Slab serif

Also called Mécane, Egyptian, Antique

A serif as thick as the stem it ends, usually unbracketed, built for a poster rather than a page.

Slab serif: a letter in the house face with the slab serif marked in vermilion. — Slab serif, drawn, Drew Ink. Drawn 2026-09-10.

Slab serif: TERM and MINER in fourteen- and twelve-line pica Egyptian from Thorowgood's specimen of 1825, the serifs as heavy as the stems. — Thorowgood's Egyptian, 1825, William Thorowgood, Fann Street Foundry; photographed by James Puckett. CC BY 2.0. Cropped to the two showings. Retrieved 2026-09-10.

Near it

Clarendon

Didone

Reverse contrast

Bracket

Serif

What it is made of

serif weight	equal to the stem
bracket	none or minimal	a bracketed slab is a clarendon
the classification this term belongs to is retired	de-adopted 18 March 2021	AND THE CLASSIFICATION THIS TERM BELONGS TO WAS RETIRED BY ITS OWN CUSTODIAN. The ATypI board de-adopted Vox-ATypI on 18 March 2021 and withdrew its endorsement, because the system divides only the Latin writing system and a later revision put Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew and the Asian scripts together under one heading called Non-Latines. ATypI, "ATypI de-adopts Vox-ATypI typeface classification system", published 27 April 2021, read whole (1,136 words). THE STATEMENT DOES NOT DEFINE THIS CLASS: it names only Garaldes and Linéales as examples, so nothing in this entry's own definition comes from it

Where it came from

England, around 1815, arriving with advertising and large-format printing. The name Egyptian came from a fashion for Egypt after Napoleon's campaign and has nothing to do with the letterforms.

Done well

Rockwell, Monotype, 1934