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62-462: Vox proposed a nine-type classification which tends to group typefaces according to their main characteristics, often typical of a particular century (15th, 16th, 17th, 18th, 19th, 20th century), based on a number of formal criteria: downstroke and upstroke, forms of serifs , stroke axis, x-height , etc. Although the Vox-ATypI classification defines archetypes of typefaces, many typefaces can exhibit

124-429: A brush, pen, pencil, or other writing instrument. These typefaces generally do not represent writing, and are not intended for body text, but instead display or headline purposes. Vox originally included the blackletter and uncial faces in this categorization. Examples of graphic typefaces include Banco and Klang. The original Vox classification contained the above nine groups. ATypI added two more classifications,

186-553: A division made on the Vox-ATypI classification system. Nonetheless, some have argued that the difference is excessively abstract, hard to spot except to specialists and implies a clearer separation between styles than originally appeared. Modern typefaces such as Arno and Trinité may fuse both styles. Early "humanist" roman types were introduced in Italy. Modelled on the script of the period, they tend to feature an "e" in which

248-520: A left-inclining curve axis with weight stress at about 8 and 2 o'clock; serifs are almost always bracketed (they have curves connecting the serif to the stroke); head serifs are often angled. Old-style faces evolved over time, showing increasing abstraction from what would now be considered handwriting and blackletter characteristics, and often increased delicacy or contrast as printing technique improved. Old-style faces have often sub-divided into 'Venetian' (or ' humanist ') and ' Garalde ' (or 'Aldine'),

310-898: A letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface (or serifed typeface ), and a typeface that does not include them is sans-serif . Some typography sources refer to sans-serif typefaces as "grotesque" (in German , grotesk ) or "Gothic" (although this often refers to blackletter type as well) and serif typefaces as " roman " (or in German, Antiqua ). Serif typefaces can be broadly classified into one of four subgroups: § old style , § transitional , § Didone and § Slab Serif , in order of first appearance. Some Old-style typefaces can be classified further into one of two subgroups: § Antiqua and § Dutch Taste . Serifs originated from

372-403: A sans serif font versus a serif font. When size of an individual glyph is 9–20 pixels, proportional serifs and some lines of most glyphs of common vector fonts are smaller than individual pixels. Hinting , spatial anti-aliasing , and subpixel rendering allow to render distinguishable serifs even in this case, but their proportions and appearance are off and thickness is close to many lines of

434-423: A simple, functional feel that gained momentum during the industrial period of the late 19th century and early 20th century. The Didones or 'modern' typefaces draw their name from the typefounders Di dot and Bo doni . These typefaces, dating from the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, make a very strong contrast between full and connecting strokes (the connecting strokes being extremely fine),

496-422: A softened version of the same basic design, with reduced contrast. Didone typefaces achieved dominance of printing in the early 19th-century printing before declining in popularity in the second half of the century and especially in the 20th as new designs and revivals of old-style faces emerged. In print, Didone fonts are often used on high-gloss magazine paper for magazines such as Harper's Bazaar , where

558-517: A spurred ⟨G⟩ and an ⟨R⟩ with a curled leg. According to Monotype, the term "grotesque" originates from Italian : grottesco , meaning "belonging to the cave" due to their simple geometric appearance. The term arose because of adverse comparisons that were drawn with the more ornate Modern Serif and Roman typefaces that were the norm at the time. Examples of grotesque lineal typeface include Headline, Monotype 215, and Grot no. 6. Neo-grotesque typefaces are derived from

620-419: A subcategory, and these typefaces only slightly resemble those in the humanist serif category. Examples of humanist lineal typefaces include Gill Sans and Optima . The Calligraphics can be broken down into 'glyphic', ' script ', 'graphic', ' blackletter ', and ' Gaelic ' categories, and are characterized by a suggestion of being hand-crafted. The glyphic, incised, or incise are typefaces which evoke

682-401: A vertical stress and thin serifs with a constant width, with minimal bracketing (constant width). Serifs tend to be very thin, and vertical lines very heavy. Didone fonts are often considered to be less readable than transitional or old-style serif typefaces. Period examples include Bodoni , Didot , and Walbaum . Computer Modern is a popular contemporary example. The very popular Century is

