As we mentioned last month, wood-type can be divided into three major categories: Gothic, Roman, and Antique. Gothic is known by that name primarily in the US, and by other names elsewhere. The more generic name is “sans-serif” meaning “without serifs” in French. Serifs are the decorative cross strokes at the end of the main stokes of a letter. Gothic wood-type was first introduced in the 1830sand was shortly followed by a full array over line sizes, widths, and decorative variations.From the 1850s through the 1870s many subcategories of Gothic were created such asTuscan, Round, Runic and others. Gothic in the 1800s was widely used for posters.Today it is used on traffic signs, the logos of high tech companies, and is the primary type face on the Internet. Our “Gothic” sample below is an X Condensed version made by the Hamilton Co.