In newer serif fonts, the thick and thin lines are often vertical, not slanted, and are more exaggerated than the old fonts. These fonts are effective for titles of books or pamphlets, but are less suitable for large areas of print. Here are some modern serif fonts.

Cheltenham    Melior    Charter    BT

Sans serif
The sans serif style has no tails. Serif is probably from a Dutch word meaning stroke or line, and sans means “without” in French. Arial and Helvetica are the most common sans serif fonts.

This is Arial,
and this, Helvetica.

These are easy to read and ideal for people with vision problems. In long passages of text, however, both can look rather heavy and dense.

Here are some other sans serif fonts:

Avant Garde    Gill Sans MT    Trebuchet    Century Gothic

Some sans serif fonts use letters which resemble hand-printed letters. If you are writing for people with limited literacy, look at the letters a and g in a sans serif font. Some are clearer than others. People with literacy difficulties often find it easier to read text that resembles hand printing. On the other hand, in most fonts with this style of letters, the tail on the g is very short, so an a and a g may be confused.

This is Vag Rounded.

Roman and italics
The fonts I have shown you have all been roman-style fonts, with upright letters. Most have an italic style to go with them. In some cases, the italic is just an oblique version of the roman, while in others the italic is a separate style. Computers label them all as italic.

This is Trebuchet, in Roman and oblique (italic).
And this is Times New Roman in italics.

Notice the italic “a” does not have an extra line over it like the roman “a” does. Serif italics are often harder to read, as they are narrower.

Another point to consider when using sans serif fonts is the look of the upper case “I” and the lower case “l.” In many sans serif fonts, these are almost identical and therefore may cause confusion.

The I and l in ITC Officina Sans
and the I and l in Trebuchet

are clearly differentiated; but both faces use the doubled-over “a” like the one we saw above in Times Roman. It is a matter of judging which font has most of the features you think you need for your audience.