ). Each set consisted of 5,040 volumes, making a total of 322,560 volumes printed using movable type. In 1234 the first books known to have been printed in metallic type set were published in Goryeo dynasty Korea. They form a set of ritual books, Sangjeong Gogeum Yemun , compiled by Ch'oe Yun-ŭi . While these books have not survived,

7788-481: The engine behind the text area being parsed will render the text and the asterisks in bold automatically after the text is submitted. Markdown is a common formalization of this concept. Colors are important for emphasizing. Important words in a text may be colored differently from others. For example, many dictionaries use a different color for headwords , and some religious texts color the words of deities red, commonly referred to as rubric . In Ethiopic script , red

7906-429: The focus was on reprinting Chinese classics lost in 1126 when Korea's libraries and palaces had perished in a conflict between dynasties. Scholarly debate and speculation has occurred as to whether Eastern movable type spread to Europe between the late 14th century and early 15th centuries. For example, authoritative historians Frances Gies and Joseph Gies claimed that "The Asian priority of invention movable type

8024-534: The font bounding box . Glyph-level metrics include the glyph bounding box, the advance width (the proper distance between the glyph's initial pen position and the next glyph's initial pen position), and sidebearings (space that pads the glyph outline on either side). Many digital (and some metal type) fonts are able to be kerned so that characters can be fitted more closely; the pair "Wa" is a common example of this. Some fonts, especially those intended for professional use, are duplexed: made with multiple weights having

8142-485: The font is usually alternated back to (upright) roman script, or quotation marks are used instead, although some font families provide upright italics for a third visually distinct appearance. By contrast, a bold font weight makes letters of a text thicker than the surrounding text. Bold strongly stands out from regular text, and is often used to highlight keywords important to the text's content. For example, printed dictionaries often use boldface for their keywords, and

8260-493: The font. Attempts to systematize a range of weights led to a numerical classification first used in 1957 by Adrian Frutiger with the Univers typeface: 35 Extra Light , 45 Light , 55 Medium or Regular , 65 Bold , 75 Extra Bold , 85 Extra Bold , 95 Ultra Bold or Black . Deviants of these were the "6 series" (italics), e.g. 46 Light Italics etc., the "7 series" (condensed versions), e.g. 57 Medium Condensed etc., and

8378-572: The globe . The 19th-century invention of hot metal typesetting and its successors caused movable type to decline in the 20th century. The technique of imprinting multiple copies of symbols or glyphs with a master type punch made of hard metal first developed around 3000 BC in ancient Sumer . These metal punch types can be seen as precursors of the letter punches adapted in later millennia to printing with movable metal type. Cylinder seals were used in Mesopotamia to create an impression on

8496-406: The idea of losing hanja , the badge of their elitism", stifled the adoption of the new alphabet. A " Confucian prohibition on the commercialization of printing" also obstructed the proliferation of movable type, restricting the distribution of books produced using the new method to the government. The technique was restricted to use by the royal foundry for official state publications only, where

8614-417: The inclusion of an adjustable optical size axis means optical sizes are not released as separate products. Font metrics refers to metadata consisting of numeric values relating to size and space in the font overall, or in its individual glyphs. Font-wide metrics include cap height (the height of the capitals), x-height (the height of the lowercase letters) and ascender height, descender depth, and

8732-659: The invention of paper during the Chinese Han dynasty , writing materials became more portable and economical. Yet, copying books by hand was still labour-consuming. Not until the Xiping Era (172–178 AD), towards the end of the Eastern Han dynasty, did sealing print and monotype appear. These were used to print designs on fabrics and to print texts. By about the 8th century during the Tang dynasty , woodblock printing

8850-569: The invention of bronze movable type printing in China no later than the 12th century, with the country producing large-scale bronze-plate-printed paper money and formal official documents issued by the Jin (1115–1234) and Southern Song (1127–1279) dynasties with embedded bronze metal types for anti-counterfeit markers. Such paper-money printing might date back to the 11th-century jiaozi of Northern Song (960–1127). The typical example of this kind of bronze movable type embedded copper-block printing

8968-483: The iron plate. In this he placed the types, set close together. When the frame was full, the whole made one solid block of type. He then placed it near the fire to warm it. When the paste [at the back] was slightly melted, he took a smooth board and pressed it over the surface, so that the block of type became as even as a whetstone. For each character there were several types, and for certain common characters there were twenty or more types each, in order to be prepared for

9086-435: The italic fonts are only slanted , which is often done algorithmically, without otherwise changing their appearance. Such oblique fonts are not true italics, because lowercase letter shapes do not change, but they are often marketed as such. Fonts normally do not include both oblique and italic styles: the designer chooses to supply one or the other. Since italic styles clearly look different than regular (roman) styles, it

