phont

Phont is a term used in typography and linguistics to describe a font or font family optimized for rendering phonetic notation, especially the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). The word phont is a blend of phonetics and font, and, in practice, it refers to any typeface that provides broad IPA glyph support, robust handling of combining diacritics, tone letters, and suprasegmental marks, and reliable cross-platform rendering.

Although not an official typographic category, phont-like fonts are commonly used in linguistic documentation, textbooks, and field notebooks. In many workflows the term "phont" is used informally to distinguish IPA-capable fonts from general-purpose typefaces.

Technical features typically associated with phonts include complete IPA coverage (Unicode blocks for IPA and Latin Extended-D, combining diacritical marks), high-quality glyph geometry for diacritics that align with base letters, good kerning and ligature handling, and compatibility with typesetting engines such as TeX/LaTeX (via tipa or similar packages) and modern OpenType features (smart ligatures, mark-to-base placement).

Commonly employed phonts include specialized IPA fonts such as Doulos SIL and Charis SIL, as well as general-purpose fonts that include extensive IPA support like DejaVu Sans. Designers may also create dedicated phonts for specific language documents or publication pipelines, balancing readability with compact glyph sets for dense phonetic transcription.

See also: IPA font, phonetics, typography, OpenType, TeX, LaTeX.