In a writing system , a letter is a grapheme that generally corresponds to a phoneme —the smallest functional unit of speech—though there is rarely total one-to-one correspondence between the two. An alphabet is a writing system that uses letters.
73-547: G , or g , is the seventh letter of the Latin alphabet , used in the modern English alphabet , the alphabets of other western European languages , and others worldwide. Its name in English is gee (pronounced / ˈ dʒ iː / ), plural gees . The lowercase version can be written in two forms: the single-storey (sometimes "opentail") [REDACTED] and the double-storey (sometimes "looptail") [REDACTED] . The former
146-411: A multigraph . Multigraphs include digraphs of two letters (e.g. English ch , sh , th ), and trigraphs of three letters (e.g. English tch ). The same letterform may be used in different alphabets while representing different phonemic categories. The Latin H , Greek eta ⟨Η⟩ , and Cyrillic en ⟨Н⟩ are homoglyphs , but represent different phonemes. Conversely,
219-513: A lowercase form (also called minuscule ). Upper- and lowercase letters represent the same sound, but serve different functions in writing. Capital letters are most often used at the beginning of a sentence, as the first letter of a proper name or title, or in headers or inscriptions. They may also serve other functions, such as in the German language where all nouns begin with capital letters. The terms uppercase and lowercase originated in
292-549: A variety of modern uses in mathematics, science, and engineering . People and objects are sometimes named after letters, for one of these reasons: The word letter entered Middle English c. 1200 , borrowed from the Old French letre . It eventually displaced the previous Old English term bōcstæf ' bookstaff '. Letter ultimately descends from the Latin littera , which may have been derived from
365-553: 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
438-443: A fee-paying school, around 230 BC . At this time, ' K ' had fallen out of favor, and 'C', which had formerly represented both /ɡ/ and /k/ before open vowels, had come to express /k/ in all environments. Ruga's positioning of 'G' shows that alphabetic order related to the letters' values as Greek numerals was a concern even in the 3rd century BC. According to some records, the original seventh letter, 'Z', had been purged from
511-520: 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'),
584-477: A phonemic /ɡ/ . Faroese uses ⟨g⟩ to represent /dʒ/ , in addition to /ɡ/ , and also uses it to indicate a glide . In Māori , ⟨g⟩ is used in the digraph ⟨ng⟩ which represents the velar nasal /ŋ/ and is pronounced like the ⟨ng⟩ in singer . The Samoan and Fijian languages use the letter ⟨g⟩ by itself for /ŋ/ . In older Czech and Slovak orthographies, ⟨g⟩
657-533: A replacement for the obsolete letter yogh , which took various values including /ɡ/ , /ɣ/ , /x/ and /j/ ) may represent: Non-digraph ⟨gh⟩ also occurs, in compounds like foghorn , pigheaded . The digraph ⟨ gn ⟩ may represent: Non-digraph ⟨gn⟩ also occurs, as in signature , agnostic . The trigraph ⟨ngh⟩ has the value /ŋ/ as in gingham or dinghy . Non-trigraph ⟨ngh⟩ also occurs, in compounds like stronghold and dunghill . G
730-403: 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
803-422: 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
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#1732794061695876-460: A sound that does not occur in modern English, but there is a dialectal variation: many Netherlandic dialects use a voiceless fricative ( [x] or [χ] ) instead, and in southern dialects it may be palatal [ʝ] . Nevertheless, word-finally, it is always voiceless in all dialects, including the standard Dutch of Belgium and the Netherlands. On the other hand, some dialects (like Amelands ) may have
949-401: 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
1022-415: A vowel or as the article and pronoun gli , represents the palatal lateral approximant /ʎ/ . Other languages typically use ⟨g⟩ to represent /ɡ/ , regardless of position. Amongst European languages, Czech , Dutch , Estonian and Finnish are exceptions, as they do not have /ɡ/ in their native words. In Dutch , ⟨g⟩ represents a voiced velar fricative /ɣ/ instead,
1095-924: Is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in 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
