What is the difference between a font and a typeface?

Question

Originally, the typeface is a particular design of type, while a font is a type in a particular size and weight. In short, a typeface usually gathers many fonts.Nowadays, with the digital design of documents, you often see those two words used rather interchangeably. It doesn't make much sense to say that “Helvetica 12” and “Helvetica 14” are different fonts (they used to be different drawers with different blocks of lead, now they're all a single OTF file!).So, my question is: Does the difference between a 'font' and a 'typeface' subside in the language? Or are *font* and *typeface* now used interchangeably even by pros?

Answer 1

I love this question.

A typeface is the family of fonts.

A font is a kind of typeface.

The typeface is Open Sans where as Open Sans Thin is the font.