When I was writing headlines for my college newspaper back in the age of metal type, I frequently ran into a sticky problem. Over the years, some of the letters had been lost or broken, but they were horrendously expensive to replace. The printer figured that we could make do with what he had. Rs left in our favorite headline font. When I graduated from college and found a job on a daily newspaper with a seemingly unlimited supply of Rs, I knew I'd hit the big time.
Metal type is a thing of the past.
Thanks to powerful processors, sophisticated software and cheap printers, virtually every computer is a potential publishing house. Microsoft Windows installs 34 fonts when you load the operating system onto your computer. Some users get hooked on fonts. They prowl the Web, looking for free or low-cost typefaces. Thanks to computer power, almost anyone can be a typeface designer these days, too.