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744-467: Is commonly used on headings, websites, signs and billboards. A Japanese-language font designed in imitation of western serifs also exists. Farang Ses, designed in 1913, was the first Thai typeface to employ thick and thin strokes reflecting old-style serif Latin typefaces, and became extremely popular, with its derivatives widely used into the digital age. (Examples: Angsana UPC, Kinnari ) Slab serif Too Many Requests If you report this error to

806-469: Is ended with a dipping motion of the brush, the ending of horizontal strokes are also thickened . These design forces resulted in the current Song typeface characterized by thick vertical strokes contrasted with thin horizontal strokes, triangular ornaments at the end of single horizontal strokes, and overall geometrical regularity. In Japanese typography, the equivalent of serifs on kanji and kana characters are called uroko —"fish scales". In Chinese,

868-601: Is named in homage to Claude Garamond and Aldus Manutius . In general, the Garaldes have finer proportions than the Venetians, and a stronger contrast between downstroke and upstroke. The weights of the Garaldes are distributed according to an oblique axis. In France, under King Francis I , the Garaldes were the tool that supported the official fixing of grammar and orthography. Examples of Garaldes include Bembo and Garamond . The transitional, realist, or réales are

930-436: Is often referred to as 'Oldstyle' or 'Old style'. Venetian (also called humanist, humanistic, or humanes ) include the first Roman typefaces created during the 15th century by Venetian printers, such as Nicolas Jenson (hence the name 'Venetian'). These typefaces sought to imitate the formal hands found in the humanistic (renaissance) manuscripts of the time (humanist minuscule). These typefaces, rather round in opposition to

992-633: Is that serifs were devised to neaten the ends of lines as they were chiselled into stone. The origin of the word 'serif' is obscure, but apparently is almost as recent as the type style. The book The British Standard of the Capital Letters contained in the Roman Alphabet, forming a complete code of systematic rules for a mathematical construction and accurate formation of the same (1813) by William Hollins , defined 'surripses', usually pronounced "surriphs", as "projections which appear at

1054-488: Is the printed capital I , where the addition of serifs distinguishes the character from lowercase L (l). The printed capital J and the numeral 1 are also often handwritten with serifs. Below are some images of serif letterforms across history: In the Chinese and Japanese writing systems, there are common type styles based on the regular script for Chinese characters akin to serif and sans serif fonts in

1116-499: Is the past tense of schrijven (to write). The relation between schreef and schrappen is documented by Van Veen and Van der Sijs. In her book Chronologisch Woordenboek , Van der Sijs lists words by first known publication in the language area that is the Netherlands today: The OED ' s earliest citation for "grotesque" in this sense is 1875, giving 'stone-letter' as a synonym . It would seem to mean "out of

1178-608: The Oxford English Dictionary ( OED ) are 1830 for 'serif' and 1841 for 'sans serif'. The OED speculates that 'serif' was a back-formation from 'sanserif'. Webster's Third New International Dictionary traces 'serif' to the Dutch noun schreef , meaning "line, stroke of the pen", related to the verb schrappen , "to delete, strike through" ( 'schreef' now also means "serif" in Dutch). Yet, schreef

1240-539: The Antiques of the Thibaudeau classification. The British Standard 1967 extended the category by breaking the group into 4 subcategories: Grotesque, Neo-Grotesque, Geometric, and Humanist. Grotesque typefaces are sans serif typefaces that originate in the nineteenth century. There is some degree of contrast between thick and thin strokes. The terminals of curves are usually horizontal, and the typeface frequently has

1302-475: The Janson and Ehrhardt types based on his work and Caslon , especially the larger sizes. Transitional, or baroque, serif typefaces first became common around the mid-18th century until the start of the 19th. They are in between "old style" and "modern" fonts, thus the name "transitional". Differences between thick and thin lines are more pronounced than they are in old style, but less dramatic than they are in

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1364-524: The germanophone world, with the Antiqua–Fraktur dispute often dividing along ideological or political lines. After the mid-20th century, Fraktur fell out of favor and Antiqua-based typefaces became the official standard in Germany. (In German, the term "Antiqua" refers to serif typefaces. ) A new genre of serif type developed around the 17th century in the Netherlands and Germany that came to be called

