Serif
In typography, a serif 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, and a typeface that does not include them is sans-serif. Some typography sources refer to sans-serif typefaces as "grotesque" or "Gothic". In German usage, the term Antiqua is used more broadly for serif types.
Serif typefaces can be broadly classified into one of four subgroups: Old-style, Transitional, Didone, and Slab serif, in order of first emergence.
Origins and etymology
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 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 the type style. The book 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 a Greek word derived from σῠν- and ῥῖψῐς.
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 by additions of what believe type-founders call syrifs or cerefs". The printer Thomas Curson Hansard referred to them as "ceriphs" in 1825. The oldest citations in the Oxford English Dictionary 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". Yet, schreef is the past tense of schrijven. 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:
- schrijven, 1100;
- schreef, 1350;
- schrappen, 1406, not from schrappen ).
Classification
Old-style
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 then oblique styles that were 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 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 and generally, but less often, by a diagonal stress. An old-style font normally has a left-inclining curve axis with weight stress at about 8 and 2 o'clock; serifs are almost always bracketed ; 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' and 'Garalde', 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 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 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 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 the "M"; Cloister is an exception.
Dutch taste
A new genre of serif type developed around the 17th century in the Netherlands and Germany that came to be called the "Dutch taste". It was a tendency towards denser, more solid typefaces, often with a high x-height 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 the larger sizes.
Transitional
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 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 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, Noto Serif, 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 the two genres blur, especially in type intended for body text; Bell is an example of this.
Didone
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. 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 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 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 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.