9204-615: The linguistic and cultural bottleneck that held back movable type in Korea for 200 years appeared in the early 15th century—a generation before Gutenberg would begin working on his own movable-type invention in Europe—when Sejong the Great devised a simplified alphabet of 24 characters ( hangul ) for use by the common people, which could have made the typecasting and compositing process more feasible. But Korea's cultural elite, "appalled at

9322-518: The loss of the two copper movable types. Song dynasty bronze block embedded with bronze metal movable type printed paper money was issued on a large scale and remained in circulation for a long time. The 1298 book Zao Huozi Yinshufa ( 《造活字印書法》 ) by the Yuan dynasty (1271–1368) official Wang Zhen mentions tin movable type, used probably since the Southern Song dynasty (1127–1279), but this

9440-427: The majuscule or the minuscule glyph at a common height for both characters. Titling fonts are designed for headlines and displays, and have stroke widths optimized for large sizes. Some typefaces include fonts that vary the width of the characters ( stretch ), although this feature is usually rarer than weight or slope. Narrower fonts are usually labeled compressed , condensed or narrow . In Frutiger's system,

9558-468: The materials used for the type, punch, matrix, mould and in method of making an impression. The techniques for bronze casting, used at the time for making coins (as well as bells and statues) were adapted to making metal type. The Joseon dynasty scholar Seong Hyeon (성현, 成俔, 1439–1504) records the following description of the Korean font-casting process: At first, one cuts letters in beech wood. One fills

9676-458: The metal type was located in for manual typesetting: the more distant upper case or the closer lower case. The same distinction is also referred to with the terms majuscule and minuscule . Unlike a digital typeface, a metal font would not include a single definition of each character, but commonly used characters (such as vowels and periods) would have more physical type-pieces included. A font when bought new would often be sold as (for example in

9794-404: The method described by Shen Kuo in his Dream Pool Essays , and printed his book Notes of The Jade Hall ( 《玉堂雜記》 ). The ceramic movable type was also mentioned by Kublai Khan 's counsellor Yao Shu , who convinced his pupil Yang Gu to print language primers using this method. The claim that Bi Sheng's clay types were "fragile" and "not practical for large-scale printing" and "short lived"

9912-405: The names of entries can conventionally be marked in bold. Small capitals ( THUS ) are also used for emphasis, especially for the first line of a section, sometimes accompanied by or instead of a drop cap , or for personal names as in bibliographies. If the text body is typeset in a serif typeface , it is also possible to highlight words by setting them in a sans serif face. This practice

10030-412: The normal typeface, approaching a more handwritten , cursive style, possibly using ligatures more commonly or gaining swashes . Although rarely encountered, a typographic face may be accompanied by a matching calligraphic face ( cursive , script ), giving an exaggeratedly italic style. In many sans-serif and some serif typefaces, especially in those with strokes of even thickness, the characters of

10148-566: The oldest book existing in the world printed in metallic movable types is Jikji , printed in Korea in 1377. The Asian Reading Room of the Library of Congress in Washington, D.C., displays examples of this metal type. Commenting on the invention of metallic types by Koreans, French scholar Henri-Jean Martin described this as "[extremely similar] to Gutenberg's". However, Korean movable metal type printing differed from European printing in

10266-597: The other called Zihao —for the purpose of preventing counterfeiting; over the Ziliao there is a small character (輶) printed with movable copper type, while over the Zihao there is an empty square hole—apparently the associated copper metal type was lost. Another sample of Song dynasty money of the same period in the collection of the Shanghai Museum has two empty square holes above Ziliao as well as Zihou , due to

10384-429: The practice became unnecessary with the advent of computerized text formatting, although it is still found on occasion in documents created by older lawyers. Another means of emphasis is to increase the spacing between the letters , rather than making them darker, but still achieving a distinction in blackness. This results in an effect reverse to boldface: the emphasized text becomes lighter than its environment. This

10502-400: The pressure of the press. Scholars conjecture that the type pieces may have been cast from a series of matrices made with a series of individual stroke punches, producing many different versions of the same glyph. It has also been suggested that the method used by Gutenberg involved using a single punch to make a mould, but the mould was such that the process of taking the type out disturbed

10620-468: The printing plate required considerable time, labour, and materials. It also was not convenient to store these plates and was difficult to correct mistakes. Bi Sheng ( 畢昇 ) (990–1051) developed the first known movable-type system for printing in China around 1040 AD during the Northern Song dynasty, using ceramic materials. As described by the Chinese scholar Shen Kuo (沈括) (1031–1095): When he wished to print, he took an iron frame and set it on

10738-468: The process of casting metal type at a type foundry . The spelling font is mainly used in the United States, whereas fount was historically used in most Commonwealth countries. In a manual printing ( letterpress ) house the word "font" would refer to a complete set of metal type that would be used to typeset an entire page. Upper- and lowercase letters get their names because of which case

