A huge variety of fonts are available for the Mac. Understanding how they work can help you use them to best effect — and prevent you from using too many!
Before attempting to create or modify fonts, make sure your application works with your kinds of font. Fontographer works with TrueType or PostScript fonts for both Mac and PC.
Font Categories
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Different fonts are suited to different purposes. Serif fonts are easiest to read in large blocks of text. Here are some examples:-
 
San-serif fonts, as shown below, stand out in headlines and titles.
 
You may need special fonts for fractional characters such as:-
 
or for foreign or specialised characters:-
 
Unfortunately these fonts don’t usually provide any corellation between the character and what you type! The last example is used for the International Phonetic Alphabet and shows a random sample of characters.
Decorative fonts can be eye-catching. Examples include:-
 
Finally there are dingbat fonts that you can combine with text as an alternative to standard graphic elements. The following show a random selection of characters:-
 
Font Parameters
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The diagram below shows the basic elements that characterise a font:-
 
The font’s weighting or style and the line spacing are also important.
Legibility
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There must be a balance between continuity of a line of text and the variations that identify each character. The most important features are:-
Proportion With narrow letters you can view a line of words at a glance
— but if too narrow each character is indistinct.
Spaces Horizontal spaces between characters should be easy to see
— but shouldn’t break up the line.
Ascenders Ascenders and descenders must stand out between lines.
— ascenders are more important since we read downwards.
Readability
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Readability is determined by banding, the space between lines, set by the height of lower-case letters. Banding leads the eye from one row to the next.
The ascent is set by upper–case letters and numbers. In most fonts the lower-case letters are as high as possible compared to the upper–case. Such fonts, closely placed, are hard to read.
The space between the top of upper–case letters and the bottom of the descenders from the line above is the leading — pronounced ‘ledding’. If there’s enough banding you can increase the lead, ascent or both. A large ascent looks elegant and doesn’t disturb banding.
Serifs
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Characters are best defined by sharp edges. Serifs, the horizontal lines on characters, add distinction and increase the apparent line density. Serifs should always align with each other to emphasise the line itself.
The font you’re reading is a serif typeface
Line density can also be increased by reducing letter width and spacing — this makes the words stand out more clearly.
Sans– serif fonts, such as Geneva, are more difficult to read than serif typefaces — but can be useful in confined spaces.
The font you’re reading is a sans-serif typeface
Proportional and Monospaced Fonts
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In a proportional font each character can have a different width. Here’s an example:-
In WIWIW the letter W is widest and I is narrowest.
Numerals are usually all of the same width to make them line up easily in columns of numerical data. In a monospaced font, such as Monaco or Courier, all characters, including punctuation and spaces, are of a fixed width, as on a typewriter. For example:-
In WIWIW the letter W and I are the same width.
These can be useful in tables — but not in long lengths of text!
Ligatures and Pair Kerning
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These occur when two letters are tied together.
For example:-
aesthetically ù æsthetically
Some applications can add ligatures automatically. Not all fonts support these characters — use KeyCaps or PopChar to find out what keys to press!
Some fonts automatically kern fonts. For example:-
A V Not kerned — the letters are separate
AV This is kerned — the letters overlap
Font Dimensions
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Font dimensions are measured in points. The European (Didot) point equals 1/68 of an inch whilst the US or British printer’s point is 0.0138" — on the Mac this is approximated to 1/72" or 0.01389". Hence on a 72 dpi screen each point appears as a single pixel.
The following information may be useful:-
1 point = 0.351 mm
1 inch = 72.27 points — rounded to 72 points on a Mac
1 pica = 12 points — often used to define column widths
1 em = horizontal space equal to square of font* — width of letter m
1 en = half em — width of letter n
* for a 10 point font this is 10 points by 10 points
Font Size
The size of a font is the distance from the top of the highest ascender to the bottom of the lowest descender. This should equate to the distance from the baseline of one row of text to the next, assuming no line spacing.
Ï Newspaper print is often 9 point, usually in Times font.
Ï Fonts with a large X-height and small ascenders and descenders always look big for
their size.
Leading
Line spacing or leading is measured between the baseline of each row. If lines are spaced by 14 points the line is said to be 14 points leading. The term 12/14 means 12 point font with 14 points leading.
Ï 10 point Palatino with 12 points leading gives a good book style for printing.
Styles and Weights
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The style of a font significantly changes it’s appearance. With PostScript fonts each style is treated as a different font — which is what it really is!
The weight of a font determines the thickness or heaviness of each character. Here are the common weight names, in ascending order:-
Ultra Light
Extra Light
Light
Roman, Book, Regular, Plain, Normal
Medium
Demi
Bold, Boldface
Extra Bold, Heavy, Black
Ultra Bold
Font Parameters in Detail
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The crucial font dimensions are:-
 
