Reverse contrast

Also called Italienne, French Clarendon

A face with the weight in the wrong place on purpose: the horizontals are heavy and the verticals are thin, which is the opposite of every rule a broad nib produces.

Reverse contrast: the word MINE cut in wood as a French Clarendon, its horizontal arms and serifs several times the weight of its vertical stems. — Hamilton & Katz No. 59, 20 Line, Class C, a spurred Tuscan French Clarendon, James Puckett. CC BY 2.0. Cropped to the letters. Retrieved 2026-09-10.

Near it

Didone

Slab serif

Stress

Display face

What it is made of

what it is	horizontals drawn heavier than verticals, the reverse of what a broad pen does
measured on this shelf, and the measurement is a nil	no family here has it	measured on the fixed shelf, 2026-09-28, which renders the o at 600px and counts pixels, because a counter is an AREA and a contrast is a RATIO and neither is in any table; the only face measured as heavier across than down is Drew Perforate, whose o is six dashes, and that is not a reversed pen. Until 2026-09-24 this row named Terrace at 1.159 as a hexagon with a flat top, measured on a build replaced before it shipped
so this entry describes the thing and not our version of it	UNMEASURED against our own work	said plainly rather than illustrated with a face that has none of it

Where it came from

Nineteenth-century wood type for posters and playbills, where the point was to be seen rather than to be read. Revived deliberately in the 2000s.