4.4 Low-level font commands ¶

These commands are primarily intended for writers of macros and packages. The commands listed here are only a subset of the available ones.

\fontencoding{encoding} ¶

Select the font encoding, the encoding of the output font. There are a large number of valid encodings. The most common are OT1, Knuth’s original encoding for Computer Modern (the default), and T1, also known as the Cork encoding, which has support for the accented characters used by the most widespread European languages (German, French, Italian, Polish and others), which allows TeX to hyphenate words containing accented letters. For more, see https://ctan.org/pkg/encguide.

\fontfamily{family} ¶

Select the font family. The web page https://tug.org/FontCatalogue/ provides one way to browse through many of the fonts easily used with LaTeX. Here are examples of some common families.

pag Avant Garde

fvs Bitstream Vera Sans

pbk Bookman

bch Charter

ccr Computer Concrete

cmr Computer Modern

cmss Computer Modern Sans Serif

cmtt Computer Modern Typewriter

pcr Courier

phv Helvetica

fi4 Inconsolata

lmr Latin Modern

lmss Latin Modern Sans

lmtt Latin Modern Typewriter

pnc New Century Schoolbook

ppl Palatino

ptm Times

uncl Uncial

put Utopia

pzc Zapf Chancery

\fontseries{series} ¶

Select the font series. A series combines a weight and a width. Typically, a font supports only a few of the possible combinations. Some common combined series values include:

m Medium (normal)

b Bold

c Condensed

bc Bold condensed

bx Bold extended

The possible values for weight, individually, are:

ul Ultra light

el Extra light

l Light

sl Semi light

m Medium (normal)

sb Semi bold

b Bold

eb Extra bold

ub Ultra bold

The possible values for width, individually, are (the meaning and relationship of these terms varies with individual typefaces):

uc Ultra condensed

ec Extra condensed

c Condensed

sc Semi condensed

m Medium

sx Semi expanded

x Expanded

ex Extra expanded

ux Ultra expanded

When forming the series string from the weight and width, drop the m that stands for medium weight or medium width, unless both weight and width are m, in which case use just one (‘m’).

\fontshape{shape} ¶

Select font shape. Valid shapes are:

n Upright (normal)

it Italic

sl Slanted (oblique)

sc Small caps

ui Upright italics

ol Outline

The two last shapes are not available for most font families, and small caps are often missing as well.

\fontsize{size}{skip} ¶

Set the font size and the line spacing. The unit of both parameters defaults to points (pt). The line spacing is the nominal vertical space between lines, baseline to baseline. It is stored in the parameter \baselineskip. The default \baselineskip for the Computer Modern typeface is 1.2 times the \fontsize. Changing \baselineskip directly is inadvisable since its value is reset every time a size change happens; instead use \baselinestretch. (see \baselineskip & \baselinestretch).

\linespread{factor} ¶

Equivalent to \renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{factor}, and therefore must be followed by \selectfont to have any effect. Best specified in the preamble. See \baselineskip & \baselinestretch, for using setspace package instead.

\selectfont ¶

The effects of the font commands described above do not happen until \selectfont is called, as in \fontfamily{familyname}\selectfont. It is often useful to put this in a macro:
\newcommand*{\myfont}{\fontfamily{familyname}\selectfont}
(see \newcommand & \renewcommand).

\usefont{enc}{family}{series}{shape} ¶

The same as invoking \fontencoding, \fontfamily, \fontseries and \fontshape with the given parameters, followed by \selectfont. For example:

\usefont{ot1}{cmr}{m}{n}