Editing Serif (section)

===Transitional===
[[Image:Times New Roman sample.svg|thumb|[[Times New Roman]], a modern example of a transitional serif design.]]
Transitional, or baroque, serif typefaces first became common around the mid-18th century until the start of the 19th.<ref name="Shaw2017">{{cite book|author=Paul Shaw|title=Revival Type: Digital Typefaces Inspired by the Past|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=n7e0DgAAQBAJ&pg=PA85|date=18 April 2017|publisher=Yale University Press|isbn=978-0-300-21929-6|pages=85–98|access-date=22 June 2017|archive-date=9 February 2024|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20240209075213/https://books.google.com/books?id=n7e0DgAAQBAJ&pg=PA85#v=onepage&q&f=false|url-status=live}}</ref> They are in between "old style" and "modern" fonts, thus the name "transitional". Differences between thick and thin lines are more pronounced than they are in old style, but less dramatic than they are in the Didone fonts that followed. Stress is more likely to be vertical, and often the "R" has a curled tail. The ends of many strokes are marked not by blunt or angled serifs but by [[ball terminal]]s. Transitional faces often have an italic 'h' that opens outwards at bottom right.<ref name="Type Designs of the Past and Present, Part 3">{{cite journal|last1=Morison|first1=Stanley|title=Type Designs of the Past and Present, Part 3|journal=PM|date=1937|pages=17–81|url=http://magazines.iaddb.org/issue/PM/1937-11-01/edition/4-3/page/19|access-date=4 June 2017|archive-date=2017-09-04|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170904064848/http://magazines.iaddb.org/issue/PM/1937-11-01/edition/4-3/page/19|url-status=dead}}</ref> Because the genre bridges styles, it is difficult to define where the genre starts and ends. Many of the most popular transitional designs are later creations in the same style.

Fonts from the original period of transitional typefaces include early on the {{lang|fr|"[[romain du roi]]"}} in France, then the work of [[Pierre Simon Fournier]] in France, [[Joan Michaël Fleischman|Fleischman]] and [[Jacques François Rosart|Rosart]] in the Low Countries,<ref name="Middendorp2004 Fleischman">{{cite book|author=Jan Middendorp|title=Dutch Type|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=sR9g5xPPJVQC&pg=PA27|year=2004|publisher=010 Publishers|isbn=978-90-6450-460-0|pages=27–29}}</ref> [[Eudald Pradell|Pradell]] in Spain and [[John Baskerville]] and [[Bulmer (typeface)|Bulmer]] in England.<ref name="Eighteenth Century Spanish Type Design">{{cite journal|last1=Corbeto|first1=A.|title=Eighteenth Century Spanish Type Design|journal=The Library|date=25 September 2009|volume=10|issue=3|pages=272–297|doi=10.1093/library/10.3.272|s2cid=161371751}}</ref><ref name="Unger 2001">{{cite journal|last1=Unger|first1=Gerard|title=The types of François-Ambroise Didot and Pierre-Louis Vafflard. A further investigation into the origins of the Didones|journal=Quaerendo|date=1 January 2001|volume=31|issue=3|pages=165–191|doi=10.1163/157006901X00047}}</ref> Among more recent designs, [[Times New Roman]] (1932), [[Perpetua (typeface)|Perpetua]], [[Plantin (typeface)|Plantin]], [[Mrs. Eaves]], [[Freight (typeface)|Freight Text]], and the earlier [[Modernised Old Style (typeface)|"modernised old styles"]] have been described as transitional in design.{{efn|Monotype executive [[Stanley Morison]], who commissioned Times New Roman, noted that he hoped that it "has the merit of not looking as if it had been designed by somebody in particular".<ref name="The history of the Times New Roman typeface">{{cite web|last1=Alas|first1=Joel|title=The history of the Times New Roman typeface|url=http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2fa033e-7ca1-11de-a7bf-00144feabdc0.html |archive-url=https://ghostarchive.org/archive/20221210/http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/a2fa033e-7ca1-11de-a7bf-00144feabdc0.html |archive-date=2022-12-10 |url-access=subscription|website=Financial Times|access-date=16 January 2016}}</ref>}}

Later 18th-century transitional typefaces in Britain begin to show influences of Didone typefaces from Europe, described below, and the two genres blur, especially in type intended for body text; [[Bell MT|Bell]] is an example of this.<ref name="The Evolution of the Modern-Face Roman">{{cite journal|last1=Johnson|first1=Alfred F.|author-link1=Alfred F. Johnson|title=The Evolution of the Modern-Face Roman|journal=The Library|date=1930|volume=s4-XI|issue=3|pages=353–377|doi=10.1093/library/s4-XI.3.353}}</ref><ref name="Transitional Faces">{{cite book|last1=Johnston|first1=Alastair|title=Transitional Faces: The Lives & Work of Richard Austin, type-cutter, and Richard Turner Austin, wood-engraver|date=2014|publisher=Poltroon Press|location=Berkeley|url=http://www.poltroonpress.com/book/transitional-faces-the-lives-work-of-richard-austin-type-cutter-and-richard-turner-austin-wood-engraver/|isbn=978-0918395320|access-date=8 February 2017|archive-date=11 February 2017|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20170211075548/http://www.poltroonpress.com/book/transitional-faces-the-lives-work-of-richard-austin-type-cutter-and-richard-turner-austin-wood-engraver/|url-status=live}}</ref>{{efn|It should be realised that "Transitional" is a somewhat nebulous classification, almost always including Baskerville and other typefaces around this period but also sometimes including 19th and 20th-century reimaginations of old-style faces, such as [[Bookman Old Style|Bookman]] and [[Plantin (typeface)|Plantin]], and sometimes some of the later "old-style" faces such as the work of Caslon and his imitators. In addition, of course Baskerville and others of this period would not have seen their work as "transitional" but as an end in itself. Eliason (2015) provides a leading modern critique and assessment of the classification, but even in 1930 A.F. Johnson called the term "vague and unsatisfactory."<ref name="The Evolution of the Modern-Face Roman"/><ref name="“Transitional” Typefaces: The History of a Typefounding Classification">{{cite journal|last1=Eliason|first1=Craig|title="Transitional" Typefaces: The History of a Typefounding Classification|journal=Design Issues|date=October 2015|volume=31|issue=4|pages=30–43|doi=10.1162/DESI_a_00349|s2cid=57569313}}</ref>}}