Looking for a 'dictionary' style font

[oiseau-rouge]

Hi

I've been searching for a font that I can use to type text in the style of dictionary entries. I've been looking for ages but can't find a single contender - does anyone have any ideas?

Thank you :-)

[Virgo Nightingale]

I'm not sure what you mean by 'dictionary style', but pretty much any font that's easy to read at a small size would be a good contender for dictionary copy. Try a simple, classic serif like Baskerville, Caslon, Garamond, Bembo, Minion, Century Schoolbook... Or a simple serif like Univers, Trade Gothic, or even the good ol' standbys like Helvetica or Arial.

[budafist]

What Virgo said.

Or you could scan a page of what you mean.

[Drazan]

What you are probably looking for is a phonetic font with all the little pronunciation marks, correct?

If you search "phonetic fonts" on google, i'm sure you'll come up with a few resources.

http://www.fonts.com/FindFonts/detail.htm?pid=202420

Jade

[Virgo Nightingale]

Good call, Drazan. That could be what he/she means.

[captain spanky]

courier. :)

[Broacher]

Comic Sans would make an interesting choice for a dictionary.

[captain spanky]

or papyrus... lets see a whole dictionary in papyus... ;)

[Broacher]

It would be a fun gallery: take a dictionary page (maybe starting with the word 'font'?) and set the styles to all link to a base style. And then just modify the base. You'd have to drop the phonetics. If nothing else, it would be a fun type class exercise.

[Bowfinpw]

I think there have been some recent fonts specifically designed either for dictionaries or Phone books. Font Bureau is one of the sources, and from a different source, I am pretty sure Fedra and Fedra Sans were both designed with this in mind.

In general, fonts with many weights and large x-heights are good for relatively small type.

[budafist]

Why make it easy then? Might as well set up a dictionary in Wingdings to confuse them and make them really work for knowledge :)

[Broacher]

whystopatfontchoiceletsremovecapitalizationspacesa ndpunctuationandhavesomerealfun

(that's how the Roman scholars were trained)

[Virgo Nightingale]

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