Font Families
FONT FAMILIES
Fonts are divided up into families. There are 4 generic families of fonts: Serif, Sans Serif, Script, and Monospace.
SERIF FONTS
Serif fonts are mainly used for print. Serif fonts are fonts with "serif's" on them. Serifs are like little decoritive hooks that are on fonts. Some examples of serif fonts are Garmond, Georgia, New York, Times, and Times New Roman. Times New Roman is the most known font, as this is the default for Microsoft Office and Open Office. From a web designers perspective, serif fonts are harder to read online. This would be the same for documents that are read on screen or a presentation that is viewed on screen.
SAN SERIF FONTS
Sans Serif fonts(or no serif) are plain, flaring free fonts more suitable for screen viewing. These are the types of fonts that you would use for documents that will be viewed on screen and not printed like Powerpoint Presentations. Some examples of san serif fonts are: Arial, Geneva, Helvetica, Lucica Sans, Trebuchet, and Verdana. Web pages should use san serif fonts, because they are easier on the eyes.
NOTE: Here's a note in regards to all fonts except for monospace fonts. Both serif families and other fonts are not spaced equally, meaning each character is a different width. Whereas, monospace fonts like courier or courier new (my favorite kind) are equally spaced no matter what. I like using monospace fonts because it makes formatting certain documents easier.
MONOSPACE FONTS
Monospace fonts are equally spaced fonts. These fonts are also called typewriter style fonts and this is the type of font programmers/web developers use for displaying code/code snippets. Some examples of monospace fonts are: Courier, Courier New, Ludica Console, and Monaco.
SCRIPT FONTS
Script fonts are cursive style fonts that may be used in some desktop publishing settings. They should never be used in professional documents or screen presentations as they are harder to read. A few examples of script fonts are: Comic Sans, Ludica Handwriting, and Zapf Chancery.
Now I just listed the generic fonts. There are probably thousands of fonts out there. If you're an Apple or Microsoft Office user you're probably familiar with the term True Type Font. TrueType was invented by Apple. TrueType fonts are scalable fonts that look good both on screen and in print. Remember, monospace fonts are equally spaced and other font are not; meaning if you type a word (typewriter) in Arial and in Courier New, the word may not be the same width. (Did that make sense?)
I hope this helped, if you have any questions don't hesitate to contact me.
