Hey Tiffany,
I did check out the categories used by myfonts, fontshop etc. but they were a bit too 'creative' for my task. I didn't realise Eric had his own system - many many thanks for that - I shall now go about nabbing him!

R

The topic of this thread is near and dear to my heart. I have struggled with trying to understand the 'classic' classifying systems and have found that they are most useful when talking about text typefaces. After several years of frequenting font newsgroups what I found was that very few ID requests were ever concerned with text typefaces, and most display types that were not just super bold or compressed versions of text faces, defied any of the classical categories. What was more, the conventional (classical) systems did not agree always on terms, and were hardly equipped to deal with typefaces that were devised since those schemes were created, if they were not based on classical letterforms. In other words too many typefaces wouldn't fall in any categories that existed in the classification schemes that are usually described (which by the way, do not all agree with each other either).

My own answer has been to try to define type in categories that go in heirarchies, with the goal that special knowledge or training should not be necessary to use the system. The top grouping (SuperGroup) is based simply on how the type appears to have been created: either by hand (Script in my broad definition), or with tools (ruler, compass, calipers, etc.). The latter category includes almost all text type and many kinds of display type, but nothing that looks like it was hand-drawn, even if all the same tools were used to make it -- appearance is the key.

The next tier is the main one for me, and it expresses the Style Group. There is a relevant mnemonic for this: F.A.C.E.S. = Formal, Artistic, Casual, Elegant and Strange. Those of you familiar with my Script Font ID Guide will see how I have applied these Style Groups, and broken them down into Style Categories. That Guide essentially covers the whole Script SuperGroup.

The other SuperGroup, which doesn't have a handy name (Non-Script seems closest to my idea), has the same Style Groups (F.A.C.E.S.), but will have different Style Categories ( I say 'will have' because this is still taking shape): The Formal Style Group is lettering for extended text purposes. Categories within it will be based on serif type, including semi and sans. These will be the Roman forms (not italics) and only in weights normally used in books, magazines and newspaper text (not headlines); The Artistic Style Group will include Geometric Types (not meant to be text -- see the Bauhaus-style Font ID Guide), Very Heavy weights of Formal faces, Ethnic or Historic styles (including Futuristic) and other Display designs that do not look hand-drawn; Casual will be for the Italics of the Formal faces, as well as lettering that resembles Formal type, but has a more relaxed style that would make it unsuited for extended text; the Elegant Style Group would be the Ultra thin and very narrow versions of Formal Text faces, as well as Titling faces that are all-caps; the Strange Style Group would have grunge faces and other non-hand-drawn types with erratic letterforms and baselines. This would probably include experimental faces with marginal legibility.

Within the Formal Non-Script faces I have already developed an identification aid (Sans Serif Font ID Guide) for the Sans serif faces that is based on the configurations of 7 key letters. My Key for the Serif faces is still being developed, but the goal is to use a limited subset of characters and match the combinations of distinctive characteristics to rapidly narrow down the choices for the font.

Sorry, for the endless response, but this seemed like the right time to spell out my own approach, for what it's worth.