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Gentium Book Basic

Designed By

Victor Gaultney

2 Styles Serif

The pleasure
of a well-set
page.

Gentium Book Basic · Regular

Compare this serif family in headings and a continuous reading sample.

2 styles available. Compare the specimens below, or enter your own text.

Download Gentium Book Basic ↓

WOFF2 · SIL Open Font License 1.1

Set Your Own Text

Change the style and size to compare the letterforms.

The ferry left at 9:30 sharp

A Page In Gentium Book Basic

Gentium Book Basic · Regular

Headings, labels and running text.

Notes From The Reading Room

The reading room opens onto a quiet courtyard. Along the shelves, small handwritten labels mark the collections. A visitor leaves a book open beside the window, keeping a place for the next reader.

A heading marks the next chapter. The margins leave room for a note while the text continues across the page.

2 Styles,
One Family

Every available style is shown below in its own font file.

Regular400

The ferry left at 9:30 sharp

Bold700

The ferry left at 9:30 sharp

Gentium Book Basic has already been retired once. Google Fonts listed it in August 2011 and took it down in March 2023, when Gentium Book Plus replaced it, the same 4 styles with full extended Latin, Greek and Cyrillic added. So this is the older, smaller cousin, and still a pleasant book face.

Victor Gaultney designed Gentium for SIL International, and the project picked up an ATypI Certificate of Excellence in Type Design in 2003. The Book version came in November 2007, drawn a little heavier than Gentium Basic so it would hold up better in printed books. Basic, in turn, means the character set stops at Western and common extended Latin, with no IPA or Greek.

This page has the Regular and Bold. The lowercase is fairly small, which costs nothing in print at 10 to 12 pt. On screen we would take it up to 18 px before setting a paragraph, and if you need Greek, go to Gentium Book Plus instead.

Gentium Book Basic type specimen with letters and figures
Gentium Book Basic · Type Specimen

Characters & Figures

214 glyphs reported in the reference style. This selection shows 211 recorded characters.

ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
0123456789 & @ ? !

View The Recorded Character Selection
!"#$%&'()*+,-./0123456789:;<=>?@ABCDEFGHIJKLMNOPQRSTUVWXYZ[\]^_`abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz{|}~¡¢£¤¥¦§¨©ª«¬®¯°±²³´µ·¸¹º»¼½¾¿ÀÁÂÃÄÅÆÇÈÉÊËÌÍÎÏÐÑÒÓÔÕÖ×ØÙÚÛÜÝÞßàáâãäåæçèéêëìíîïðñòóôõö÷øùúûüýþÿıŒœʼˆ˚˜–—‘’‚“”„•…‹›⁄€™−

The Font Files

Download
Gentium Book Basic

2 WOFF2 styles with the accompanying CSS, README and license information.

Download ZIP · 47 KB ↓
Version
1.102
License
SIL Open Font License 1.1
Read The Font License ↗

Install On Your Computer

Extract the ZIP first. On Windows, select the font files and choose Install from the context menu. On macOS, open the files in Font Book and choose Install.

Use On A Website

Keep the font files and the included stylesheet together. Update the stylesheet path to match your project.

<link rel="stylesheet"
  href="/fonts/gentium-book-basic-2/gentium-book-basic-2.css">

body {
  font-family: 'Gentium Book Basic', sans-serif;
}

Keep the copyright and license notices with redistributed files.

Heading & Body

The family provides the heading; Inter carries the supporting text.

Gentium Book Basic Heading · Inter Body

Notes From The Reading Room

The reading room opens onto a quiet courtyard. Along the shelves, small handwritten labels mark the collections. A visitor leaves a book open beside the window, keeping a place for the next reader.