![]() ![]() So my recommendation (not a rule) is to use a serif font for most legal documents. Attorney for his district required that all documents filed by federal attorneys be in Arial.)īut what if it’s up to you? Generally, serif typefaces are more common in legal writing than sans serif, and they tend to look more professional to most lawyers. ![]() (A Social Security Administration lawyer told me that the U.S. Yes, some courts and other organizations require a certain font, and you might work for someone who insists on a particular font. Most legal writers have, at some point, had to decide whether to use a serif or sans serif font. ![]() (Below right.) Examples are Arial, Tahoma, and Calibri. (Below left.) Examples are Times New Roman, Garamond, and Cambria. Serif fonts have small extensions at the end of each stroke, called serifs. This post defines a few terms, reports on some research, and offers some recommendations.įonts come in two broad categories: serif and sans serif. And the slanted Roman script was later named Italique Hande, or just italic, due to its Italian origin.What are the best fonts for legal writing? Legal text appears most often in traditional, serious documents-statutes, contracts, pleadings, and briefs-so let’s narrow our definition of “best” to professional and readable. In contrast with these "classical" Roman-inspired scripts, the old blackletters were viewed by Italian humanists as non-classical and barbaric (and associated with the Goths that invaded the Roman Empire), so they were naturally termed gothic, which came to just mean not roman. At the time, you had the long-standing blackletter scripts, but Italian Renaissance humanists, obsessed with Roman antiquity, began spreading much easier to read scripts based on Carolingian minuscule, such as humanist minuscule and a simpler, slightly slanted derivative suited to faster writing. † These classifications originate from handwriting/calligraphy/script styles in 15-16th century Europe. "Roman" (by itself) is commonly the base font of a typeface or font family, but there can also be a "bold-roman", "black-roman", as well as "roman- oblique", which is slanted at an angle but maintains the same glyph shapes as the base font. ![]() And, lastly, some typefaces have what are called petit-serifs ( "small serifs") or semi-serifs.Īs Charles Stewart noted in his comment, " roman" is also used to refer to the upright straight-lined typestyle reminiscent of classical Roman chiseled type-from which serifs are also derived (and contrasting with blackletter and italic script). There are also different types of serif, such as slab serif-also referred to as Egyptian, mechanistic, or square serif-versus bracketed serifs.Īdditionally, there are some typefaces with serifs that are still considered sans-serif. Sans-serif typefaces are, likewise, sometimes referred to as grotesque / grotesk or gothic. Serif typefaces are sometimes referred to as " roman". Sans-serif just means "without serif." The definition of serif / sans-serif typefaces should be self-explanatory. For instance, a capital "I" is usually rendered with 2 crossbars. Serifs are the usually perpendicular projections found on the termini/endpoints in type. ![]()
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