Blame it on Ronald and his Peeve Week 2 for putting me in exasperating mode. I already shared my peeves on Culture and Misconceptions on his blog and will be writing more peeves on Internet and Stereotypes. Here though I’d like to talk about the differences between certain terms that often are being inadvertently erased.
Font vs. Typeface
I’m the first one to admit that I was getting confused by these two terms myself. With the introduction of computers the terms Font and Typeface are often used interchangeably, however it is wrong.
Typefaces are designs, fonts are their digital representation. Typographers, or Type designers create Typefaces and Graphic or Web Designers choose certain typefaces for their projects. In order to actually use those typefaces in our digital works we need to have the corresponding fonts installed on our computers and printers to send the designs for print.
Font is the variation of type in styles (bold, italic) and sizes (12pt, 1in). Typeface describes the shape of characters, created by typographers.
Here are some correct ways of asking questions when referring to Font or Typeface:
- What typeface was used for Star Wars logo?
- Can you email me the font used for Aliens poster?
- Which typefaces are web-safe?
- What font size should I use when highlighting the captions?
Web vs. Internet
We often use these terms synonymously: “I couldn’t find your site on the Internet” or “I read your article on the Web”. However, the Web is just one of the services offered by the Internet. Other services include email, FTP, newsgroups, instant messaging, and much more.
Tag vs. Attribute
Leaving Tag clouds and Tagging aside, Tag is an HTML element that indicates semantic structures in an HTML document and specifies how this document or a portion of it must be formatted. Most HTML Tags have attributes that describe the tag. So for example <IMG /> is a tag that displays an image on the page, but ALT is an attribute of the Image tag that displays the title of that image. Thus it is wrong to say “don’t forget to include ALT tags in your code”.
What are some other terms that we’re often getting confused with?