Font facts for kids

In typography, a font or hfount is all the letters or characters of a single size of a typeface. For example, all characters for 9-point Bulmer is a font, and the 10 point size would be another font.

With the increase in the use of personal computers, the definition of font has changed. The term font is now often used as another name for a typeface. The size of the characters has no effect on fonts when using this definition.

Images for kids

• 

  Metal type sorts arranged on a composing stick

• 

  A 1910 letterpress poster, advertising an auction, using a variety of fonts

• 

  Bold and regular versions of three common fonts. Helvetica has a monoline design and all strokes increase in weight in bold; less monoline fonts like Optima and Utopia increase the weight of the thicker strokes more. In all three designs, the curve on 'n' thins as it joins the left-hand vertical.

• 

  'Upright italic' within normal italics

• 

  The typeface Avenir Next in condensed and regular widths.

• 

  A set of optical sizes developed at URW of the typeface Leipziger Antiqua. The fonts become thicker and more widely spaced as the point size for which they are designed decreases.

• 

  EB Garamond's regular and schoolbook versions of a and g. Single-storey characters are more commonly found as default in geometric sans-serif fonts such as Century Gothic, shown at bottom.

See also

In Spanish: Tipo de letra para niños