1168-495: Is also used in many words that came into English from medieval church/academic use, French, Spanish, Italian or Portuguese – these tend to, in other ways in English, closely align to their Ancient Latin and Greek roots (such as fragile , logic or magic ). There remain widely used a few English words of non-Romance origin where ⟨g⟩ is hard followed by ⟨e⟩ or ⟨i⟩ ( get , give , gift ), and very few in which ⟨g⟩
1241-594: Is commonly used in handwriting and fonts based on it, especially fonts intended to be read by children. The evolution of the Latin alphabet's G can be traced back to the Latin alphabet's predecessor, the Greek alphabet . The voiced velar stop was represented by the third letter of the Greek alphabet, gamma (Γ) , which was later adopted by the Etruscan language . Latin then borrowed this "rounded form" of gamma, C, to represent
1314-456: Is considered to be a separate letter from ⟨n⟩ , though this distinction is not usually recognised in English dictionaries. In computer systems, each has its own code point , U+006E n LATIN SMALL LETTER N and U+00F1 ñ LATIN SMALL LETTER N WITH TILDE , respectively. Letters may also function as numerals with assigned numerical values, for example with Roman numerals . Greek and Latin letters have
1387-469: 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,
1460-429: Is indicated by the existence of precomposed characters for use with computer systems (for example, ⟨á⟩ , ⟨à⟩ , ⟨ä⟩ , ⟨â⟩ , ⟨ã⟩ .) In the following table, letters from multiple different writing systems are shown, to demonstrate the variety of letters used throughout the world. Serif In typography , a serif ( / ˈ s ɛr ɪ f / )
1533-712: Is soft though followed by ⟨a⟩ such as gaol , which since the 20th century is almost always written as "jail". The double consonant ⟨ gg ⟩ has the value /ɡ/ (hard ⟨g⟩ ) as in nugget , with very few exceptions: /d͡ʒ/ in exaggerate and veggies and dialectally /ɡd͡ʒ/ in suggest . The digraph ⟨ dg ⟩ has the value /d͡ʒ/ (soft ⟨g⟩ ), as in badger . Non-digraph ⟨dg⟩ can also occur, in compounds like floodgate and headgear . The digraph ⟨ ng ⟩ may represent: Non-digraph ⟨ng⟩ also occurs, with possible values The digraph ⟨ gh ⟩ (in many cases
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#17327940616951606-633: 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
1679-488: 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
1752-741: Is the tenth least frequently used letter in the English language (after Y , P , B , V , K , J , X , Q , and Z ), with a frequency of about 2.02% in words. Most Romance languages and some Nordic languages also have two main pronunciations for ⟨g⟩ , hard and soft. While the soft value of ⟨g⟩ varies in different Romance languages ( /ʒ/ in French and Portuguese , [(d)ʒ] in Catalan , /d͡ʒ/ in Italian and Romanian , and /x/ in most dialects of Spanish ), in all except Romanian and Italian, soft ⟨g⟩ has
1825-439: 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
1898-608: 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
1971-475: 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
2044-483: The Principles , abandoned the recommendation and acknowledged both shapes as acceptable variants. In 2018, a study found that native English speakers have little conscious awareness of the looptail form ( [REDACTED] ). The authors write: "Despite being questioned repeatedly, and despite being informed directly that G has two lowercase print forms, nearly half of the participants failed to reveal any knowledge of
2117-524: 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
2190-554: The voiced velar plosive . The small caps ⟨ɢ⟩ represents the voiced uvular plosive . [REDACTED] Letter (alphabet) A letter is a type of grapheme , the smallest functional unit within a writing system. Letters are graphemes that broadly correspond to phonemes , the smallest functional units of sound in speech. Similarly to how phonemes are combined to form spoken words, letters may be combined to form written words. A single phoneme may also be represented by multiple letters in sequence, collectively called
2263-429: 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
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2336-404: 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
2409-617: 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 ...