1426-429: The wood grain on printing blocks ran horizontally, it was fairly easy to carve horizontal lines with the grain. However, carving vertical or slanted patterns was difficult because those patterns intersect with the grain and break easily. This resulted in a typeface that has thin horizontal strokes and thick vertical strokes . In accordance with Chinese calligraphy ( kaiti style in particular), where each horizontal stroke

1488-456: The "Dutch taste" ( "goût Hollandois" in French ). It was a tendency towards denser, more solid typefaces, often with a high x-height (tall lower-case letters) and a sharp contrast between thick and thin strokes, perhaps influenced by blackletter faces. Artists in the "Dutch taste" style include Hendrik van den Keere , Nicolaas Briot, Christoffel van Dijck , Miklós Tótfalusi Kis and

1550-617: The "Latin" style include Wide Latin , Copperplate Gothic , Johnston Delf Smith and the more restrained Méridien . Serifed fonts are widely used for body text because they are considered easier to read than sans-serif fonts in print. Colin Wheildon, who conducted scientific studies from 1982 to 1990, found that sans serif fonts created various difficulties for readers that impaired their comprehension. According to Kathleen Tinkel, studies suggest that "most sans serif typefaces may be slightly less legible than most serif faces, but ...

1612-457: The "M"; Cloister is an exception. Antiqua ( / æ n ˈ t iː k w ə / ) is a style of typeface used to mimic styles of handwriting or calligraphy common during the 15th and 16th centuries. Letters are designed to flow, and strokes connect together in a continuous fashion; in this way it is often contrasted with Fraktur -style typefaces where the individual strokes are broken apart. The two typefaces were used alongside each other in

1674-497: The 1530s onwards. Often lighter on the page and made in larger sizes than had been used for roman type before, French Garalde faces rapidly spread throughout Europe from the 1530s to become an international standard. Also during this period, italic type evolved from a quite separate genre of type, intended for informal uses such as poetry, into taking a secondary role for emphasis. Italics moved from being conceived as separate designs and proportions to being able to be fitted into

1736-494: The Didone fonts that followed. Stress is more likely to be vertical, and often the "R" has a curled tail. The ends of many strokes are marked not by blunt or angled serifs but by ball terminals . Transitional faces often have an italic 'h' that opens outwards at bottom right. Because the genre bridges styles, it is difficult to define where the genre starts and ends. Many of the most popular transitional designs are later creations in

1798-637: The Garamond , on the other hand to compete in quality with the different printers of Europe. The term realist is unrelated to the artistic movement realism , and derives from the Spanish for 'royal', because of a typeface cast by Christophe Plantin for King Philip II of Spain. Examples of transitional typefaces include Baskerville , Times New Roman , and other contemporary redesigns of traditional faces. The moderns can be broken down into Didone, Mechanistic, and Lineal categories, and are characterized by

1860-666: The West. In Mainland China, the most popular category of serifed-like typefaces for body text is called Song ( 宋体 , Songti ); in Japan, the most popular serif style is called Minchō ( 明朝 ) ; and in Taiwan and Hong Kong, it is called Ming ( 明體 , Mingti ). The names of these lettering styles come from the Song and Ming dynasties, when block printing flourished in China. Because

1922-638: The blackletters and the Non-Latins. The blackletters or German : fraktur [fractured, broken], which Vox included in the graphics, are characterized by pointed and angular forms, and are modeled on late medieval hands written with a broad-nibbed pen . An example of a blackletter typeface family is Fraktur . Gaelic type was added to the classification at the AGM of the Dublin meeting of ATypI, on 12 September 2010. This heterogeneous family, not included in

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1984-476: The characteristics of more than one class. On April 27, 2021, ATypI announced that they had de-adopted the system and that they were establishing a working group building towards a new, larger system incorporating the different scripts of the world. The classicals can be broken down into 'Venetian', 'Garalde', and 'Transitional' categories, and are characterized by triangular serifs, oblique axis, and low stroke contrast. In other classification systems, this group

