Product Code Database
Charis () or Charis SIL is a slab serif typeface developed by SIL International based on Bitstream Charter, one of the first fonts designed for laser printers. The font offers four family members: roman, bold, italic, and bold italic.
Its design goal is to "provide a single Unicode-based font family that would contain a comprehensive inventory of needed for almost any Roman- or Cyrillic-based writing system, whether used for phonetic or orthographic needs."
Charis SIL supports Graphite, OpenType, and AAT technologies for advanced rendering features. Along with Doulos SIL and Gentium, it is licensed under the SIL Open Font License (OFL), and can be downloaded free of charge. Download page on sil.org
Version 6.2 of the font, with over 3,800 glyphs, was released on 1 February 2023. Version 7 was released on 2 June 2025.
Variant forms of many characters can be chosen in the word-processor. For example, for primer-style 'a' and 'g', append ss01=1 to the name of the font in the font-selection window. (Features are appended with a colon and linked with an ampersand – see images at left.) Alternatively, customized versions of the fonts can be created with TypeTuner, prior to download, that have those forms preset. TypeTuner Web homepage
Features that may be chosen include , primer-style 'a' and 'g', roman-style 'a' and 'g' in italic typeface, variant forms of capital 'Ŋ', large modifier letter apostrophe and Saltillo, Vietnamese-style diacritics, Serbian-style italics (in Cyrillic), staveless , and automatic fractions. Charis: features
Phonetician John C. Wells has recommended Charis SIL as an excellent font for displaying IPA symbols.
Since version 7, it is now simply called Charis.
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