Syntax is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Meier in 1968, and released in 1969 by the D. Stempel Schriftgießerei (type foundry) of Frankfurt am Main.

The original drawings were done in 1954; first by writing the letters with a brush, then redrawing their essential linear forms, and finally adding balanced amounts of weight to the skeletons to produce optically monoline letterforms.

Meier described Syntax as being a sans-serif face modeled on the Renaissance serif typeface, similar to Sabon or Bembo.

On its release Jan Tschichold praised Syntax as "very easy to read, well designed: better than the related Gill Sans".

In 1995, Hans Eduard Meier and Linotype began to produce an extensive revision and expansion of the Syntax font family.

[6] Based on original font design, the alterations made to accommodate hot metal and phototypesetting machines were discarded.

Both families come in 5 weights of roman fonts, covering Basic Latin to ISO Latin-1 character sets, available in TrueType or PostScript Type 1 formats.

Like the sans-serif version, it comes with Text and Display designs with same amount of fonts per family, and covers same character sets.

[9][10] Linotype Syntax is used in OÖ Nachrichten, Deccan Herald newspapers, Lonely Planet Guidebooks;[11] impuls 2000 magazine[12][13] and was used in Sinclair computer box art, manuals and brochures.