Terms like “font” and “typeface” have evolved over a considerable amount of time and have seen several transitions in technology. As a result, these terms can sometimes be interpreted in various ways. This produces a terminology that can be seen as esoteric at best and confusing at worst.

To begin, it must be agreed upon the terminology in which situations where font and typeface are used. Mark Simonson over at Typophile says that “the physical embodiment of a collection of letters, numbers, symbols and so on is a font,” while “the design of the collection (the way it looks)” is a typeface. The specific origin of the word font is not entirely clear. Type designer David Berlow believes that it originated in France where “the idea of a spring of water (fontaine) was close enough to the ideas that spring from words.” Another theory says that the term font came from the word fount meaning a source from which words gushed.

Yet another theory suggests that font came from fount and foundry, dating back to the manufacture of type using molten steel. When type were still little blocks of metal or wood and only fit for a specific size, a font was a single point size of a complete set of characters for setting text. With the advent of film type and scalable outlines, the term font became size-independent.

Tags: typeface

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