Ascent Maximum height of an Ascender for the entire font.
Descent Maximum depth of Descender for the entire font.
Leading Space between each row of characters.
Width The cursor movement for each individual character — measured from
the end of the kern space which can vary with each character.
Maximum Kern The largest kern possible for the entire font.
Offset Positioning of an individual character within the maximum width —
measured from the beginning of the kern space.
Maximum Width The smallest width all characters fit into — its left hand side is the
reference for offsets. In some fonts specific characters can exceed
the maximum width — but this doesn’t usually cause any problems!
The Characters used in Fonts
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The Mac’s standard keyboard generates only 219 characters, including spaces. This means that most fonts won’t contain all the characters you’ll need! If you’re fortunate enough to have GX fonts you may be able to select one of 65,000 characters!
Apart from letters, numbers and punctuation many fonts contain shapes and symbols unrelated to the keyboard characters known as dingbats.
Ï Any symbols in a standard font may differ from those in other fonts.
If you change a font used for text you’ll change many of the symbols.
Non-printing Characters and Hyphens
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Carriage Returns
Strictly speaking a carriage return is a control code rather than a font character! When you press Return you generate a hard return that forces the text onto a new line, even if you’re in the middle of a word.
If you press Control-Return you produce a soft return. This is useful if you want to avoid awkward splits in the middle of words — but you’ll get more gaps in other lines!
Spaces
Most fonts provide at least two sizes of horizontal space. You can press the spacebar for a standard space or press it with the Option key for a non-breaking space (NBSP). Non-breaking spaces behave as letters — if you enter one in the middle of a word the text doesn’t wrap to the next line.
Ï In some fonts a non-breaking space is wider than a standard space. It can be used to
follow any italics that lean awkwardly into standard spaces.
Short and Long Spaces
Some applications use a short space (en-space) or long space (em-space) of width equal to n and m respectively — in some cases they’re the same width as 0 and 00 instead!
Since these spaces have no particular ASCII code they can be interpreted differently by various applications. They’re best avoided — try using tabs and standard spaces instead!
If you need to transfer data containing en- and em-spaces from one application to another you could:-
• Filter out the spaces in a Save As … operation.
OR
• Use Change All to convert the spaces to tildes.
In the destination application use Change All to convert them back again!
· Only one space should follow a full-stop, colon, exclamation mark or question mark.
Hyphens
The short hyphen, or en-dash, of width equal to n, is produced by pressing Option-dash
— it’s longer and more attractive than the standard dash that’s often used as a minus sign! It’s sometimes used as a hard hyphen, or non-breaking hyphen for holding hyphenated words together on one line.
The long hypen or em-dash has a width equal to m, but this can vary between fonts. It’s produced by pressing Option-Shift-dash. It looks better with a space before and after it — use a non-breaking space if you want to prevent unwanted indents on new lines!
Punctuation and Accents
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Quotes
Curved single and double quote marks look more professional than straight marks. You can generate them on a keyboard by pressing Option or Shift-Option with the [ and ] keys. It’s even easier if you use a word processor with smart quotes built-in — this should automatically convert straight quotes into the curved versions.
Ellipsis
This character (…) should be produced using Option-; rather than using a string of periods. If it comes at the end of a sentence put any punctuation first. Avoid using spaces before or after an ellipsis, unless it’s at the end of a sentence.
