Words of Type | Encyclopedia

Roadmap

This roadmap lists down all the things that have been done so far, and what we are planning to do for the near future.
This project can not exist without everybody’s help and contribution, whether as individuals or companies. There is always much to do, from maintenance to improvements, and of course, adding more words and languages. So have a look at this roadmap, and please consider supporting us!

You can do so as an individual by subscribing to our yearly membership .
Or as a type foundry, you can sponsor our words and have your typefaces displayed in the encyclopedia.
Or as a type foundry and/or company, you can also support us at a larger scale and fund a language translation!

Ask us for more information about the support options!

PLANS FOR ALWAYS

We begin with words descriptions in English, as a common starting point for translations into the other languages. Then we make sure that the descriptions are accurate by handing them over to a proofreader of each language. Since each language may have different things to tell about typography, in different ways, or need additional content for context, we also make sure that the descriptions in each language can be as helpful as the ones in English.

As you might imagine, this process takes time. There are no professional translators onboard (it would take too long to explain a great majority of these words to people not familiar enough with typography!), but all are experienced with the field itself as designers, and people who have experience at teaching typography, in English and in their own language.

If you see anything that could be improved or noticed a mistake, feel free to let us know. This is for the “greater good.”

And if you’d like to join us, for any of the existing languages or missing ones, let us know by sending an email to info@wordsoftype.com !

1. Words List & Status

The table below is our complete list of words, with those that are currently in the encyclopedia, and more that we plan to add soon in future updates.

Check it out to see what we have done so far, what is under preparation, and what we plan to do!

Words List & Status page

Do you want to share your own illustration talent on WoT? Send us your best work (preferably related to typography), and join WoT Encyclopedia!

2. Members get to vote!

As a WoT member, you can join our community to give us your insight, feedback, and opinions on what you think about the existing texts, and even let us know if there are words that you’d like to see joining the encyclopedia sooner by sharing your votes!

More information about WoT membership.

PLANNED FOR 2026

(last updated in 31.OCT.2025)

1. ENCYCLOPEDIA

Current Languages
Translating texts from one language to another is always a huge challenge that even AI tools can’t figure out very well. Those who use multiple languages know why. And for those who don’t know why, there is this article (Fontstand article) that tells some of the few challenges and questions that we’ve met so far with WoT.

We are always trying to improve our descriptions. And for matters of consistency, we begin a large part of the descriptions in English, which are then translated into the other languages. Currently, descriptions in all languages except for English are not all completed or updated to their last version. Here are the languages in progress or under newer updates, and the people working on it:

English — Lisa Huang + improvements on font engineering terms by Rosalie Wagner, and general proofreading by Dan Reynolds
French — Lisa Huang & Éloïsa Perez
German — (formerly) Indra Kupferschmid, Ferdinand Ulrich
Spanish — Carlos de Toro, María Ramos
Chinese (Simplified) — Yanru Wang, Willie Liu, Zhiqian Li
Japanese — Min-Young Kim, Mariko Takagi
Korean — Min-Young Kim, Mingoo Yoon

Additional Languages
Each new language added to WoT requires a large workload for each person involved.
If you want to collaborate with us for developments into languages that are currently missing, please let us know by reaching out! We already received proposals for some languages, and we have discuss with everyone to see each person’s view regarding the translation work, and whether we have enough funding or not yet. We are currently working on the following languages:

Dutch — Marte Verhaegen, Sam Van Vaerenbergh
Italian — Marta Bernstein
Russian — Maria Doreuli

Additional words from specific scripts
You might have noticed on the words list that there are some words in the waiting list related to typography or type design in specific scripts (Arabic, Indic, etc.). We are also working with a expert collaborators to write the descriptions of these words too—first in English:

Arabic — Lara Captan
Greek — Irene Vlachou
Thai — Boom Suksumek

If you’d like to contribute as translators, proofreaders or co-writers to the scripts listed above, or scripts not listed yet, send us an email and let’s talk!

Vote for your language!
Same as words to join the encyclopedia, WoT members also get to vote for the language(s) that they wish to see in the encyclopedia sooner 🙂

Get the membership , join the community, and vote for one or more languages listed, or suggest one if it’s not already there. And spread the word about it to push it even higher in the waiting list!

Visit the WoT Languages List

2. EVENTS

Lectures & Workshops
Year after year, as we see the number of audience rising, together with interests for more diversified topics, we plan more and more lectures and workshops. 2026 will be a year with events even more focused on typography and/or type design in scripts other than Latin, almost following a “one month, one script” pattern. Here are some scripts that will be covered in 2026 (so far): Arabic, Hangeul, Japanese, Devanagari, Thai, Chinese Hanzi, and more. And a few other topics:

Cinema & StereoType — lecture presented by Aaron Levin
Schriften, Lettering, Écritures: 174 slides about Walter Käch — lecture presented by Fabian Harb (Dinamo type foundry)
Font Production, beginner + intermediate — lecture and workshop with Rosalie Wagner

Maybe more for 2026

Armenian typography & type design
Greek type design, with Irene Vlachou
Hebrew type design
Cyrillic type design

Conversations topics
March 6: Women in Typography
June: TBD
September: TBD
December: TBD

PLANNED FOR 2027

(last updated in 31.OCT.2025)

I. ENCYCLOPEDIA

Languages

There are too many languages to handle for a tiny team as we are now. So we try to develop the encyclopedia with additional languages as much as we can. WoT members also get to vote for the language(s) that they wish to see in the encyclopedia sooner 🙂 If you want to collaborate with us for developments into languages that are currently missing, please let us know by reaching out! We already received proposals for some languages, and we have to consider for the most serious proposals only (it is a lot of work with some back and forth exchanges). But let’s chat and see!