In Latin-script typography, roman is one of the three main kinds of historical type, alongside blackletter and italic. Roman type was modelled from a European scribal manuscript style of the 1400s, based on the pairing of inscriptional capitals used in ancient Rome with Carolingian minuscules developed in the Holy Roman Empire.
During the early Renaissance, roman and italic type were used separately. Today, roman and italic type are mixed, and most typefaces are composed of an upright roman style with an associated italic or oblique style.
Popular roman typefaces include Bembo, Baskerville, Caslon, Bodoni, Times Roman and Garamond.
The name roman is customarily applied uncapitalized distinguishing early Italian typefaces of the Renaissance period and most subsequent upright types based on them, in contrast to Roman letters dating from classical antiquity.
Famous quotes containing the words roman and/or type:
“My first childish doubt as to whether God could really be a good Protestant was suggested by my observation of the deplorable fact that the best voices available for combination with my mother’s in the works of the great composers had been unaccountably vouchsafed to Roman Catholics.”
—George Bernard Shaw (1856–1950)
“Only that type of story deserves to be called moral that shows us that one has the power within oneself to act, out of the conviction that there is something better, even against one’s own inclination.”
—Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe (1749–1832)