Diæreses
This is the double-dot or bar that’s placed over vowels that should be sounded separately. For example:-
naive ù naïve
In most fonts you obtain this using Option-U followed by the required letter.
Accents and Deadkeys
Mac keyboards have a number deadkeys that come into effect when Option is pressed in combination with E, I, U, N, or `.
√Ö Nothing happens until you press another key combination
If you press the same combination again you’ll get the appropriate accent mark
for the letter. For example, U gives a ¨ accent. Each time you use the same
combination you’ll get the same accent — you’ll need two backspaces to remove it.
If you press the spacebar as the second combination the accent still appears
— but you can get rid of it with one backspace.
If you press a letter key on its own as the second combination, you’ll get that
letter with the accent mark over it — assuming the accent works with it! You can
use the Shift key as well if you need an upper case letter. If the accent doesn't work
with the letter, the accent mark is followed by the letter.
Deadkeys let you get to a special part of the font’s character table that contains the shape of a letter complete with its accent mark. Other letters that can’t be obtained using deadkeys are shown in the Key Caps DA when you press both the Shift and Option keys.
The deadkeys are:-
Deadkey Accent Accent Name Appropriate Characters
E ´ Acute a,e,i,o,u
` ` Grave a,e,i,o,u
I ^ Circumflex a,e,i,o,u
U ¨ Umlaut or Diaresis a,e,i,o,u
N ~ Tilde a,n,o
The tilde, when not used with a letter, is on the mid-line level of a dash — so you can use it for maths or logic. You can also generate a tilde using Shift-`.
If you have a word processor with overstrike you may use the following with lower-case characters:–
Keys Accent Accent Name
Shift-Option-M Àú Tilde
Shift-Option-, ¯ Macron
Option-H Àô Dot
The dot can be used to create an elevated dotted line.
Non-keyboard Characters
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You may be annoyed to find you can’t use the last four characters of a font — represented by the numbers 252 to 255 (hex FC to FF) but not usually generated by the keyboard. You can use a macro application such as KeyQuencer to produce these values — but make sure the trigger keys aren’t used for other characters!
For example, using KeyQuencer:-
Key Macro Instruction Name
Control-Option-†-[ Type $FC ¸ Cedilla
Control-Option-†-] Type $FD ˝ Hungarian umlaut
Control-Option-†-; Type $FE ˛ Ogonek diacritic
Control-Option-†-' Type $FF ˇ Carib diacritic
Some fonts produce more exciting characters — they’re used for special arrows in Zapf Dingbats and curvy bracket elements in Symbol.
If you don’t have a macro you can copy and paste the characters from a file already containing these ASCII values.
Standard Font Characters
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The following characters can be found in most fonts:-
The size of a numbers in a fraction should be just over half the size of a standard character. For example, fractional numbers in 12 point text should be 7 point — for 10 point text they should be 5.5 or 6 point. You should use a superscript font for the top number and press Option-Shift-1 in the regular font size to get a slash at the right angle.
Font styles are important in a slick presentation. Try to avoid using too many fonts and styles on any one page!
Italics
Italics are useful for emphasising a word or phrase in a sentence, or for highlighting foreign words. They can also be used when single letters are used as words, such as in equations.
Bold or Boldface
This gains the reader’s attention but can make reading difficult. It’s particularly useful for headings and titles.
Underline
This style is inherited from the days of the typewriter — it often makes text difficult to read. Bold or italic is preferable.
Subscripts and Superscripts
Try to use a reasonable size of font, such as 12 point, when you need these. The Mac will automatically increase the leading when they’re entered — this may give uneven line spacing. Avoid this by selecting a spacing of at least six lines per inch.
