Free serif fonts

A serif is the small stroke finishing the end of a stem, and the shape of it tells you most of what you need to know about the face. Old-style serifs are bracketed and angled, with modest contrast between thick and thin; they were cut for printing and they are still the safest choice for a long read. Modern serifs — Didone faces — have flat hairline serifs and violent contrast, which is magnificent at 60 pixels and falls apart at 14. Slab serifs are blunt and even, and behave more like a sans than either.

The question that decides most of it is where the text will be read. On paper, contrast is free: the ink holds a hairline. On a screen, a hairline is one pixel that may or may not be there, and a high-contrast face at body size goes thin and patchy on exactly the displays most people have. If the text is going on a screen and it is long, choose a face with modest contrast and a large x-height.

For headings the calculation reverses. A Didone at 48 pixels is doing something a sans cannot, and the fragility that ruins it at body size is the source of its authority at display size. Pairing one with a plain sans for the body is the oldest reliable pairing there is, and it works because the two are not competing for the same job.

Screen-first serifs are worth knowing about as a group. Several families here were drawn specifically for text on displays: sturdier serifs, wider spacing, a taller lowercase. They look slightly heavy-handed in print and they are the right answer for an article somebody reads on a phone.