2046-488: The clear, bold nature of the large serifs, slab serif designs are often used for posters and in small print. Many monospace fonts , on which all characters occupy the same amount of horizontal space as in a typewriter , are slab-serif designs. While not always purely slab-serif designs, many fonts intended for newspaper use have large slab-like serifs for clearer reading on poor-quality paper. Many early slab-serif types, being intended for posters, only come in bold styles with

2108-500: The cross stroke is angled, not horizontal; an "M" with two-way serifs; and often a relatively dark colour on the page. In modern times, that of Nicolas Jenson has been the most admired, with many revivals. Garaldes, which tend to feature a level cross-stroke on the "e", descend from an influential 1495 font cut by engraver Francesco Griffo for printer Aldus Manutius , which became the inspiration for many typefaces cut in France from

2170-474: The difference can be offset by careful setting". Sans-serif are considered to be more legible on computer screens. According to Alex Poole, "we should accept that most reasonably designed typefaces in mainstream use will be equally legible". A study suggested that serif fonts are more legible on a screen but are not generally preferred to sans serif fonts. Another study indicated that comprehension times for individual words are slightly faster when written in

2232-545: The earlier "modernised old styles" have been described as transitional in design. Later 18th-century transitional typefaces in Britain begin to show influences of Didone typefaces from Europe, described below, and the two genres blur, especially in type intended for body text; Bell is an example of this. Didone, or modern, serif typefaces, which first emerged in the late 18th century, are characterized by extreme contrast between thick and thin lines. These typefaces have

2294-693: The earlier grotesque faces, but generally have less stroke contrast and a more regular design. Unlike the grotesque, they generally do not have a spurred ⟨G⟩ , and the terminals of curves are usually slanted. Many neo-grotesque faces have a large degree of subtlety and variation of widths and weights to accommodate different means of production (Hot type, foundry type, phototypesetting, see History of typography, 20th century ). Examples of neo-grotesque lineal typeface include Helvetica and Univers . Geometric typefaces are sans serif faces constructed from simple geometric shapes, circles or rectangles. The same curves and lines are often repeated throughout

2356-440: The engraving or chiseling of characters in stone or metal, as opposed to calligraphic handwriting. They thus have small, triangular serifs or tapering downstrokes. There is usually a greater emphasis on the capital letters in glyphic typefaces, with some faces not containing a lowercase. Examples of glyphic typefaces include Albertus , Copperplate Gothic , and Trajan . The scripts or scriptes include typefaces which evoke

2418-615: The first official Greek writings on stone and in Latin alphabet with inscriptional lettering —words carved into stone in Roman antiquity . The explanation proposed by Father Edward Catich in his 1968 book The Origin of the Serif is now broadly but not universally accepted: the Roman letter outlines were first painted onto stone, and the stone carvers followed the brush marks, which flared at stroke ends and corners, creating serifs. Another theory

2480-439: The formal differences are very subtle and such a distinction is only appropriate for very few types. But large numbers of slab serif types, clarendons or ionics (that is bracketed slab serifs) and egyptians (that is square-ended, unbracketed slab serifs) are simply grouped together." Dixon challenges the prevalent focus on roman types as being dated, saying "distinctions between text and display are now increasingly irrelevant, with

2542-449: The formal penmanship of cursive writing. They seem to be written with a quill and have a strong slope. The letters can often be connected to each other. Typefaces imitating copperplate script form part of this family. Scripts are distinct from italic type . Examples of script typefaces include Shelley, Mistral and Francesca. The graphic, manual, or manuaires , are based on hand-drawn originals which are slowly written with either

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2604-642: The gothics of the Middle Ages , are characterized by short and thick bracketed serifs, a slanted cross stroke on the lowercase 'e', ascenders with slanted serifs, and a low contrast between horizontals and verticals. These typefaces are inspired in particular by the Carolingian minuscule , imposed by Charlemagne during his reign of the Holy Roman Empire . Examples of Venetians include Centaur and Cloister . Also called Aldine , this group

2666-503: The greater subtlety that has been introduced into sans serifs and slab serif designs, leading to a wider application of such types for text purposes." Dixon's conclusion is that these systems have remained unchanged since 1967, and thus many contemporary typefaces render these systems inadequate. Miguel Catopodis, in the ATypI forum, proposed that the full 1962 Vox-AtypI classification needed to be uploaded and made more widely available, because

