Abyssinica SIL

Try Abyssinica SIL

Weights and styles

• Regular 400Abyssinica SIL Regular

About Abyssinica SIL

Abyssinica SIL is a serif typeface that combines the Ethiopic script with a basic Latin alphabet in one Unicode font. It encodes 862 characters and holds 1,057 glyphs in total. The Latin letters shown in the specimen have bracketed serifs, moderate contrast between thick and thin strokes, a slightly calligraphic stress and lining numerals. There is a single Regular style, with no bold or italic, and the font is not variable. The catalogue credits SIL International, while the name table inside the font names Victor Gaultney and Lorna Evans as designers and SIL Global as manufacturer. The Latin Extended subset is only partly present, so accented Latin coverage stops at Western European languages. Abyssinica SIL is released under the SIL Open Font License 1.1, and the copyright notice runs from 2000 to 2024.

Where Abyssinica SIL works

Documents in Ethiopic script

The font's stated purpose is Unicode text in Ethiopic, the bulk of its 862 encoded characters.

Mixed Ethiopic and English pages

Latin letters, numerals and punctuation are in the same file, so English words inside Ethiopic text need no second font.

Dictionaries and teaching material

One Unicode font for both scripts keeps headwords and glosses in a single typeface.

Titles in a bookish serif

The Latin alone gives short headings bracketed serifs and a calm, traditional texture.

Glyphs

Language support

The family contains the core letters these languages are written with:

• English
• French
• German
• Spanish
• Portuguese
• Italian
• Dutch
• Swedish
• Norwegian
• Danish
• Finnish
• Icelandic
• Catalan
• Estonian

Writing systems with glyphs in the family besides Latin: Ethiopic. These are listed as scripts, not as a promise for every language written in them.

Character sets found in the files: ethiopic, latin. The language list is a check of required letters against the font, not a promise of typographic quality in each language.

License

Fonts that pair with Abyssinica SIL

Suggestions come from simple rules on the records: a contrasting classification and enough weights to carry body text. They are a starting point, not a verdict.

Use Abyssinica SIL on the web

Download the family and host the files on your own site, then declare them in CSS. Please do not link to the files on trendhub.net: preview files here are subsets and their addresses change.

@font-face {
  font-family: "Abyssinica SIL";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/AbyssinicaSIL-Regular.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 400;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Abyssinica SIL", serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Abyssinica SIL with this markup:

<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com">
<link rel="preconnect" href="https://fonts.gstatic.com" crossorigin>
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css2?family=Abyssinica+SIL&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

One weight

Abyssinica SIL has Regular 400 only. Bold and italic are not part of the family.

The specimen shows Latin only

The sample image on this page sets the Latin alphabet; the Ethiopic characters are not pictured there.

Latin Extended is partial

The font is listed with the Ethiopic and Latin subsets. Only a few Latin Extended characters are present.

FAQs

Similar fonts

Other families in the same classification, ordered by shared use tags. All serif fonts