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83-659: 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 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

166-455: A majuscule script commonly used from the 3rd to 8th centuries AD by Latin and Greek scribes. Tironian notes were a shorthand system consisting of thousands of signs. New Roman cursive script, also known as minuscule cursive, was in use from the 3rd century to the 7th century, and uses letter forms that are more recognizable to modern eyes; ⟨a⟩ , ⟨b⟩ , ⟨d⟩ , and ⟨e⟩ had taken

249-482: 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

332-432: 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,

415-549: 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

498-516: 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'),

581-578: A more familiar shape, and the other letters were proportionate to each other. This script evolved into a variety of regional medieval scripts (for example, the Merovingian , Visigothic and Benevantan scripts), to be later supplanted by the Carolingian minuscule . It was not until the Middle Ages that the letter ⟨ W ⟩ (originally a ligature of two ⟨ V ⟩ s)

664-483: 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 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

747-402: 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

830-423: 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),

913-510: 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 is named in homage to Claude Garamond and Aldus Manutius . In general,

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996-521: 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

1079-419: 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

1162-447: 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 is often referred to as 'Oldstyle' or 'Old style'. Venetian (also called humanist, humanistic, or humanes ) include

1245-483: Is a popular contemporary example. The very popular Century is 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

1328-459: 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 ) Latin alphabet The Latin alphabet , also known as

1411-468: 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,

1494-512: Is standardised as the ISO basic Latin alphabet . The term Latin alphabet may refer to either the alphabet used to write Latin (as described in this article) or other alphabets based on the Latin script , which is the basic set of letters common to the various alphabets descended from the classical Latin alphabet, such as the English alphabet . These Latin-script alphabets may discard letters, like

1577-488: 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

1660-497: 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

1743-579: Is today transcribed Lūciī a fīliī was written ⟨ lv́ciꟾ·a·fꟾliꟾ ⟩ in the inscription depicted. Some letters have more than one form in epigraphy . Latinists have treated some of them especially such as ⟨ Ꟶ ⟩ , a variant of ⟨H⟩ found in Roman Gaul . The primary mark of punctuation was the interpunct , which was used as a word divider , though it fell out of use after 200 AD. Old Roman cursive script, also called majuscule cursive and capitalis cursive,

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1826-811: 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 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

1909-608: 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

1992-529: The African reference alphabet . Although Latin did not use diacritical marks, signs of truncation of words (often placed above or at the end of the truncated word) were very common. Furthermore, abbreviations or smaller overlapping letters were often used. This was due to the fact that if the text was engraved on stone, the number of letters to be written was reduced, while if it was written on paper or parchment, it saved precious space. This habit continued even in

2075-539: 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

2158-562: The Roman alphabet , is the collection of letters originally used by the ancient Romans to write the Latin language . Largely unaltered excepting several letters splitting—i.e. ⟨J⟩ from ⟨I⟩ , and ⟨U⟩ from ⟨V⟩ —additions such as ⟨W⟩ , and extensions such as letters with diacritics , it forms the Latin script that is used to write most languages of modern Europe , Africa , America and Oceania . Its basic modern inventory

2241-753: The Rotokas alphabet , or add new letters, like the Danish and Norwegian alphabets. Letter shapes have evolved over the centuries, including the development in Medieval Latin of lower-case , forms which did not exist in the Classical period alphabet. The Latin alphabet evolved from the visually similar Etruscan alphabet , which evolved from the Cumaean Greek version of the Greek alphabet , which

2324-594: The age of colonialism and Christian evangelism , the Latin script spread beyond Europe , coming into use for writing indigenous American , Australian , Austronesian , Austroasiatic and African languages . More recently, linguists have also tended to prefer the Latin script or the International Phonetic Alphabet (itself largely based on the Latin script) when transcribing or creating written standards for non-European languages, such as

2407-523: 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

2490-428: 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

2573-579: 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 the Janson and Ehrhardt types based on his work and Caslon , especially

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2656-615: 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 ...

2739-454: 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

2822-452: 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 the same style. Fonts from the original period of transitional typefaces include early on

2905-492: 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

2988-529: 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

3071-639: 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

3154-831: The Middle Ages. Hundreds of symbols and abbreviations exist, varying from century to century. It is generally believed that the Latin alphabet used by the Romans was derived from the Old Italic alphabet used by the Etruscans . That alphabet was derived from the Euboean alphabet used by the Cumae , which in turn was derived from the Phoenician alphabet . Latin included 21 different characters. The letter ⟨C⟩

3237-549: The Romans did not use the traditional ( Semitic -derived) names as in Greek: the names of the plosives were formed by adding /eː/ to their sound (except for ⟨K⟩ and ⟨Q⟩ , which needed different vowels to be distinguished from ⟨C⟩ ) and the names of the continuants consisted as a rule either of the bare sound, or the sound preceded by /e/ . The letter ⟨Y⟩ when introduced

3320-459: 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 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

