gentium

Gentium is a serif typeface family designed to support multilingual typesetting and scholarly typography. It provides broad coverage for Latin-script languages, including a wide range of diacritics and phonetic symbols (IPA), to enable accurate representation of diverse texts. The design emphasizes readability for body text and long passages, with clear letter shapes and a traditional serif rhythm that remains legible at small sizes. The typeface aims to be neutral and unobtrusive, so that content remains prominent rather than the font itself.

The family includes Gentium, Gentium Basic, and Gentium Plus, and is released under the SIL Open Font License, allowing free use, modification, and redistribution. It is widely used in academic publishing, linguistics resources, and open-access projects that require reliable multilingual typography.

The name Gentium derives from the Latin gentium, the genitive plural of gens, meaning “of peoples” or “of the nations,” reflecting its multilingual focus. By providing extensive Latin-script support and phonetic notation, Gentium has become a popular choice for multilingual books, dictionaries, and websites that prioritize accurate diacritic rendering and IPA transcription.