In typography, a slab serif (also called mechanistic, square serif or Egyptian) typeface is a type of serif typeface characterized by thick, block-like serifs. Serif terminals may be either blunt and angular (Rockwell), or rounded (Courier). Slab serif typefaces generally have no bracket (feature connecting the strokes to the serifs). Some consider slab serifs to be a subset of modern serif typefaces.
Because of their bold appearance, they are most commonly used in large headlines and advertisements but are seldom used in body text. One recent exception to the general lack of the use of Slab Serif in body text is Egyptienne, a font designed for the newspaper The Guardian in the UK, which is used throughout the paper and within its body. Another common exception to this rule is in the use of monospaced text, many fonts for which are modeled on the typefaces used by typewriters. Though widely utilized in the field of computer science due to their fixed-width nature, the everyday use of typewriter-like fonts is declining in the wake of electronic publishing and the spread of electronic reading devices.
Famous quotes containing the word slab:
“Another day. Deliberations are recessed
In an iron-blue chamber of that afternoon
On which we wore things and looked well at
A slab of business rising behind the stars.”
—John Ashbery (b. 1927)