2728-418: The key differentiation being width, and often have no lower-case letters at all. Examples of slab-serif typefaces include Clarendon , Rockwell , Archer , Courier , Excelsior , TheSerif , and Zilla Slab . FF Meta Serif and Guardian Egyptian are examples of newspaper and small print-oriented typefaces with some slab-serif characteristics, often most visible in the bold weights. In the late 20th century,

2790-446: The late 19th and early 20th centuries saw a return to the designs of Renaissance printers and type-founders, many of whose names and designs are still used today. Old-style type is characterized by a lack of large differences between thick and thin lines (low line contrast) and generally, but less often, by a diagonal stress (the thinnest parts of letters are at an angle rather than at the top and bottom). An old-style font normally has

2852-435: The letters, resulting in minimal differentiation between letters. Examples of geometric lineal typefaces include Century Gothic and Futura . Humanist typefaces, instead of deriving from the 19th century grotesque faces, relate to the earlier, classical handwritten monumental Roman capitals and a lowercase similar in form to the Carolingian script . The term humanist is being used here in combination with lineal to create

2914-475: The main glyph, strongly altering appearance of the glyph. Consequently, it is sometimes advised to use sans-serif fonts for content meant to be displayed on screens, as they scale better for low resolutions. Indeed, most web pages employ sans-serif type. Recent introduction of desktop displays with 300+ dpi resolution might eventually make this recommendation obsolete. As serifs originated in inscription, they are generally not used in handwriting. A common exception

2976-852: The name of this group evokes the mechanical aspect of these typefaces, which coincide with the Industrial Revolution at the beginning of the 19th century. The principal characteristics of these typefaces are a very low contrast and rectangular slab serifs. They correspond to the Egyptiennes of Thibaudeau classification . This category includes both typefaces with bracketed serifs ('clarendons' or 'ionics') and typefaces with square or unbracketed serifs (egyptians). Examples of mechanical typefaces include Clarendon , Egyptienne , Ionic No. 5 , and Rockwell . Lineals, or linéales , combine all typefaces without serifs (called ' sans-serif ', 'gothic', or grotesque ), all of which correspond to

3038-681: The ordinary" in this usage, as in art 'grotesque' usually means "elaborately decorated". Other synonyms include "Doric" and "Gothic", commonly used for Japanese Gothic typefaces . Old-style typefaces date back to 1465, shortly after Johannes Gutenberg 's adoption of the movable type printing press . Early printers in Italy created types that broke with Gutenberg's blackletter printing, creating upright and later italic styles inspired by Renaissance calligraphy. Old-style serif fonts have remained popular for setting body text because of their organic appearance and excellent readability on rough book paper. The increasing interest in early printing during

3100-634: The original nine Vox groups, gathers (without distinction of style) all writing systems not based on the Latin alphabet : Greek , Cyrillic , Hebrew , Arabic , Chinese , Korean etc. English printers traditionally called these 'exotics'. Catherine Dixon, in a 2002 paper, criticized both the Vox and British Standard categories for favoring roman typefaces over display typefaces, which derives from early twentieth century design culture. As an example, Dixon notes that in these classification systems "'humanist' types are formally distinguished from 'garalde', even though

3162-555: The paper retains the detail of their high contrast well, and for whose image a crisp, "European" design of type may be considered appropriate. They are used more often for general-purpose body text, such as book printing, in Europe. They remain popular in the printing of Greek, as the Didot family were among the first to establish a printing press in newly independent Greece. The period of Didone types' greatest popularity coincided with

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3224-421: The rapid spread of printed posters and commercial ephemera and the arrival of bold type . As a result, many Didone typefaces are among the earliest designed for "display" use, with an ultra-bold " fat face " style becoming a common sub-genre. Slab serif typefaces date to about 1817. Originally intended as attention-grabbing designs for posters, they have very thick serifs, which tend to be as thick as

