Editing Typeface (section)

{{Short description|Set of characters that share common design features}}
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[[File:A Specimen by William Caslon.jpg|thumb|right|300px|''A Specimen'', a broadsheet with examples of typefaces and fonts available. Printed by [[William Caslon]], letter founder; from the 1728 ''[[Cyclopædia, or an Universal Dictionary of Arts and Sciences|Cyclopædia]]''.]]

A '''typeface''' (or '''font family''') is a design of [[Letter (alphabet)|letter]]s, [[Numerical digit|number]]s and other [[symbol]]s, to be used in printing or for electronic display.<ref>{{Cite encyclopedia |title=typeface |url=https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/typeface |encyclopedia=Cambridge Academic Content Dictionary |access-date=22 December 2019}}</ref> Most typefaces include variations in size (e.g., 24 point), weight (e.g., light, bold), slope (e.g., italic), width (e.g., condensed), and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a [[font]].

There are [[list of typefaces|thousands of different typefaces]] in existence, with new ones being developed constantly.

The art and craft of designing typefaces is called [[type design]]. Designers of typefaces are called [[type designer]]s and are often employed by [[type foundry|type foundries]]. In [[desktop publishing]], type designers are sometimes also called "font developers" or "font designers" (a [[typographer]] is someone who ''uses'' typefaces to design a page layout).

Every typeface is a collection of [[glyph]]s, each of which represents an individual letter, number, punctuation mark, or other symbol. The same glyph may be used for [[character (symbol)|character]]s from different [[writing systems]], e.g. Roman uppercase [[A]] looks the same as [[Cyrillic]] uppercase [[А]] and Greek uppercase [[alpha]] (Α). There are typefaces tailored for special applications, such as [[cartography]], [[astrology]] or [[mathematics]].