Font vs. Face
In (pre-computer) typography a “face” referred to the design of the letters. Most often, each face was available in variants such as roman, italic, and small-capitals, and there were variations in weight (light, bold) and width (condensed, expanded) available as well.
On the other hand a “font” referred to the physical collection of type, and generally was described with the face name, size, style, and if there were several choices, weight and width.
The two Monotype companies
Long ago, Monotype was divided into two companies: the original Lanston Monotype based in the United States, and the Monotype Corporation in England, though these companies have undergone minor name changes through the years. The two companies each went their own ways for machinery improvements but there was much cross-pollination. They very definitely each took their own paths for type design, even adopting different numbering systems.
Numbering systems
Lanston numbered their composition faces with a different number for each face, weight, and width, and used suffix letters to designate roman, small-cap, or italic. Monotype Corp. numbered their composition faces similarly but did not use suffix letters; a particular number code includes all of roman, small-cap, and italic (where available).
For roman display faces, Lanston used the same number as the composition face, but a different number for italics, generally appending a ‘1’ (though sometimes ’11’) to the roman face number. But you can’t just assume a number ending with ‘1’ is italic: number 11 is De Vinne, not the italic style of face number 1 (Modern Condensed). On the other hand, small-caps for display sizes use the roman face number and the same ‘B’ suffix that composition faces use.
We don’t have any Monotype Corp. display sizes so I haven’t looked into how these are numbered.
But because we have both Lanston and Monotype Corp. faces, we’ve adopted for internal consistency a bit of a mixed convention for numbering: For Monotype Corp. faces, we use the ‘ABC’ or ‘EFG’ suffixes that Lanston would use even though no specimen book or matrix would ever use them. For Lanston display faces we also add the ‘ABC’ or ‘DEF’ or ‘JK’ suffixes and either omit the extra ‘1’s or show them after a decimal point, so for instance Lanston’s 14-point italic Bodoni matrices are marked 3751 but we would call them 375.1 or 375C because they are just larger sizes of the composition sizes called 375C.
Font Schemes
The mix of letters, figures, and points you get when you purchase a font of type is referred to as the “font scheme”.
These are generally determined by the average frequencies of the letters in text for a particular language. With smaller fonts, the less-used letters may be in larger numbers than their frequency would require; this is done to ensure each font has (for instance) at least 4 of each sort, to make up for future damage and losses.
Scheme types
In addition to the language the scheme is intended for, it may also be specified as a “Body” or “Jobbing” scheme.
Body schemes are designed for text consisting of complete sentences, as one would encounter in the body of a long work such as a book.
Jobbing schemes are designed for shorter work (“jobs”) such as flyers and advertising which require more capital letters and figures.
The following is the font scheme table published by Monotype; it appears in several of their documents, and I extracted this from the back pages of The Monotype Casting Machine Manual:
| Lower-case | a | b | a | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z | total | |||
| Body | 74 | 18 | 34 | 42 | 118 | 24 | 18 | 50 | 74 | 6 | 8 | 42 | 26 | 66 | 66 | 20 | 6 | 58 | 66 | 84 | 38 | 12 | 20 | 6 | 20 | 4 | 1000 | |||
| Full Jobbing | 74 | 18 | 34 | 42 | 118 | 24 | 18 | 50 | 74 | 6 | 8 | 42 | 26 | 66 | 66 | 20 | 6 | 58 | 66 | 84 | 38 | 12 | 20 | 6 | 20 | 4 | 1000 | |||
| ½ Jobbing | 36 | 10 | 16 | 20 | 58 | 12 | 10 | 24 | 36 | 4 | 6 | 20 | 14 | 32 | 32 | 12 | 4 | 26 | 32 | 40 | 18 | 8 | 10 | 6 | 10 | 4 | 500 | |||
| ¼ Jobbing | 18 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 28 | 6 | 6 | 12 | 16 | 4 | 4 | 10 | 6 | 14 | 14 | 8 | 4 | 12 | 14 | 18 | 8 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 250 | |||
| Capitals | A | B | A | D | E | F | G | H | I | J | K | L | M | N | O | P | Q | R | S | T | U | V | W | X | Y | Z | & | £ | — | |
| Body | 8 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 12 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 10 | 6 | 4 | 8 | 18 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 4 | 8 | 12 | 12 | 6 | 4 | 8 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 222 |
| Full Jobbing | 28 | 10 | 14 | 16 | 44 | 10 | 10 | 20 | 28 | 6 | 6 | 16 | 14 | 24 | 24 | 10 | 4 | 22 | 26 | 32 | 14 | 6 | 10 | 4 | 8 | 4 | 8 | 12 | 8 | 438 |
