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## Text font attributes

Every text font in LATEX has five attributes:

encoding
  This specifies the order that characters appear in the font. The two most common text encodings used in LATEX are Knuth's `TEX text' encoding, and the `TEX text extended' encoding developed by the TEX Users Group members during a TEX Conference at Cork in 1990 (hence its informal name `Cork encoding').
family
  The name for a collection of fonts, usually grouped under a common name by the font foundry. For example, `Adobe Times', `ITC Garamond', and Knuth's `Computer Modern Roman' are all font families.
series
  How heavy or expanded a font is. For example, `medium weight', `narrow' and `bold extended' are all series.
shape
  The form of the letters within a font family. For example, `italic', `oblique' and `upright' (sometimes called `roman') are all font shapes.
size
  The design size of the font, for example `10pt'. If no dimension is specified, `pt' is assumed.

The possible values for these attributes are given short acronyms by LATEX. The most common values for the font encoding are:

`OT1` | TEX text
`T1` | TEX extended text
`OML` | TEX math italic
`OMS` | TEX math symbols
`OMX` | TEX math large symbols
`U` | Unknown
`L<xx>` | A local encoding

The `local' encodings are intended for font encodings which are only locally available, for example a font containing an organisation's logo in various sizes. There are far too many font families to list them all, but some common ones are:

`cmr` | Computer Modern Roman
`cmss` | Computer Modern Sans
`cmtt` | Computer Modern Typewriter
`cmm` | Computer Modern Math Italic
`cmsy` | Computer Modern Math Symbols
`cmex` | Computer Modern Math Extensions
`ptm` | Adobe Times
`phv` | Adobe Helvetica
`pcr` | Adobe Courier

The most common values for the font series are:

`m` | Medium
`b` | Bold
`bx` | Bold extended
`sb` | Semi-bold
`c` | Condensed

The most common values for the font shape are:

`n` | Normal (that is `upright' or `roman')
`it` | Italic
`sl` | Slanted (or `oblique')
`sc` | Caps and small caps

The font size is specified as a dimension, for example `10pt` or `1.5in` or `3mm`; if no unit is specified, `pt` is assumed. These five parameters specify every LATEX font, for example:

Font | TEX font name |  |
`OT1` | `cmr` | `m` | `n` | `10` | Computer Modern Roman 10 point | `cmr10`
`OT1` | `cmss` | `m` | `sl` | `1pc` | Computer Modern Sans Oblique 1 pica | `cmssi12`
`OML` | `cmm` | `m` | `it` | `10pt` | Computer Modern Math Italic 10 point | `cmmi10`
`T1` | `ptm` | `b` | `it` | `1in` | Adobe Times Bold Italic 1 inch | `ptmb8t at 1in`

These five parameters are displayed whenever LATEX gives an overfull box warning, for example:

       Overfull \hbox (3.80855pt too wide) in paragraph at lines 314--318
       []\OT1/cmr/m/n/10 Normally [] and [] will be iden-ti-cal,

The author commands for fonts set the five attributes:

Author command | Attribute | Value in `article` class
`\textrm{..}` or `\rmfamily` | family | `cmr`
`\textsf{..}` or `\sffamily` | family | `cmss`
`\texttt{..}` or `\ttfamily` | family | `cmtt`
`\textmd{..}` or `\mdseries` | series | `m`
`\textbf{..}` or `\bfseries` | series | `bx`
`\textup{..}` or `\upshape` | shape | `n`
`\textit{..}` or `\itshape` | shape | `it`
`\textsl{..}` or `\slshape` | shape | `sl`
`\textsc{..}` or `\scshape` | shape | `sc`
`\tiny` | size | `5pt`
`\scriptsize` | size | `7pt`
`\footnotesize` | size | `8pt`
`\small` | size | `9pt`
`\normalsize` | size | `10pt`
`\large` | size | `12pt`
`\Large` | size | `14.4pt`
`\LARGE` | size | `17.28pt`
`\huge` | size | `20.74pt`
`\Huge` | size | `24.88pt`

The values used by these commands are determined by the document class, using the parameters defined in Section 2.4. Note that there are no author commands for selecting new encodings. These should be provided by packages, such as the `fontenc` package. This section does not explain how LATEX font specifications are turned into TEX font names. This is described in Section 4.

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