I confess: I love different typefaces and use far too many of them! My friend the Webmistress has very kindly offered to indulge me by publishing some of my musings on the subject and I hope that somebody out there will find them at least interesting, if not actually useful.

Where to start?   If you are reading this, then you must have access to a computer and even fairly basic ones these days have a range of 'fonts' (as IT people call them - not to be confused with the church variety!), though not necessarily the same ones.   A lot of people will hardly be more aware of this than to notice that some documents look slightly different from others.   They may be able to tell the difference between 'serif' and 'sans serif' and/or recognise names such as 'Arial', 'Courier' and 'Times New Roman'.   They may have personal preferences or (if they use the computer in the course of their work) be bound by a corporate 'style'.   And, in most cases, that will be as far as it goes.

Once you get beyond this level, things can get far more complicated.   Different people deliberately choosing which typefaces to use will be doing so for particular reasons that can vary enormously and the more involved those people are, the less likely it is that they'll agree!   As with many other things, typography is something which used to be restricted to a few specialists, but is now (at least in some forms) available to the masses.   Of course, there are still professional typesetters and, though the tools may have changed somewhat, their reasons for doing things in particular ways or aiming for a particular 'look' will generally be much the same as they would always have been.   However, one advantage of the modern world for them must be that they can no longer be restricted by only having access to one set of little metal letters (which has been a problem in the past).   Having said that, it can still make perfect sense to use only one or two typefaces in the entire course of their careers.

Where things get more tricky is the meteoric rise of 'Desk Top Publishing' (or whatever you prefer to call it), which has given maniacs like me the freedom to produce an enormous range of documents (some of which - like this one - may not even get onto paper at all).

Taste, of course, is a very subjective thing, but it seems quite clear that it is at least as easy to produce something that looks shoddy or downright ghastly as it is to produce something the long term professionals would be proud of, especially since a lot of those responsible have no idea what makes something 'good' or 'bad'.

In my own case, I happen to know people 'in both camps' and have found advice from the professionals to be very helpful in certain circumstances.   Of course, one of the best things about advice is that you can ignore it!   I therefore apologise to those concerned for the 'horrors' which I am still perpetrating...

When choosing which typefaces to use, I try to consider (at least) three things: 'mood', 'clarity' and 'difference'.   My primary reason for straying from a couple of standard typefaces is an attempt to make a piece more eye-catching and I try to make the style fit the content.   Whether it be old-fashioned or futuristic, sombre or whimsical etc. a 'font' (or sometimes a range of 'fonts') can usually be found to match.  In most cases I go for a dramatic-looking title, but stick to something 'ordinary' for most of the text; occasionally (if I think the situation calls for it) I may use a more unusual typeface throughout - and every now and again I go totally bananas!

The second thing to consider is 'clarity'.   The more difficult it is to read something the less likely it is that people will finish (or, sometimes, even start) reading it and, if they do make the effort, the difficulty itself can produce negative feelings, even when the reader would otherwise agree with or enjoy the text.   I'll return to this subject later.

The third reason I've mentioned will depend on circumstances: in some cases, it is advantageous having things in the same 'style' (words like 'continuity', 'familiarity' and 'reassurance' spring to mind), but there are also times when it can help to differentiate between items which would otherwise look very similar - perhaps to emphasise a change of author or a difference of opinion, tone or even subject.  This can be achieved by using typefaces which differ sufficiently to be told apart, but not wildly so.

You can manage quite a lot using just the 'built-in' 'fonts' supplied with a computer and/or particular software, making use of features like 'bold' and 'italic' and varying the character size and layout, but there may come a time when something more adventurous seems to be called for or you may want to produce something non-standard (e.g. a facsimile of an old document^*, like a page from Herr Gutenberg's Bible, or something based on an other-wordly piece of fiction, like a Klingon poem!).   Extra 'fonts' can be obtained from a variety of sources (internet sites and collections on CD-ROM are quite popular) and at a range of costs in time, effort and/or money.   Some are completely free in monetary terms (whether that was the intention of the designer or not!).   An acknowledgement may be required or some form of 'credit'/reference, but this is not always the case.   The next step up may require the payment of a nominal sum (usually single figures of US$), either initially or after a trial period (some characters may be unavailable until the fee is paid - if that includes "e", you'd better cough up sharpish!).   At the top end of the scale are 'fonts' from professional 'foundries', which can cost up to hundreds of dollars or pounds, but may contain a huge range of characters (variants of 'normal' characters, 'foreign' characters, punctuation etc.) - free ones sometimes only have the basic alphabet (if that!).   If you want an 'expert' version of a professional 'font' and are prepared to pay accordingly, that's fine.   Some of us have tighter budgets to live with...

There are different ways you can approach 'font-hunting' on the internet, depending on your requirements and your starting information.   The most basic is to use a search engine to find websites with general collections (or 'libraries') of 'fonts' - unfortunately, these don't always last as long as I'd like, so I'll refer you to the "Summary of Recommended Websites" for the latest links - and then trawl through a bunch of samples, downloading ones you like the look of.   You can be pleasantly surprised by the results of this, but you can also waste a lot of time and get quite frustrated (I should know: I've looked at literally thousands of fonts on dozens of sites!).

A 'font' can appear under different names (there may be minor variations, but not obvious ones e.g. Stonehenge vs Tolkien), sometimes even on the same website!   Also, some of the more popular ones will be on each site you look at, but you may still have to spend time getting through them looking for new ones.

As with most internet searches, you can try to narrow the field by using keywords indicating the type of 'font' you want, but the results can be somewhat unpredictable (page after page of baptismal fonts, for example) and may miss something which is actually there, but not described in a way that helps the search engine find it.   However, there are some specialised sites that can make things easier (in fact, there are almost certainly other ones I haven't encountered yet).

If you have seen a typeface you like, but don't know anything about it, either WhatTheFont (www.myfonts.com/WhatTheFont/) or Identifont (www.identifont.com/) may be able to help.   The first of these compares a scanned sample with 'fonts' in its library and lists those it considers similar, almost always with samples.   The latter goes through a question and answer process concerning characteristics of the 'font' you want and will provide a list with access to samples when it has narrowed things down sufficiently.   There are a couple of disadvantages with both these sites: you may think that some of the results look nothing like what you were hunting for (how they choose them, I don't know) and they deal with commercial 'fonts', so you may not like the prices.   However, they can be a good starting point.

FontSeek (www.fontseek.com/) can look for 'fonts' using keywords or actual 'font' names and lists commercial and free versions (if it can find any), with links to other sites as appropriate.   I've found that a combination of this and one or both of the previously-named sites can prove successful (i.e. use them to discover commercial 'font' names and then search by name for a possible cheaper version).

If you want to, you can probably also find 'rules' for how to use different typefaces in particular situations (e.g. books vs newspapers vs essays etc.) or just go with what 'looks right'...

^*As an exercise to see if I could produce something old-fashioned that looked reasonably authentic, I created the following - based on three genuine early 'newspapers' - using about a dozen fonts and a graphic all found on the world wide web. I'll let you judge how successful I was.