Sans serif text generator

Serifs are the small strokes that finish off the main lines of a letter, like the little feet at the base of a printed T or I. Typefaces such as Times New Roman and Georgia have them. Sans serif, from the French sans, meaning without, describes typefaces like Arial and Helvetica that leave them off, so each stroke simply stops.

Most of what you read on a phone is already sans serif. Phones draw their interfaces in sans-serif typefaces such as Apple's San Francisco and Google's Roboto, and Instagram and Facebook show captions and comments in sans-serif type. That's why the sans styles here blend in, while the serif ones in the generator, 𝐁𝐨𝐥𝐝 and 𝐼𝑡𝑎𝑙𝑖𝑐, look more like print.

Unicode's Mathematical Alphanumeric Symbols block, added in 2001, includes four sans-serif alphabets, and each runs unbroken from A to z. That isn't true of every maths style: the cursive, Old English and outline sets have holes that generators fill with older characters, which can look slightly out of step. The sans sets need no patching.

Neither italic set has digits of its own, so a sloped line with a number in it always ends up with one upright character, like the 7 above. When a line carries a price, a time or a date, bold sans is the style that keeps every character in step.

Of the four, regular sans serif is the one that most often disappoints. Pasted into Instagram, 𝖣𝗈𝗈𝗋𝗌 𝗈𝗉𝖾𝗇 looks almost like the text around it, because both are sans serif. Your phone draws the maths letters with a different font from the app's own, so the shapes and spacing shift a little, but many readers won't spot it.

That small change still carries the full cost of styled text: search won't match the words, and screen readers may read them oddly. The good use for regular sans is a line that mixes styles, since 𝗗𝗼𝗼𝗿𝘀 𝗼𝗽𝗲𝗻 𝖺𝗍 𝟩 keeps the bold and regular letters in one matching design. For everything else, ordinary text does the same job for free.

The generator offers bold and italic in both families, and they set a different tone:

Pick one family per post. A serif-bold heading over sans-italic asides looks unplanned, because the two families are drawn to different designs. The four sans styles share one design, so a bold sans heading, italic sans asides and the odd bold italic word sit together naturally.

Tip: For a heading in a caption or bio, bold sans is the safest pick: it matches the app's type, has its own digits and stays clear at small sizes.

If you came here for a sans-serif font to use in Word, Google Docs or a design app, you want an installable font rather than these characters. Arial, Helvetica and Verdana are long-standing choices, and Google Fonts has free ones such as Inter, Roboto and Open Sans. Choose one from the font menu and the bold and italic buttons work as normal, with numbers that slope along with the letters.