Roman type

roman typeface Bembo, a 1928 revival by Stanley Morison based on punches cut by Francesco Griffo in 1495. This specimen includes a few letters of Bembo italic.

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.

See also

• History of western typography
• Gaelic type

References

• Bringhurst, Robert (2008), The Elements of Typographic Style (version 3.2). Vancouver: Hartley & Marks. Often referred to simply as "Bringhurst", Elements is widely respected as the current English-language authority on typographic style.
• Nesbitt, Alexander The History and Technique of Lettering (1957), Dover Publications, Inc. ISBN 0-486-40281-9. The Dover edition is an abridged and corrected republication of the work originally published in 1950 by Prentice-Hall, Inc. under the title Lettering: The History and Technique of Lettering as Design

---