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Understanding Fonts
Typefaces and Fonts
A font is a set of characters and symbols created with a distinct design. The distinct design is called a
typeface
. The
typefaces you select add personality to a document. Well-chosen typefaces make a document easier to read.
The printer has numerous resident fonts in PCL 5/PCL 6 and PostScript Level3 Compatible. See "Resident Fonts"
for a listing of all resident fonts.
Weight and Style
Typefaces are often available in different weights and styles. These variations modify the original typeface so you can,
for example, emphasize important words in text or highlight book titles. The different weights and styles are
designed to complement the original typeface.
Weight
refers to the thickness of the lines that form the characters. Thicker lines result in darker characters. Some
words commonly used to describe the weight of a typeface are bold, medium, light, black, and heavy.
Style
refers to other typeface modifications, such as tilt or character width. Italic and oblique are styles where the
characters are tilted. Narrow, condensed, and extended are three common styles that modify the character widths.
Some fonts combine several weight and style modifications; for example, Helvetica BdOb. A group of several weight
and style variations of a single typeface is called a
typeface family
. Most typeface families have four variations:
regular, italic (oblique), bold, and bold italic (bold oblique). Some families have more variations, as the following
illustration for the Helvetica typeface family shows:
Pitch and Point Size
The size of a font is specified as either a pitch or point size, depending on whether the font is fixed space or
proportional.
In
fixed space
fonts, each character has the same width.
Pitch
is used to specify the size of fixed space fonts. It is a
measure of the number of characters that will print in one horizontal inch of type. For example, all 10-pitch fonts
print 10 characters per inch (cpi) and all 12-pitch fonts print 12 cpi:
Understanding Fonts 253
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General
Weight and Dimensions
