TYPOGRAPHY IS THE ART and technique of printing with movable type. Derived from Greek words typos (form) and grapho (write), it is a form of communication with a stylistic language of it's own. The typeface used on a web page or any printed material affects the way the reader feels about the content. Type attracts attention, sets the style and tone of a document, colors how readers interpret the words, and defines the feeling of the page - usually without the reader recognizing a particular typeface. While one page may look serious and formal, another may be informal and friendly, while yet another may be modern and cool. The typography of a page depends on the context in which it is designed. For example: A page designed for an Educational Technology course in a university may be different from a newspaper. Type, irrespective of the context, has a purpose - that of visual communication.

It's important to learn the key terms of typography to be able to see the differences between various type faces. The inspiration for this visual was drawn from Counterspace, a website dedicated to typography and its history.

Typeface is a particular design for characters, like Courier, Times New Roman, Arial. Font is a particular typeface at a particular size in a particular style (bold, italic, etc). The term font is commonly used to refer to what should really be called a typeface. All fonts fall into a distinct category of fonts, called families. Fonts are generally classified into the following categories:

• Oldstyle: Based on the handlettering of the scribes. Oldstyles have serifs and the serifs of lowercase letters are always angled.

• Modern: These fonts are extreme contrast between thick and thin strokes, vertical axis, thin or hairline (and often horizontal) serifs.

• Slab-serif: The serifs are solid straight lines with even strokes.

• Sans-serif: These fonts are the most appropriate family for the Web, as their simpler-letter forms remain readable at low resolutions.

• Serif: These are the old-style, traditional looking fonts. A serif is a flick added to the tips of the lines that make up the letters. More suitable for usage in offline, printed media like books and newspapers.
  

Bindu D'Souza

D'Souza, B (2005). Typography: What you should know. In B. Hoffman (Ed.), Encyclopedia of Educational Technology. Retrieved July 15, 2010, from file:///D:/实验室/eet/articles/webtypography/start.htm