Serif

The small stroke that finishes a letter, a foot the eye can rest on. It carries history; used well it reads as authority, not nostalgia.

Serifs began as the chisel's exit stroke and stayed because they work: feet that seat the letter on its line, finishing strokes that guide the eye along the reading direction. Long text still sets comfortably in serifs partly for this, partly for the centuries of habit behind them.

The register they carry is institutional memory: law, print, scholarship. Used precisely, that reads as authority; used lazily, as costume. When we reach for a serif it is because the content has earned gravity, not because the layout wanted an antique.