To others, a font. Three distinct typefaces belonging to the same family. The standard characters are, of course, the standard characters. They're the usual capitals, lowercases, regular numbers, accentuated capitals and lowercases, and punctuation signs, as well as other signs including monetary and mathematical symbols. Small caps feature lowercases that are replaced with smaller, not simply reduced, versions of the large capitals.
Experts are the more unusual signs such as fractions and certain punctuation signs.
Alternates, also called swash capitals, feature special letters that are scarcely used, such as special ornamented capitals used for ending text. Finally, titling capitals. These are also known as display fonts. The most common is whether a font is a serif or sans serif. While there are infinite differences between various serifs and san serifs, these constitute the two major classifications of fonts.