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 French word sans, meaning "without".

In print, sans-serif fonts are more typically used for headlines than for body text.¹ The conventional wisdom is 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. It has been suggested this is because the small size of the font causes serif fonts to appear excessively cluttered on the screen.² This is also true of typography on mobile screens, though it is less commonly used in television screens (the United Kingdom uses a Serif font by default on television).³

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 Japanese 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.

History

Ancient usages

Sans-serif letter forms can be found in Latin, Etruscan, and Greek inscriptions, for as early as 5th century BC.⁴ The sans serif forms had been used on stoichedon Greek inscriptions.

Non-Latin types

The first known usage of Etruscan sans-serif foundry types was from Thomas Dempster's De Etruria regali libri VII (1723). Later at about 1745, Caslon foundry made its the first sans-serif types for Etruscan languages, which was used by University Press, Oxford, for pamphlets written by Etruscan scholar John Swinton.

Revival of Latin characters

According to James Mosley's Typographica journal titled The Nymph and the Grot: the revival of the sanserif letter, the sans serif letters had appeared as early as 1748, as an inscription of Nymph in the Grotto in Stourhead.⁵ However, it was classified as an experiment rather than a sign of wide-scale adoption.⁶

In late 18th century, Neoclassicism movement led to architects to increasingly incorporating ancient Greek and Roman designs in contemporary structures. Among the architects, John Soane was noted for using sans serif letters on his drawings and architectural designs, which were eventually adopted by other designers, such as Thomas Banks, John Flaxman.

Sans-serif letters began to appear in printed media as early as 1805, in European Magazine. However, early 19th-century commercial sign writers and engravers had modified the sans-serif styles of neoclassical designers to include uneven stroke weights found in serif Roman fonts, producing sans-serif letters.⁷

In 1816, the Ordnance Survey began to use 'Egyptian' type, which was printed using copper plate engraving of monoline sans-serif capital letters, to name ancient Roman sites.⁸

Incorporation by typefounders

In 1786, a rounded sans-serif font was developed by Valentin Haüy, first appeared in the book titled "Essai sur l'éducation des aveugles" (An Essay on the Education of the Blind).⁹ The purpose of this font was to be invisible and address accessibility. It was designed to emboss paper and allow the blind to read with their fingers.¹⁰ The design was eventually known as Haüy type¹¹.

In 1816, William Caslon IV produced the first sans-serif printing type in England for Latin characters under the title 'Two Lines English Egyptian', where 'Two Lines English' referred to the font's body size, which equals to about 28 points. Originally cut in 1812.¹²

In 1832, Thorowgood of Fann Street Foundry introduced Grotesque, which include the first commercial Latin printing type to include lowercase sans-serif letters.

Other names for sans-serif

Classification

For the purposes of type classification sans-serif designs broadly divide into four major groups:^{citation needed}

Note that in some sans-serif fonts, such as Arial, the capital-i and lowercase-L appear identical. Verdana, however, keeps them distinct because Verdana's capital-i, as an exception, has serifs. Other fonts may have two horizontal bars on the capital-i, a curved tail on the lowercase-L, or both.

British Standards classification

In British Standards Classification of Typefaces (BS 2961:1967), the following are defined:

PANOSE classification

In PANOSE 1.0, if E, A, and N glyphs are serifed and the TipRat variable is greater than or equal to 0.1, it is classified as serif, otherwise it is sans-serif. The classification system picks out the type of sans-serif subclasses, in the order specified below:

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