4.3 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 http://www.tug.dk/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; see \baselinestretch, next.

\baselinestretch

LaTeX multiplies the line spacing by the value of the \baselinestretch parameter; the default factor is 1. A change takes effect when \selectfont (see below) is called. You can make a line skip change happen for the entire document, for instance doubling it, by doing \renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{2.0} in the preamble.

However, the best way to double-space a document is to use the setspace package. In addition to offering a number of spacing options, this package keeps the line spacing single-spaced in places where that is typically desirable, such as footnotes and figure captions. See the package documentation.

\linespread{factor}

Equivalent to \renewcommand{\baselinestretch}{factor}, and therefore must be followed by \selectfont to have any effect. Best specified in the preamble, or use the setspace package, as just described.

\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}