10856-454: The reduced legibility of heavier Minchō type, the practice remains common. Of these methods, italics, small capitals and capitalization are oldest, with bold type and sans-serif typefaces not arriving until the nineteenth century. The house styles of many publishers in the United States use all caps text for: Capitalization is used much less frequently by British publishers, and usually only for book titles. All-uppercase letters are

10974-413: The repetition of characters on the same page. When the characters were not in use he had them arranged with paper labels, one label for each rhyme-group, and kept them in wooden cases. If one were to print only two or three copies, this method would be neither simple nor easy. But for printing hundreds or thousands of copies, it was marvelously quick. As a rule he kept two forms going. While the impression

11092-738: The right to achieve italics (that is instead referred to as slanting or oblique ), print them twice or darker for boldface, or scale majuscules to the height of middle-chamber minuscules (like x and o ) for small-caps, but instead use entirely different typefaces that achieve the effect. The letter 'w', for example, looks quite different in italic compared to upright. As a result, typefaces therefore have to be supplied at least fourfold (with computer systems, usually as four font files): as regular, bold, italic, and bold italic to provide for all combinations. Professional typefaces sometimes offer even more variations for popular fonts, with varying degrees of blackness. Only if such fonts are not available should

11210-422: The same base outlines. A more common font variant, especially of serif typefaces, is that of alternate capitals. They can have swashes to go with italic minuscules or they can be of a flourish design for use as initials ( drop caps ). Movable type The world's first movable type printing technology for paper books was made of porcelain materials and was invented around 1040 AD in China during

11328-524: The same character width so that (for example) changing from regular to bold or italic does not affect word wrap. Sabon as originally designed was a notable example of this. (This was a standard feature of the Linotype hot metal typesetting system with regular and italic being duplexed, requiring awkward design choices as italics normally are narrower than the roman.) A particularly important basic set of fonts that became an early standard in digital printing

11446-438: The script provides the possibility. Some superfamilies include both proportional and monospaced fonts. Some fonts also provide both proportional and fixed-width ( tabular ) digits, where the former usually coincide with lowercase text figures and the latter with uppercase lining figures . The width of a font will depend on its intended use. Times New Roman was designed with the goal of having small width, to fit more text into

11564-447: The second digit of condensed fonts is a 7. Wider fonts may be called wide , extended or expanded . Both can be further classified by prepending extra , ultra or the like. Compressing a font design to a condensed weight is a complex task, requiring the strokes to be slimmed down proportionally and often making the capitals straight-sided. It is particularly common to see condensed fonts for sans-serif and slab-serif families, since it

11682-597: The terms "font" and "typeface" are often used interchangeably. For example, when used in computers, each style is stored in a separate digital font file . In both traditional typesetting and computing, the word "font" refers to the delivery mechanism of the typeface. In traditional typesetting, the font would be made from metal or wood type : to compose a page may require multiple fonts or even multiple typefaces. The word font (US) or fount (traditional UK; in any case pronounced / f ɒ n t / ) derives from Middle French fonte , meaning "cast iron". The term refers to

11800-460: The type and aided the use of reusable metal matrix moulds instead of the expendable sand and clay moulds. The use of antimony alloy increased hardness of the type compared to lead and tin for improved durability of the type. The reusable metal matrix allowed a single experienced worker to produce 4,000 to 5,000 individual types a day, while Wang Chen had artisans working 2 years to make 60,000 wooden types. Type-founding as practised in Europe and

11918-538: The type together). In the 1880s–1890s, "hot lead" typesetting was invented, in which type was cast as it was set, either piece by piece (as in the Monotype technology) or in entire lines of type at one time (as in the Linotype technology). In addition to the character height, when using the mechanical sense of the term, there are several characteristics which may distinguish fonts, though they would also depend on

12036-428: The typeface. These include the look of digits ( text figures ) and the minuscules, which may be smaller versions of the capital letters ( small caps ) although the script has developed characteristic shapes for them. Some typefaces do not include separate glyphs for the cases at all, thereby abolishing the bicamerality . While most of these use uppercase characters only, some labeled unicase exist which choose either

12154-408: The use of underlining or setting text in oblique type ). In Japanese texts, when katakana would be inappropriate, emphasis is indicated by "emphasis dots" ( 圏点 or 傍点 ) placed above the kanji and any accompanying furigana in horizontal writing and to the right in vertical writing . Japanese also has an "emphasis line" ( 傍線 ) used in a similar manner, but less frequently. In Korean texts,

12272-539: The variant designs by their typical usages (with the intended point sizes varying slightly by typefaces): Other type designers and publishers might use different naming schemes. For instance, the smaller optical size of Helvetica Now is labelled "Micro", while the display variant of Hoefler Text is called "Titling". Another example is Times , whose variants are labelled by their intended point sizes, such as Times Ten, Times Eighteen, and Times New Roman Seven. Variable fonts typically do not use any naming scheme, because

