[4] Although the family has a cosmopolitan distribution, most Graphidaceae species occur in tropical regions, and typically grow on bark.

[5] Graphidaceae was originally proposed by French botanist Barthélemy Charles Joseph Dumortier in 1822 (as "Graphineae").

This taxonomic proposal was rejected by Robert Lücking in a critical 2019 review of the temporal method for the classification of lichen-forming fungi, using these specific examples to highlight several drawbacks of this approach.

It makes more sense to apply such essentially phylogenetic classifications, with less information content, to infraranks, such as subfamily or tribe".

[3] The photosynthetic partner (photobiont) of Graphidaceae fungi is typically green algae from the genus Trentepohlia, or very rarely Trebouxia.

The lichen thallus is typically crustose, which means it forms a crust-like structure on the substrate it grows on.

The hamathecium, which is the hyphae and tissue that between the asci, consists of usually unbranched, sometimes capitate, rarely branched and anastomosing paraphyses.