| ½ Jobbing | 16 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 26 | 6 | 6 | 12 | 16 | 4 | 4 | 10 | 8 | 14 | 14 | 6 | 4 | 14 | 16 | 20 | 8 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 6 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 6 | 272 |
| ¼ Jobbing | 10 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 16 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 10 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 10 | 10 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 10 | 12 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 184 |
| Figures, | 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 0 | ¼ | ½ | ¾ | ⅓ | ⅔ | ⅛ | ⅜ | ⅝ | ⅞ | . | , | ; | : | – | ‘ | ! | ? | ( | [ | |
| Body | 10 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 12 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 40 | 50 | 8 | 6 | 10 | 10 | 2 | 3 | 12 | 6 | |
| Full Jobbing | 20 | 12 | 12 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 18 | 24 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 40 | 50 | 8 | 6 | 10 | 10 | 2 | 3 | 12 | 6 | |
| ½ Jobbing | 16 | 10 | 10 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 8 | 10 | 16 | 20 | 30 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 10 | 4 | 4 | 10 | 6 | ||||||||||
| ¼ Jobbing | 10 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 12 | 14 | 24 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 8 | 6 | ||||||||||
| Ligatures | Æ | Œ | æ | œ | æ | œ | ff | fi | fl | ffi | ffl | Spaces | Ems | Ens | Thick | Mid. | Thin | Hair | ||||||||||||
| Body | 4 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 3 | 3 | 3 | 100 | 50 | 200 | 100 | 100 | 50 | |||||||||||||
| Full Jobbing | 8 | 8 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 100 | 50 | 200 | 100 | 100 | 50 | |||||||||||||||
| ½ Jobbing | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 8 | 6 | 6 | 6 | 75 | 40 | 100 | 80 | 80 | 40 | |||||||||||||||
| ¼ Jobbing | 4 | 4 | 4 | 4 | 6 | 6 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 50 | 30 | 60 | 40 | 40 | 20 | |||||||||||||||
| Accents | á | à | â | ä | é | è | ê | ë | í | ì | î | ï | ó | ò | ö | ú | ù | û | ü | Ç | ç | ñ | ||||||||
| 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 4 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | |||||||||
| Small Caps | a | b | c | d | e | f | g | h | i | j | k | l | m | n | o | p | q | r | s | t | u | v | w | x | y | z | ||||
| 8 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 13 | 3 | 3 | 6 | 8 | 2 | 2 | 5 | 6 | 8 | 8 | 3 | 2 | 7 | 8 | 10 | 4 | 2 | 3 | 2 | 3 | 2 | |||||
| Signs | * | † | ‡ | § | ‖ | ¶ | – | … | @ | ? | ? | $ | % | / | + | − | × | ÷ | = | |||||||||||
| 6 | 4 | 2 | 4 | 2 | 6 | 4 | 12 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 4 | 6 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | 2 | ||||||||||||
This table has its shortcomings, for instance, small caps would normally include ‘&’, and to get the table to look correct with the way HTML and CSS work if you try to copy and paste the table you will find that the small caps letters are actually lowercase. The counts for the figures ‘1’ and ‘9’ are optimized for the 20th century, where year numbers all start with ’19’; we should perhaps modify this scheme to have more ‘2’s and ‘0’s and fewer ‘1’s and ‘9’s now that we are firmly into the 21st century.
You can also download this as a Microsoft Excel spreadsheet.
Scheme Adjustments
The actual scheme used for any particular font may be adjusted somewhat to make up for the presence (of lack) of certain ligatures and diphthongs. For instance a font that lacks the ‘f’ ligatures (ff, fi, fl, ffi, and ffl) might come with extra ‘f’s and to a lesser extent extra ‘i’s and ‘l’s.
Occasionally fonts may have alternative forms for some letters; these are sometimes called “swash” letters if they are noticeably more ornamented, or may just be referred to by code like “H91”. Some fonts also feature so-called “long s’s” (which resemble an ‘f’ with no or reduced cross-bar) along with several ligatures. Such extras are not normally included in a font, but can be ordered separately. In general what is part of the regular font and what is extra is largely determined by Monotype’s specimen page for the face.
Some faces, notably the Copperplate group, only contain uppercase letters, but for each pointsize these are cast in four different sizes on the same body size. This allows you to fake mixed-case text by using a larger size for the “uppercase”. For such faces, each size must be ordered separately, along with a font of figures and a font of points; you can specify if you want to use the font scheme counts for uppercase or lowercase.
The presence of certain symbols or punctuation also depends on us having the appropriate matrix to cast from. When you order we will inform you of the actual content of the font.
