What is the meaning of sans serif and serif fonts?

In the Roman alphabet camp in western countries, there are two main types of fonts: sans serif and serif. Although the typewriter also belongs to sans serif, it is an equal-width font, therefore, monospace is independent. For example, in the web, the same width font is often used to represent code.

Serif indicates that there is additional decoration at the beginning and end of the stroke, and the stroke width varies depending on the straight stroke. On the contrary, sans serif does not have these additional decorations, and the stroke width is roughly the same.
We can see that the usual Georgia, Times New Roman, etc. belong to the serif font, while Arial, tahoma, verdana, etc. belong to the sans serif font. For Chinese, these two types are also available. Obviously, and (commonly used in traditional Chinese) belong to Serif, while simhei and youyuan belong to sans serif.

General comparison between serif and sans serif
Serif fonts are easy to recognize, so they are easy to recognize. On the contrary, sans serif is eye-catching. However, in terms of reading texts, sans serif is prone to letter recognition problems, which often causes re-reading back and forth and disorder of upper and lower lines.
Serif emphasizes the start and end of a letter stroke, so it is easier to identify the front and back continuity.
Serif emphasizes a word rather than a single letter, while sans serif emphasizes individual letters.
In small fonts, sans serif is usually clearer than serif.
Purpose:
Generally, the content and body of an article use the preferred serif font, which can increase the ease of reading and reading for a long time, because the unit is word, it is not easy to get tired. The title and table text are in the sans serif font that is eye-catching. It needs to be eye-catching, but you don't have to stare at these words for a long time.

For eye-catching purposes like publicity materials and posters, sans serif fonts are also used for short paragraphs. However, when the body of books, newspapers, magazines, and so on is too long, the serif font should be used to relieve the reader's reading burden. This principle should also be followed in web design and browser settings.

 

 

 

 

Serif

• English Font:Georgia and Times New Roman. Top 10 serif body text Fonts
• Chinese font:Song, fine Ming (commonly used in traditional Chinese) and so on.

Sans serif

• English Font:Arial, tahoma, verdana, etc. Top 10 sans serif body text Fonts
• Chinese font:Simhei, youyuan, etc.