3403-666: 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

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3486-527: The alphabet. From then on, ⟨G⟩ represented the voiced plosive /ɡ/ , while ⟨C⟩ was generally reserved for the voiceless plosive /k/ . The letter ⟨K⟩ was used only rarely, in a small number of words such as Kalendae , often interchangeably with ⟨C⟩ . After the Roman conquest of Greece in the 1st century BC, Latin adopted the Greek letters ⟨Y⟩ and ⟨Z⟩ (or readopted, in

3569-640: 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

3652-488: 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

3735-443: 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

3818-471: 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

3901-696: 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

3984-441: 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

4067-406: 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 the gothics of the Middle Ages , are characterized by short and thick bracketed serifs,

4150-439: 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

4233-450: 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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4316-534: The fragmentation of political power, the style of writing changed and varied greatly throughout the Middle Ages, even after the invention of the printing press . Early deviations from the classical forms were the uncial script , a development of the Old Roman cursive , and various so-called minuscule scripts that developed from New Roman cursive , of which the insular script developed by Irish literati and derivations of this, such as Carolingian minuscule were

4399-536: The general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America. This is still systematically done in modern German . Vox-ATypI classification#Humanist In typography , the Vox-ATypI classification makes it possible to classify typefaces into general classes. Devised by Maximilien Vox in 1954, it

4482-504: 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

4565-418: 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,

4648-477: 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 the Didone fonts that followed. Stress is more likely to be vertical, and often

4731-443: 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

4814-457: The latter case) to write Greek loanwords, placing them at the end of the alphabet. An attempt by the emperor Claudius to introduce three additional letters did not last. Thus it was during the classical Latin period that the Latin alphabet contained 21 letters and 2 foreign letters: The Latin names of some of these letters are disputed; for example, ⟨H⟩ may have been called [ˈaha] or [ˈaka] . In general

4897-436: 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

4980-474: 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

5063-426: The most influential, introducing the lower case forms of the letters, as well as other writing conventions that have since become standard. The languages that use the Latin script generally use capital letters to begin paragraphs and sentences and proper nouns . The rules for capitalization have changed over time, and different languages have varied in their rules for capitalization. Old English , for example,

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5146-854: 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

5229-678: 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

5312-635: 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

5395-549: 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

5478-414: 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

5561-679: 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

5644-448: 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

5727-565: 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,

5810-617: 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

5893-602: 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 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

5976-624: 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 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

6059-470: 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

6142-486: The various letters see Latin spelling and pronunciation ; for the names of the letters in English see English alphabet . Diacritics were not regularly used, but they did occur sometimes, the most common being the apex used to mark long vowels , which had previously sometimes been written doubled. However, in place of taking an apex, the letter i was written taller : ⟨ á é ꟾ ó v́ ⟩ . For example, what

6225-457: 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

6308-664: 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 ,

6391-527: Was added to the Latin alphabet, to represent sounds from the Germanic languages which did not exist in medieval Latin, and only after the Renaissance did the convention of treating ⟨ I ⟩ and ⟨ U ⟩ as vowels , and ⟨ J ⟩ and ⟨ V ⟩ as consonants , become established. Prior to that, the former had been merely allographs of the latter. With

6474-516: Was adopted in 1962 by the Association Typographique Internationale (ATypI) and in 1967 as a British Standard , as British Standards Classification of Typefaces (BS 2961:1967), which is a very basic interpretation and adaptation/modification of the earlier Vox-ATypI classification. Vox proposed a nine-type classification which tends to group typefaces according to their main characteristics, often typical of

6557-512: Was itself descended from the Phoenician alphabet , which in turn derived from Egyptian hieroglyphs . The Etruscans ruled early Rome ; their alphabet evolved in Rome over successive centuries to produce the Latin alphabet. During the Middle Ages , the Latin alphabet was used (sometimes with modifications) for writing Romance languages , which are direct descendants of Latin , as well as Celtic , Germanic , Baltic and some Slavic languages . With

6640-419: Was probably called "hy" /hyː/ as in Greek, the name upsilon not being in use yet, but this was changed to i Graeca ("Greek i") as Latin speakers had difficulty distinguishing its foreign sound /y/ from /i/ . ⟨Z⟩ was given its Greek name, zeta . This scheme has continued to be used by most modern European languages that have adopted the Latin alphabet. For the Latin sounds represented by

6723-600: Was rarely written with even proper nouns capitalized, whereas Modern English writers and printers of the 17th and 18th century frequently capitalized most and sometimes all nouns; for example, from the preamble of the United States Constitution : We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote

6806-445: Was the everyday form of handwriting used for writing letters, by merchants writing business accounts, by schoolchildren learning the Latin alphabet, and even emperors issuing commands. A more formal style of writing was based on Roman square capitals , but cursive was used for quicker, informal writing. It was most commonly used from about the 1st century BC to the 3rd century, but it probably existed earlier than that. It led to Uncial ,

6889-439: Was the western form of the Greek gamma , but it was used for the sounds /ɡ/ and /k/ alike, possibly under the influence of Etruscan , which might have lacked any voiced plosives . Later, probably during the 3rd century BC, the letter ⟨Z⟩ – not needed to write Latin properly – was replaced with the new letter ⟨G⟩ , a ⟨C⟩ modified with a small vertical stroke, which took its place in

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