Typography is:
1. the art or process of printing from type;
2. the art or process of setting and arranging type for printing;
3. the arrangement, style, or general appearance of printed matter
(from yourdictionary).
It comes via French and Latin from the Greek τύπος (typos), to strike + γραφία (graphia), to write.
I chose this word today because I found an interesting blog about typhography called I Love Typography. As well as discussing typography, the author also gives advice on creating your own fonts, something that quite a few people ask me about. There are also some slightly less-than-serious posts, such as this one about Typoholism, “A disorder characterized by the excessive consumption of and dependence on type…”.
I think I ‘suffer’ from typoholism, and a related condition for which I can’t think of a word at the moment. Can you think of a word for my love of languages and writing systems? Perhaps ‘panglotophilia’.
What about Linguaholic, sounds and looks just like a real word and has a nice ring to it 😉 but with only 91 hits on google, it’s definitely ripe for dissemination to the masses…
Maybe there should be an L.A. (Linguaholics Anonymous) site for all of us linguaphiles. Can you imagine “hi my name’s dmh and I’m a linguaholic. I speak French, Chinese and Russian pretty well, can read Spanish, Italian, Esperanto, my German’s coming along and I’m starting to get a good feel for Persian…” “Is that all?” *Looks at the floor* “Well, some Latin, but only on weekends, at parties, sometimes.”