Serif
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.
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".
[6] In her book Chronologisch Woordenboek,[7] 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.
[8] Old-style typefaces date back to 1465, shortly after Johannes Gutenberg's adoption of the movable type printing press.
[9][10] Old-style serif fonts have remained popular for setting body text because of their organic appearance and excellent readability on rough book paper.
[17] 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.
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.
[23][24] 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.
[26][27][28][c] Examples of contemporary Garalde old-style typefaces are Bembo, Garamond, Galliard, Granjon, Goudy Old Style, Minion, Palatino, Renard, Sabon, and Scala.
Several of these blend in Garalde influences to fit modern expectations, especially placing single-sided serifs on the "M"; Cloister is an exception.
[30] A new genre of serif type developed around the 17th century in the Netherlands and Germany that came to be called the "Dutch taste" (goût Hollandois in French).
[31] 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.
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,[38] Pradell in Spain and John Baskerville and Bulmer in England.
[42][43][e] Didone, or modern, serif typefaces, which first emerged in the late 18th century, are characterized by extreme contrast between thick and thin lines.
[55][56] 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.
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 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.
[66][67] 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.
[69] Colin Wheildon, who conducted scientific studies from 1982 to 1990, found that sans serif fonts created various difficulties for readers that impaired their comprehension.
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.
(Examples: Angsana UPC, Kinnari)[78] In Germany and other Central European countries, blackletter remained the norm in body text for longer than in Western Europe; see the Antiqua–Fraktur dispute, often dividing along ideological or political lines.