Symbols
There are many more symbols, ornaments, and piece borders available than are listed in the above scheme. These generally are not associated with any particular face, but ones that are somewhat alphabetic in nature (for instance the ‘@’) come in several variants which can be matched to the style of nearby text.
We have yet to catalogue our holdings of symbol matrices, so if you’re looking for something (particularly something you’ve seen in a copy of the Monotype specimen book), ask and we’ll see if we have it.
Style and Weight
Faces are typically available in roman, italic, and small-caps variants. There are also often bold variants of a face but these have a different identifying number, which is also true for condensed, expanded, or light faces. Each such variant must be ordered separately.
Figure Styles: Hanging and Lining
For old-style faces (the ones using ‘EFG’ suffixes rather than ‘ABC’), there was often a choice of two styles of figures: hanging (sometime called “old-style”) figures have ascenders and descenders and visually fit in well with lowercase text. Lining (sometimes called “modern”) figures all run from the baseline up to the top of the uppercase letters and are the same height and therefore have more visual resemblance to uppercase.
Although the matrices for both of these figure styles would have been available in the day, we now have to work with the matrices we have at hand, so generally any particular font can only contain hanging or lining figures. This availability is not even consistent between various sizes of the same face.
Style variants
Some typefaces provide variants on the basic form. As mentioned above there are “swash” fancy letters, alternative letter forms with codes like “H91”. There are also some faces which come in regular and “long descender” or “long ascender” forms, where the parts of lowercase letters that descend below the baseline or rise above the x-height are extra-long. If you are ordering type to add to existing type you want to ensure you get the matching variant.
Font sizes
Fonts are labeled as to size by the count of some particular sort; a lowercase font would be counted based on the number of ‘a’s, uppercase by ‘A’s, and figures by ‘1’s. This might be marked on the package as “74-a 28-A 20-1” for a full jobbing font using the schemes above.
Fonts are actually ordered as subsets of this table: You can request a Body, Full Jobbing, ½ Jobbing, or ¼ Jobbing font, which would include uppercase, lowercase, figures, points, and ligatures as specified in this table. You can also request just one group of these, for instance, Body Lowercase. The Accents, Small Caps, and Signs fonts are each separate.
You can also request a font for non-English languages, which would include appropriate numbers of accented letters as part of the font, and the overall letter frequencies might be adjusted to better suit the language.
Spacing
The font scheme table provides schemes for mixed packs of spacing, with the spaces ranging in size Em, En, Thick, Medium, Thin, and Hair (respectively 1 em, ½ em, ⅓ em, ¼ em, 1/5 em, and ⅙ em), where 1 em is the nominal point size.
It is not really clear whether the space widths should strictly follow these fractional values or whether they should round to, say the nearest point (e.g. should a 14-point hair space be 2.333 or 2.5 points). Following strict fractions makes it easier to, for instance, center a line because a thick space can be split into two thin spaces to place one at either end of the line. On the other hand, point-rounding could give you a bit of adjustment by replacing an en space (7 points in 14-point) with three hair spaces (7.5 points in 14-point).
For fonts of spacing we cast exact fractions of the em. You can also order a lot of just a single space size, in which case we can cast the spaces to whatever width you want.
Quads
Our ability to cast quads is currently limited; all we can do is cast spaces on a larger mould that just happen to work as quads when turned sideways. For instance a thick space in 36-point is 12×36 points and can be used sideways as a 3-em quad in 12-point.
Alignment
Type is characterized by its alignment, which is the distance from the top of the type body to the baseline of the printed text. The alignment is important in two ways: The first is that if you already have some type and you want to augment this with more of the same type, it is imperative that the alignments be the same; otherwise your text will seem to be dancing across the page rather than being in straight lines. The second is that if you want to mix two typefaces within a line, you need to know the alignments of each so you can make them line up.
For display type, the alignment seems to vary from one face to the next, though usually all the faces of the same size in a family (regular, bold, light, expanded, etc.) have the same alignment.
For composition sizes, Lanston determined the alignment generally by a simple formula based on the point size: Take the point size times 10 plus 5, giving the alignment in thousandths of an inch. This means you can generally mix faces and the text will be aligned properly.
On the other hand, Monotype Corporation used special alignment for each face and size, just as with display type. The alignment is specified in the specimen book, but using a different measurement than for Lanston faces.
We normally cast type to the recommended alignment, but can cast to any alignment you want (within the limitations of the caster). If you are purchasing type to mix with type you already own, we recommend you send up a couple of sample letters to match against; letters with a clear baseline such as capital H are best for this.
Pricing
Because of all the variations possible, rather than coming up with complex pricing schemes, our type and spacing is priced by weight (which amounts to pricing by area). When you order we can estimate the weight (and thus the price) of your font.