For every news story or advertisement you see, there is at least one writer who has agonized over every word. But a designer has also agonized over how those words look. Here at Vox, for example, a designer told me that the fonts you're reading now were chosen because they convey "openness, boldness, willingness to experiment, thoughtfulness and trustworthiness." This is a list that shows just how much thought goes into the look of letters.

*And before we begin, let's acknowledge that the title of this article is inexact: we tend to think of Times New Roman and Helvetica as fonts, but what you're about to read is a list of typefaces, categories of fonts, and letterings, among other things. These are all different words that refer to subtly different things. A more apt title might be "27 ways that letters themselves, and not what they say, explain your world." Pedants may cringe, but the point here is to show that it isn't just words that explain, change, and define our world. Often, it's how those words are presented.