2482-457: 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
2555-497: 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
2628-494: 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
2701-593: The Greek diphthera 'writing tablet' via Etruscan . Until the 19th century, letter was also used interchangeably to refer to a speech segment . Before alphabets, phonograms , graphic symbols of sounds, were used. There were three kinds of phonograms: verbal, pictures for entire words, syllabic, which stood for articulations of words, and alphabetic, which represented signs or letters. The earliest examples of which are from Ancient Egypt and Ancient China, dating to c. 3000 BCE . The first consonantal alphabet emerged around c. 1800 BCE , representing
2774-454: The Latin alphabet somewhat earlier in the 3rd century BC by the Roman censor Appius Claudius , who found it distasteful and foreign. Sampson (1985) suggests that: "Evidently the order of the alphabet was felt to be such a concrete thing that a new letter could be added in the middle only if a 'space' was created by the dropping of an old letter." George Hempl proposed in 1899 that there never
2847-730: The Phoenicians, Semitic workers in Egypt. Their script was originally written and read from right to left. From the Phoenician alphabet came the Etruscan and Greek alphabets. From there, the most widely used alphabet today emerged, Latin, which is written and read from left to right. The Phoenician alphabet had 22 letters, nineteen of which the Latin alphabet used, and the Greek alphabet, adapted c. 900 BCE , added four letters to those used in Phoenician. This Greek alphabet
2920-666: 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
2993-488: 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
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3066-500: 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
3139-438: The days of handset type for printing presses. Individual letter blocks were kept in specific compartments of drawers in a type case. Capital letters were stored in a higher drawer or upper case. In most alphabetic scripts, diacritics (or accents) are a routinely used. English is unusual in not using them except for loanwords from other languages or personal names (for example, naïve , Brontë ). The ubiquity of this usage
3212-474: 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
3285-709: The difference has been exploited to provide contrast. In the International Phonetic Alphabet , opentail ⟨ [REDACTED] ⟩ has always represented a voiced velar plosive , while looptail ⟨ [REDACTED] ⟩ represented a voiced velar fricative from 1895 to 1900. In 1948, the Council of the International Phonetic Association recognized ⟨ ɡ ⟩ and ⟨ [REDACTED] ⟩ as typographic equivalents, and this decision
3358-629: The distinct forms of ⟨S⟩ , the Greek sigma ⟨Σ⟩ , and Cyrillic es ⟨С⟩ each represent analogous /s/ phonemes. Letters are associated with specific names, which may differ between languages and dialects. Z , for example, is usually called zed outside of the United States, where it is named zee . Both ultimately derive from the name of the parent Greek letter zeta ⟨Ζ⟩ . In alphabets, letters are arranged in alphabetical order , which also may vary by language. In Spanish, ⟨ñ⟩
3431-545: 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
3504-472: The first Blackletter typefaces – until that in turn was replaced by Humanist minuscule , which reasserted the closed-tail form. Generally, the two forms are complementary and interchangeable; the form displayed is a typeface selection choice. In Unicode , the two appearances are generally treated as glyph variants with no semantic difference. Most serif typefaces use the looptail form (for example, g ) and most sans-serif typefaces use
3577-564: 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
3650-418: 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,
3723-446: 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
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#17327940616953796-571: The late 7th and early 8th centuries. Finally, many slight letter additions and drops were made to the common alphabet used in the western world. Minor changes were made such as the removal of certain letters, such as thorn ⟨Þ þ⟩ , wynn ⟨Ƿ ƿ⟩ , and eth ⟨Ð ð⟩ . A letter can have multiple variants, or allographs , related to variation in style of handwriting or printing . Some writing systems have two major types of allographs for each letter: an uppercase form (also called capital or majuscule ) and
3869-514: The looptail 'g', and only 1 of the 38 participants was able to write looptail 'g' correctly". In English, the letter appears either alone or in some digraphs . Alone, it represents ⟨g⟩ is predominantly soft before ⟨e⟩ (including the digraphs ⟨ae⟩ and ⟨oe⟩ ), ⟨i⟩ , or ⟨y⟩ , and hard otherwise. It is hard in those derivations from γυνή (gynḗ) meaning woman where initial-worded as such. Soft ⟨g⟩
3942-475: 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
