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What's the difference between a font, a layout, a keyboard, and an input language?

NOTE: This archived documentation has not been updated recently and may contain information that is no longer relevant

What is the difference between a font, a layout, a keyboard, and an input language? We'll define these terms in this article. Our goal is to clarify what many people find to be a confusing distinction.

Font

A font is the exact style of characters on a screen or page. The following are fonts:

• 14pt Arial
• 9pt Tahoma italic
• 18pt Times New Roman bold

A font doesn't need to be related to a language, a layout, or a keyboard:

• Some fonts cover thousands of languages, and some fonts cover only one.
• Almost all fonts are designed to work with many layouts and keyboards, while only a very few are designed for a specific layout or keyboard.

Technically a font is different from a font family (which has to do with sizes) or a typeface (which has to do with bolding and italics), but in common use they mean the same thing.

For more information on fonts, see the Wikipedia article Font.