Graphics are the icing on
the cake; typography is where good design begins.
STYLIN??™ WITH CSS - CHAPTER 3 68
If the chapter title has you wondering ???Aren??™t fonts and text the same
thing????, the answer is ???No,??? and here??™s why.
Fonts are the different kinds of typefaces. Each font is a set of letters,
numbers, and symbols with a unique visual appearance. All fonts
belong to large collections, which describe their general look, such
as serif, sans-serif, or monospace. Font collections are made up of
families, such as Times and Helvetica. A font family in turn can
be broken down into font faces, which are variations on the basic
family, such as Times Roman, Times Bold, Helvetica Condensed,
Bodoni Italic, and so on.
Text simply describes a block of type, like this sentence or the heading
of a chapter, regardless of the font in which it is set.
CSS has a set of properties relating to fonts and a set of properties
relating to text. Font properties relate to the size and appearance
of collections of type. What is its family (Times or Helvetica, for
example)? What size is it? Is it bold or italic? Text properties relate to
the font??™s treatment. What is its line height and letter spacing? Is it
underlined or indented? And so on.
Here??™s a way I think about this perhaps seemingly subtle distinction.
You can apply font styles, such as bold and italic, to a single character,
but text properties, such as line height and text indent, only
make sense in the context of a block of text, such as a headline or a
paragraph.
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