12390-407: The vast quantities needed to print complete books, making the movable-type printing process a viable enterprise. Before Gutenberg, scribes copied books by hand on scrolls and paper, or print-makers printed texts from hand-carved wooden blocks. Either process took a long time; even a small book could take months to complete. Because carved letters or blocks were flimsy and the wood susceptible to ink,

12508-468: The vertical orientation of each letter of the text is slanted to the left or right. With one or the other of these techniques (usually only one is available for any typeface), words can be highlighted without making them stand out much from the rest of the text (inconspicuous stressing). This is used for marking passages that have a different context, such as book titles, words from foreign languages, or internal dialogue. For multiple, nested levels of emphasis,

12626-456: The water-based Chinese calligraphic ink well, and had an added disadvantage of uneven matching of the type which could sometimes result from the uneven changes in size of the type during the baking process. There has been an ongoing debate regarding the success of ceramic printing technology as there have been no printed materials found with ceramic movable types. However, it is historically recorded to have been used as late as 1844 in China from

12744-456: The wooden type was more durable under the mechanical rigors of handling, repeated printing wore down the character faces, and the types could only be replaced by carving new pieces. This system was later enhanced by pressing wooden blocks into sand and casting metal types from the depression in copper, bronze, iron or tin. This new method overcame many of the shortcomings of woodblock printing. Rather than manually carving an individual block to print

12862-488: Was being made from the one form, the type was being put in place on the other. When the printing of the one form was finished, the other was then ready. In this way the two forms alternated and the printing was done with great rapidity. After his death, the ceramic movable-type passed onto his descendants. In 1193, Zhou Bida , an officer of the Southern Song dynasty, made a set of clay movable-type method according to

12980-474: Was commonly used for emphasis by the early 17th century. Bold type did not arrive until the nineteenth century, and at first fonts did not have matching bold weights; instead a generic bold, sometimes a Clarendon or other kind of slab-serif , would be swapped in. In some books printed before bold type existed, emphasis could be shown by switching to blackletter . Some font families intended for professional use in documents such as business reports may also make

13098-400: Was invented and worked as follows. First, the neat hand-copied script was stuck on a relatively thick and smooth board, with the front of the paper sticking to the board, the paper being so thin it was transparent, the characters showing in reverse distinctly so that every stroke could be easily recognized. Then, carvers cut away the parts of the board that were not part of the character, so that

13216-464: Was largely experimental. It was unsatisfactory due to its incompatibility with the inking process. But by the late 15th century these concerns were resolved and bronze type was widely used in Chinese printing. During the Mongol Empire (1206–1405), printing using movable type spread from China to Central Asia. The Uyghurs of Central Asia used movable type, their script type adopted from

13334-454: Was located above the case that held the other letters; this is why capital letters are called "upper case" characters while the non-capitals are "lower case". Compartments also held spacers, which are blocks of blank type used to separate words and fill out a line of type, such as em and en quads ( quadrats , or spaces. A quadrat is a block of type whose face is lower than the printing letters so that it does not itself print.). An em space

13452-594: Was quicker than woodblock printing . The metal type pieces were more durable and the lettering was more uniform, leading to typography and fonts . The high quality and relatively low price of the Gutenberg Bible (1455) established the superiority of movable type in Europe and the use of printing presses spread rapidly. The printing press may be regarded as one of the key factors fostering the Renaissance and, due to its effectiveness, its use spread around

13570-477: Was refuted by later experiments. Bao Shicheng (1775–1885) wrote that baked clay moveable type was "as hard and tough as horn"; experiments show that clay type, after being baked in an oven, becomes hard and difficult to break, such that it remains intact after being dropped from a height of two metres onto a marble floor. The length of clay movable types in China was 1 to 2 centimetres, not 2 mm, thus hard as horn. But similar to metal type, ceramic type did not hold

13688-399: Was so uncommon therein. In Cyrillic typography, it also used to be common to emphasize words using letter-spaced type. This practice for Cyrillic has become obsolete with the availability of Cyrillic italic and small capital fonts. Professional Western typesetting usually does not employ lines under letters for emphasis within running text. In proofreading , underlining (or underscoring)

13806-541: Was the Core Font Set included in the PostScript printing system developed by Apple and Adobe. To avoid paying licensing fees for this set, many computer companies commissioned "metrically compatible" knock-off fonts with the same spacing, which could be used to display the same document without it seeming clearly different. Arial and Century Gothic are notable examples of this, being functional equivalents to

13924-422: Was the width of a capital letter "M"—as wide as it was high—while an en space referred to a space half the width of its height (usually the dimensions for a capital "N"). Individual letters are assembled into words and lines of text with the aid of a composing stick , and the whole assembly is tightly bound together to make up a page image called a forme , where all letter faces are exactly the same height to form

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