Definitions
American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition
- n. The art and technique of printing with movable type.
- n. The composition of printed material from movable type.
- n. The arrangement and appearance of printed matter.
Century Dictionary and Cyclopedia
- n. The art of composing types and printing from them.
- n. In a restricted use, type-work; the branch of printing connected with composition; the preparation of matter in type for use in printing.
- n. The general character or appearance of printed matter.
- n. Emblematical or hieroglyphic representation.
Wiktionary
- n. The art or practice of setting and arranging type; typesetting.
- n. The practice or process of printing with type.
- n. The appearance and style of typeset matter.
GNU Webster's 1913
- n. obsolete The act or art of expressing by means of types or symbols; emblematical or hieroglyphic representation.
- n. The art of printing with types; the use of types to produce impressions on paper, vellum, etc.
WordNet 3.0
- n. the craft of composing type and printing from it
- n. art and technique of printing with movable type
Etymologies
- From French typographie. (Wiktionary)
- French typographie, from Medieval Latin typographia : Greek tupos, impression + Latin -graphia, -graphy. (American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition)
Examples
“I should add that I just stuck the title typography in there really quickly, and I used the same font on all of them so that hopefully the voting would be based on the images, not the graphic type fonts and colors.”
“Argh, well, nobody honest involved in typography for the last 50 years would agree with that, David in Nashville.”
“Beloved by Scrabble fans, em (/εm/) can mean the letter M or a unit of measurement in typography – hence em dash (one of which appeared just there, before hence).”
“Sure, the layout and typography is simple, but the stark, complicated image immediately captured my imagination.”
“Either the typography is fabulous and the layout is lousy, or the sidebar is beautifully designed but the rest of it uses terrible colors.”
“After years working in typography, I felt experienced enough to ponder the issue of justified vs. flush left — one of the deeper questions.”
“Stephen Lathrop: After years working in typography, I felt experienced enough to ponder the issue of justified vs. flush left — one of the deeper questions.”
“Another cool experiment in typography: the Word Clock, by Simon Heys.”
“Below that, Paul had posted some gorgeous examples of ornamental typography from the 16th, 17th and 18th century; below that, beautiful colored images from a 15th century edition of the famous maps drawn by the Greek astronomer Ptolemy around 160 A.D.”
“The brown and red really pop and the typography is interesting.”
Lists
These user-created lists contain the word ‘typography’.
-
phrontistery-t
from phrontistery.info
tyromancy, tyroma, tyroid, tyriasis, tyrannicide, typtology, typothetae, typomania, typography, typographia, typhonic, typhomania and 930 more...
-
Unknown
coalition, cabinet, tweet, defuse, steep, ancestral, mindset, breach, infraction, egregious, curb, backbite and 282 more...
-
Logolepsy
"Luciferous Logolepsy is a collection of over 9,000 obscure English words. Though the definition of an 'English' word might seem to be straightforward, it is not. There exist so many adopted, deriv...
Anschauung, Areopagus, Argus, Briarean, Dei gratia, Dei judicium, Deo volente, Duecento, Foehn, Geflugelte Worte, Gegenschein, Hakenkreuz and 9230 more...
-
#faveword
Words chosen as favorites for the Twitter hashtag #faveword.
autumnal, grotto, chiaroscuro, sfumato, homunculus, zing, zest, effervescent, bewitch, avuncular, susurrus, Styrofoam and 205 more...
-
graphs
lithograph, homograph, topography, psychogeography, typography, pictograph, polygraph, cinematography, stenographer, cartography, choreographer, oceanographer and 24 more...
-
Typography
An attempt to assemble all common typographic jargon.
typography, alignment, ascender, descender, baseline, boldface, bullet, cap height, glyph, condensed, digraph, backslant and 11 more...
-
There's A Virtual Museum For That!
List of virtual or on-line museums, from barf bags to corkscrews. List museum subject and in comment form provide a link to the virtual museum.
moist towelettes, corkscrews, air sickness bags, wax figures, HP Calculators, ejection, radioactive consu..., Pac-Man museum, weird nebraska, music museum, navel fluff, airbrush and 16 more...
-
big book gre
abase, abbess, abbey, abbot, abdicate, abdomen, abdominal, abduction, abed, aberration, abet, abeyance and 6691 more...
-
words
my words. my mind. my gosh.
try not to enjoy it too much.git, ghoti, sauce, quail, querulous, quarrelsome, reliability, untoward, incongruities, fission, fanatic, apple and 206 more...
-
The Sog Collection
My big word list.
chaos, flaccid, empirical, flotsam, cacophony, grumble, assuage, awe, romance, mortality, coalesce, fortuitous and 3282 more...
-
Words I like
This is a list of my favourite words (phrases) in english, as a second language. I love them mostly because of how they sound and their meaning.
ninja, cookie, skill, zip, plentiful, digg, debris, pancake, cucumber, fetch, pot, backpack and 461 more...
-
AbraxasZugzwang's Words
atavism, abraxas, sisyphean, frust, fetus-in-fetu, arhythmically, queef, epidemiology, abecedarian, troglodyte, chiaroscuro, philology and 631 more...
-
kewpid's Words
moleskine, araldite, dessicate, cellar door, grotesque, fallacy, vendetta, raindrop, panacea, ethereal, hircus, treppenwitz and 446 more...
-
mandarine's Words
antepenultimate, metonymy, synecdoche, pop, kern, inherit, clique, scrumptious, macerate, murmur, kerning, veranda and 1068 more...
-
Words of Whimsy & Grace
abecedary, addendum, ampersand, anachronism, avuncular, balderdash, barnacle, befuddle, behemoth, bejeebers, blabbermouth, blatherskite and 465 more...
-
dienekes's Words
chutzpah, lexicon, intrepid, pedagogical, schlemiel, schism, erudite, anathema, pugilist, jaunty, paradigm, automaton and 949 more...
Tweets
Looking for tweets for typography.

Telofy “The principles of typography as I understand them are not a set of dead conventions but the tribal customs of the magic forest, where ancient voices speak from all directions and new ones move to unremembered forms.”
—Robert Bringhurst, The Elements of Typographic Style Apr 29, 2010
hernesheir virtual typography musem. Lots of typefaces to peruse. Feb 2, 2010
bilby Aerial map typography. Aug 24, 2009
bilby Compare tie-pography. Aug 24, 2009
reesetee Loving that website mollusque cites here, too. :-) Jan 27, 2008
john I enjoyed Helvetica. The interviews were great, but I have to say, I wanted more. More history, I think, to put things in context. Jan 26, 2008
uselessness So I finally just watched Helvetica, and it was great. I laughed, I cried... who would have thought a movie about a font could be so enjoyable? And now I'm so inspired I just want to design something! Jan 26, 2008
mollusque Also for the typography nerd, the Plantin-Moretus Museum in Antwerp. It has a vast collection of printing materials from the 1500s to 1800s, including the only known complete original set of Garamond dies. Jan 25, 2008
reesetee Great! Thanks, s! Jan 25, 2008
uselessness Yes! I've heard great things about this one but didn't know it was available free online. Thanks for the link, I'm downloading it now to watch after work. :-) Jan 24, 2008
skipvia This YouTube video is a must for typography nerds. I know you're out there. Uselessness?... Jan 24, 2008