---
title: "The New Puritan: a bombshell in the font world"
date: 2010-12-14T13:35:53Z
modified: 2017-06-26T09:53:22Z
permalink: "https://redmonk.com/jgovernor/the-new-puritan-a-bombshell-in-the-font-world/"
type: post
status: publish
excerpt: ""
wpid: 3066
categories:
  - Uncategorized
tags:
  - Uncategorized
  - fonts
  - typefaces
  - typography
timestamp: 2017-06-26T09:53:22Z
---

[![](http://jgovernor-media.redmonk.com/jgovernor/files/2017/06/puritan-typeface.png)

](http://jgovernor-media.redmonk.com/jgovernor/files/2017/06/puritan-typeface.png)

My friend and coworker [Ben Weiner](http://readingtype.org.uk/texts/quickbrownfox/) is a developer designer. As such he has the font gene – that is, he cares about typography in a deep way – thus our in joke about things being a “bombshell in the font world”. Caring about something is one thing-creating something is another. And open sourcing your work and making it available by [Google Font](https://fonts.google.com/) is yet another. In case you don’t know about Google Font you probably should – its a super simple API that gives you access to some great fonts across all the major browsers. A bit of HTML or Javascript and bob’s your uncle. Ben’s Puritan font is here.

\[update. I got pinged about a broken link in this post, which i have now updated. thanks to Art of Blog, which has this [useful post](http://www.artofblog.com/typography-basics-some-fundamentals-for-body-copy/) about choosing a typeface for the body copy in your site. To be honest, the main thing about reading my own post again, is it sets my teeth a bit on edge, because i keep saying font where I mean typeface. People use them interchangeably, which is fine until someones explains the difference – damn you [Kelsey Breseman](http://ifoundthemeaningoflife.com/)!



The Floating Frog explains the importance like so



**What is a typeface?**
Think of a typeface as the ‘design’ of the design of the alphabet, the shape of the letters that make up the typestyle. The letters, numbers, and symbols that make up a design of type. So when you say “Arial” or “Garamond” you’re talking about a set of letters in a specific style, a ‘typeface’. **What is a font?**
Think of a font as the digital file that contains/describes the typeface. Think of the font as a little piece of software that tells the computer and printer how to display and print the typeface.





The typeface is the style, while the font is the weight, a description of how the typeface is used in the context. ]