3286-683: The same line as roman type with a design complementary to it. Examples of contemporary Garalde old-style typefaces are Bembo , Garamond , Galliard , Granjon , Goudy Old Style , Minion , Palatino , Renard, Sabon , and Scala . Contemporary typefaces with Venetian old style characteristics include Cloister , Adobe Jenson , the Golden Type , Hightower Text , Centaur , Goudy's Italian Old Style and Berkeley Old Style and ITC Legacy. Several of these blend in Garalde influences to fit modern expectations, especially placing single-sided serifs on

3348-579: The same style. Fonts from the original period of transitional typefaces include early on the " romain du roi " in France, then the work of Pierre Simon Fournier in France, Fleischman and Rosart in the Low Countries, Pradell in Spain and John Baskerville and Bulmer in England. Among more recent designs, Times New Roman (1932), Perpetua , Plantin , Mrs. Eaves , Freight Text , and

3410-404: The sans-serif humanists have a varying line weight which harks back to Carolingian minuscule. So, very different typefaces may be described by the same term: for example, Times New Roman and DIN 1451 may both be described as realist or transitional. Serif In typography , a serif ( / ˈ s ɛr ɪ f / ) is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in

3472-447: The schema is still an easy resource for many students to understand how typefaces could be classified. The Vox classifications can be used in combination. Notably, 'transitional' (and its synonym 'realist') and 'humanist' are used to distinguish between groups of sans-serif (also called 'lineal', 'Gothic', or 'grotesque') typefaces, sometimes with the term sans-serif omitted. The sans-serif realists have more constant line weight, while

3534-566: The serifs are called either yǒujiǎotǐ ( 有脚体 , lit. "forms with legs") or yǒuchènxiàntǐ ( 有衬线体 , lit. "forms with ornamental lines"). The other common East Asian style of type is called black ( 黑体/體 , Hēitǐ ) in Chinese and Gothic ( ゴシック体 , Goshikku-tai ) in Japanese. This group is characterized by lines of even thickness for each stroke, the equivalent of "sans serif". This style, first introduced on newspaper headlines,

3596-623: The term "humanist slab-serif" has been applied to typefaces such as Chaparral , Caecilia and Tisa, with strong serifs but an outline structure with some influence of old-style serif typefaces. During the 19th century, genres of serif type besides conventional body text faces proliferated. These included "Tuscan" faces, with ornamental, decorative ends to the strokes rather than serifs, and "Latin" or "wedge-serif" faces, with pointed serifs, which were particularly popular in France and other parts of Europe including for signage applications such as business cards or shop fronts. Well-known typefaces in

3658-651: The tops and bottoms of some letters, the O and Q excepted, at the beginning or end, and sometimes at each, of all". The standard also proposed that 'surripsis' may be a Greek word derived from σῠν- ( 'syn-' , "together") and ῥῖψῐς ( 'rhîpsis' , "projection"). In 1827, Greek scholar Julian Hibbert printed with his own experimental uncial Greek types, remarking that the types of Giambattista Bodoni 's Callimachus were "ornamented (or rather disfigured) by additions of what [he] believe[s] type-founders call syrifs or cerefs". The printer Thomas Curson Hansard referred to them as "ceriphs" in 1825. The oldest citations in

3720-470: The typical typefaces of the traditional period, particularly embodying the rational spirit of the Enlightenment. Contrast between main and connecting strokes is marked even more than in the first two groups; weight is distributed now according to a quasi-vertical axis. The 'transitionals' were the result of the wish of Louis XIV to invent new typographical forms, on the one hand to find a successor of

3782-459: The vertical lines themselves. Slab serif fonts vary considerably: some such as Rockwell have a geometric design with minimal variation in stroke width—they are sometimes described as sans-serif fonts with added serifs. Others such as those of the "Clarendon" model have a structure more like most other serif fonts, though with larger and more obvious serifs. These designs may have bracketed serifs that increase width along their length. Because of

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3844-663: The verticality of the characters and their unbracketed, hairline serifs. They correspond to the Didot of the Thibaudeau classification . The didones, in particular, made it possible for the First French Empire to employ typefaces very different from the typefaces used by the kings from the Ancien Régime . Examples of Didones include Bodoni and Walbaum. Also called mechanical, slab serif , or mécanes ,

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