Font vs. Typeface

A Font of Information

Back in the days when all typefaces were made of little pieces of metal that had to be arranged one character at a time in a big tray for use in a printing press, the word font referred to one specific style of type in a single size. 12-point Times New Roman and 72-point Times New Roman were two completely different fonts, one small, one large. Today, a font is a computer file stored on our computers. If you have the font Times New Roman you can make it most any size from a tiny 4-points to a huge 400-points. Font and typeface once meant two different things. Now they are interchangeable terms.