Sans-Serif

Sans-Serif

In typography, a sans-serif or sans serif  typeface  is one that does not have the small features called “serifs” at the end of strokes. The term comes from the Latin word “sine”, via the French word sans, meaning “without”.

In print, sans-serif fonts are more typically used for headlines than for body text. The conventional wisdom holds that serifs help guide the eye along the lines in large blocks of text. Sans-serifs, however, have acquired considerable acceptance for body text in Europe.

Sans-serif fonts have become the de facto standard for body text on-screen, especially online. This is partly because interlaced displays may show twittering on the fine details of the horizontal serifs. Additionally, the low resolution of digital displays in general can make fine details like serifs disappear or appear too large.

Before the term “sans-serif” became standard in English typography, a number of other terms had been used. One of these outmoded terms for sans serif was gothic, which is still used in East Asian typography and sometimes seen in font names like Century Gothic.

Sans-serif fonts are sometimes, especially in older documents, used as a device for emphasis, due to their typically blacker type color.

Other names for sans-serif

• Egyptian

• Antique

• Grotesque

• Doric

• Gothic

• Heiti

• Lineale, or Linear

• Simplices

• Swiss

Gruthch Shaded:

Pointy

Pee Pants Script

Fh Scribble

Stun Filla Wenka

Mia’s Scribblings

Jamai Stevie

Sketch Block

Tire Shop

Be Arpaw

Fail

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header (“Content-type: image/png”);

$im = ImageCreate (300, 40);
$grey = ImageColorAllocate ($im, 230, 230, 230);
$black = ImageColorAllocate ($im, 0, 0, 0);

ImageTTFText($im, 20, 0, 10, 25, $black, “CORBEL.TTF”, “TrueType Fonts!”);
ImagePng ($im);
ImageDestroy ($im);
?>

Core fonts for the Web was a project begun by Microsoft in 1996 to make a standard pack of fonts for the Internet. The fonts were designed to:

• Be highly legible on screen;
• Offer a wide range of typographic “timbres” within a small number of typefaces; and
• Support extensive internationalisation.

These design goals and the fonts’ broad availability have made them extremely popular with web designers.

While the program has formally ended, the benefits of using broadly available fonts remain; hence, in addition to the original core fonts, newer fonts packaged with Microsoft Windows and Microsoft Office increasingly form a new canon of core fonts. Broader web browser adoption of the web fonts specification may ultimately render the notion of core fonts obsolete by allowing the real-time downloading and display of specific fonts.