The difference between serif and Sans-serif fonts

Author: Ice Fire Jiu Source: Baidu Space Published: 2013-11-01 10:24 read: 12,817 recommendations: 20 original link [favorites]

In the Western Roman alphabet camp, the font is divided into two categories: Sans Serif and Serif, although the typewriter body also belongs to Sans Serif, but because it is a wide font, so separate out monospace this kind, for example, in the Web, the code is often used to use the same width font.

Serif means that there is extra decoration at the beginning and end of the stroke, and the stroke's thickness varies depending on the straight cross. Conversely, Sans Serif does not have these extra decorations, and the stroke is roughly the same thickness. Such as:

As can be seen, we usually use Georgia, Times New Roman and so on belong to serif font, and Arial, Tahoma, Verdana and so on belong to sans serif font. For Chinese, there are also these two categories, it is obvious that the song body, Fine Ming body (commonly used in traditional Chinese) and so on belong to the Serif, and the blackbody, the young circle and so on belong to Sans Serif.

　　General comparison of Serif and sans serif:

①serif's fonts are easily recognizable, making them highly readable. Conversely Sans serif is more eye-catching, but in the case of reading, Sans serif easy to cause the problem of letter recognition, often have to reread and go up and down the line of confusion situation.

②serif emphasizes the beginning and the end of the letter strokes, so it is easier to recognize the continuity.

③serif emphasizes a word, not a single letter, whereas Sans Serif emphasizes individual letters.

④ in small font situations, usually sans serif is clearer than serif.

Because the boldface character belongs to "sans Serif" (sans-serif), and italicized word belongs to the "liner body" (serif), the latter is easier to recognize the human eye, so it will be more comfortable to read. Japanese characters are not lined up in Europe and the United States (SANS-SERIF), so most people use the Goethe body (the equivalent of Western text sans serif body).

　　Applicable use:

Usually the article's Nevin, the body uses the readability better serif font, this may increase the legibility, and the long time reading under because will be in the word unit to read, is less easy to be tired. And the title, the table in the use of more prominent sans serif font, it needs to be significant, eye-catching, but do not have to stare at these words for a long time to read.

Like promotional materials, posters, for the eye, its short passages will also be used sans serif font. However, in books, newspapers and magazines, the text of a considerable amount of space, you should adopt the Serif font to alleviate the reader's burden of reading. This principle should also be followed in web design and browser settings.

Practical application:

　　In Firefox (it seems that only Firefox has this feature at the moment), you can specify Sans Serif, Serif, and monospace separately, but this option is not set on the Tools menu, but you can type about in Addressbar: Config, and then filter the font to find the following preference Name:

Code: Font.name.monospace.x-westernfont.name.monospace.zh-cnfont.name.sans-serif.x-westernfont.name.sans-serif.zh-cnfont.name.s Erif.x-westernfont.name.serif.zh-cn

You can specify a corresponding font according to the above principles of sans Serif, Serif and monospace, according to the CSS rules, At the end of the font (or font-family), it is required to specify a generic-family such as serif to avoid using the serif default font on this computer when the client does not actually specify a font.

Because of the readability of the liner font is very good, so it applies the most places is the publication or the text content of the printed matter, such as a large paragraph of text as a form of expression on the work.

The more common serif fonts are: Georgia, Garamond, Times New Roman, Chinese Arial and so on.

Sans Serif font is more sleek, the line is generally uniform thickness. More suitable for use as WordArt, title and so on. Because sans serif fonts are usually more uniform in weight, the readability is reduced when small fonts are displayed, causing visual fatigue.

Common sans serif fonts are: Trebuchet MS, Tahoma, Verdana, Arial, Helvetica, Chinese young circles, official script and so on.

　　Other common font families

　　In the printing science, in addition to serif and Sans-serif, there are usually monospace and other wide fonts, scripts handwriting (such as flower body), blackletter type Body (also known as Gothic brother Curvier. Strictly speaking, a lot of commonly used serif fonts are actually gothic fonts, ornamental decorations (those that are in the text strokes or around the decorative patterns of the font. It is common in many medieval books. If the brain body is really a font, then you should be able to calculate the decorative body bar ... ) and Symbol font (such as the famous wedding123 ... ）

　　monospace Equal width font:

The so-called equal-width font, refers to each character width is consistent font. A notable example is the Courier New font. Because of the consistent character width, it is particularly easy to align and quickly and accurately locate a column in a row, so it is often used to display code.

Cursive writing: equivalent to the handwriting in the printing science. The Chinese cursive is one such font.

　　default font in Web design: font size (12px), row height (18px)

font:12px/1.5 Tahoma, Helvetica, Arial, Sans-serif;

The ①font-family is Tahoma by default. Tahoma is the default font of the English Windows operating system, this font is more balanced, showing a good mix of Chinese and English, is a durable engaging font.

The ②mac OS x system has a system default font that is more elegant than Tahoma: Helvetica, Helvetica fonts for non-MAC systems are RIP versions.

③arial is the default font for early Windows English systems and is Tahoma on XP and Vista.

④ 's final Sans-serif is for the Hardy Linux DIY clan. Linux by default only kernel, fonts are completely user-defined, for this part of the user, Sans-serif may be useful.

⑤ Finally, the default is arial when you don't specify a Chinese font for a webpage, either in XP or Vista. Therefore, the ' song Body ' in font-family is superfluous and can be omitted.

The difference between serif and Sans-serif fonts