4015-431: The opentail form (for example, g ) but the code point in both cases is U+0067. For applications where the single-storey variant must be distinguished (such as strict IPA in a typeface where the usual g character is double-storey), the character U+0261 ɡ LATIN SMALL LETTER SCRIPT G is available, as well as an upper case version, U+A7AC Ɡ LATIN CAPITAL LETTER SCRIPT G . Occasionally
4088-681: 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
4161-555: 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
4234-421: 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
4307-683: 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
4380-451: The same pronunciation as the ⟨j⟩ . In Italian and Romanian, ⟨gh⟩ is used to represent /ɡ/ before front vowels where ⟨g⟩ would otherwise represent a soft value. In Italian and French, ⟨ gn ⟩ is used to represent the palatal nasal /ɲ/ , a sound somewhat similar to the ⟨ny⟩ in English canyon . In Italian, the trigraph ⟨gli⟩ , when appearing before
4453-464: The same sound in words such as recei , which was likely an early dative form of rex , meaning "king", as found in an "early Latin inscription." Over time, however, the letter C shifted to represent the unvoiced velar stop, leading to the displacement of the letter K. Scholars believe that this change can be attributed to the influence of the Etruscan language on Latin. Afterwards, the letter 'G'
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#17327940616954526-579: 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
4599-566: 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,
4672-462: The single-storey (sometimes "opentail") [REDACTED] and the double-storey (sometimes "looptail") [REDACTED] . The single-storey form derives from the majuscule (uppercase) form by raising the serif that distinguishes it from 'c' to the top of the loop (thus closing the loop), and extending the vertical stroke downward and to the left. The double-storey form ( [REDACTED] ) had developed similarly, except that some ornate forms then extended
4745-437: The tail back to the right, and to the left again, forming a closed bowl or loop. In the double-storey version, a small top stroke in the upper-right, often terminating in an orb shape, is called an "ear". The loop-tail form is the original one, as seen in 9th century Carolingian script ; evolving over centuries of monastic copying , the open-tail variant came to predominate and it was this that Guttenberg adopted when creating
4818-623: 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
4891-651: 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
4964-459: 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
5037-463: Was introduced in the Old Latin period as a variant of ' C ' to distinguish voiced /ɡ/ from voiceless /k/ , and G was used to represent a voiced velar from this point on and C "stood for the unvoiced velar only". The recorded originator of 'G' is freedman Spurius Carvilius Ruga , who added letter G to the teaching of the Roman alphabet during the 3rd century BC: he was the first Roman to open
5110-495: Was reaffirmed in 1993. While the 1949 Principles of the International Phonetic Association recommended the use of ⟨ [REDACTED] ⟩ for a velar plosive and ⟨ ɡ ⟩ for an advanced one for languages where it is preferable to distinguish the two, such as Russian, this practice never caught on. The 1999 Handbook of the International Phonetic Association , the successor to
5183-893: Was such a "space" in the alphabet and that in fact 'G' was a direct descendant of zeta . Zeta took shapes like ⊏ in some of the Old Italic scripts ; the development of the monumental form 'G' from this shape would be exactly parallel to the development of 'C' from gamma . He suggests that the pronunciation /k/ > /ɡ/ was due to contamination from the also similar-looking 'K'. Eventually, both velar consonants /k/ and /ɡ/ developed palatalized allophones before front vowels; consequently in today's Romance languages , ⟨c⟩ and ⟨g⟩ have different sound values depending on context (known as hard and soft C and hard and soft G ). Because of French influence, English language orthography shares this feature. The modern lowercase g has two typographic variants:
5256-456: Was the first to assign letters not only to consonant sounds, but also to vowels . The Roman Empire further developed and refined the Latin alphabet, beginning around 500 BCE. During the fifth and sixth centuries, the development of lowercase letters began to emerge in Roman writing. At this point, paragraphs, uppercase and lowercase letters, and the concept of sentences and clauses still had not emerged; these final bits of development emerged in
5329-461: Was used to represent /j/ , while /ɡ/ was written as ⟨ǧ⟩ ( ⟨g⟩ with caron ). The Azerbaijani Latin alphabet uses ⟨g⟩ exclusively for the "soft" sound, namely /ɟ/ . The sound /ɡ/ is written as ⟨q⟩ . This leads to unusual spellings of loanwords: qram 'gram', qrup 'group', qaraj 'garage', qallium 'gallium'. In the International Phonetic Alphabet , ⟨ɡ⟩ represents
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