Understanding Fonts
253
22
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:
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
32
33
34
35
36
37
38
39
40
41
42
43
44
45
46
47
48
49
50
51
52
53
54
55
56
57
58
59
60
61
62
63
64
65
66
67
68
69
70
71
72
73
74
75
76
77
78
79
80
81
82
83
84
85
86
87
88
89
90
91
92
93
94
95
96
97
98
99
100
101
102
103
104
105
106
107
108
109
110
111
112
113
114
115
116
117
118
119
120
121
122
123
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148
149
150
151
152
153
154
155
156
157
158
159
160
161
162
163
164
165
166
167
168
169
170
171
172
173
174
175
176
177
178
179
180
181
182
183
184
185
186
187
188
189
190
191
192
193
194
195
196
197
198
199
200
201
202
203
204
205
206
207
208
209
210
211
212
213
214
215
216
217
218
219
220
221
222
223
224
225
226
227
228
229
230
231
232
233
234
235
236
237
238
239
240
241
242
243
244
245
246
247
248
249
250
251
252
253
254
255
256
257
258
259
260
261
262
263
264
265
266
267
268
269
270
271
272
273
274
275
276
277
278
279
280
281
282
283
284
285
286
287
288
289
290
291
292
293
294
295
296
297
298
299
300
301
302
303
304
305
306
307
308
309
310
311
312
313
314
315
316
317
318
319
320
321
322
323
324
325
326
327
328
329
330
331
332
333
334
335
336
337
338
339
340
341
342
343
344
345
346
347
348
349
350
351
352
353
354
355
356
357
358
359
360
361
Инструкции и руководства похожие на DELL C2660dn
