Merriweather vs PT Serif
Two serif faces, set live below in their own letters — then the honest take on which to pick and when.
The quick brown fox 0123456789
Alexandra Korolkova, Olga Umpeleva & Vladimir Yefimov · 2010 · weights 400, 700
At a glance
- Feel
- Sturdy, condensed
- Calm, transitional
- Scripts
- Latin
- Latin + Cyrillic
- Weights
- 400 / 700
- 400 / 700
- Designer
- Sorkin Type, 2010
- ParaType, 2010
MerriweatherPT Serif
The honest take
Two robust text serifs made for on-screen reading, both shipping only 400 and 700. Merriweather (Sorkin Type, 2010) is built for density and sturdiness: a large x-height, strong serifs and slightly condensed proportions that hold up in long articles and rougher rendering. PT Serif (2010), part of Russia's ParaType PT superfamily, is a transitional serif designed to pair with PT Sans and to read cleanly across Latin and Cyrillic, with a slightly more open, conventional feel. Choose Merriweather for maximum robustness and a bit more character in dense body copy. Choose PT Serif when you want a calmer, more classical text serif, especially if you need Cyrillic or want to pair it with PT Sans. Both are dependable body faces; Merriweather is the sturdier workhorse, PT Serif the more even-tempered classic.
The x-ray
Same size, same baseline — Merriweather over PT Serif. Where they agree the strokes merge; where they argue, fringes.
“Hamburgefonstiv” is the type designer's test word — it carries most of the shapes that give a face away.
Read more
More about each face: Merriweather · PT Serif