Expletus Sans

Try Expletus Sans

Weights and styles

• Regular 400Expletus Sans Regular Italic
• Medium 500Expletus Sans Medium Medium Italic
• SemiBold 600Expletus Sans SemiBold SemiBold Italic
• Bold 700Expletus Sans Bold Bold Italic

Expletus Sans is a variable font: the download holds the whole weight range in one file per style, and the named weights above are positions on that range.

About Expletus Sans

Expletus Sans is a display typeface built on a humanist sans skeleton with one consistent quirk: curved strokes do not join the stems. In the specimen the bowl of a, the arches of n, m and h and the bowls of b, d and p all stop just before touching, leaving a notch of white, and the crossbar of the capital A is replaced by a short curved stroke. Stroke ends are cut at angles, which gives the letters a chiselled look. Its makers say plainly that it is a display face and not recommended for long text. The family has four weights, Regular, Medium, SemiBold and Bold, each with an italic, eight styles in all, and the official notes record its conversion to a variable font with adjusted line spacing. The weight axis runs from 400 to 700. Each font has 251 glyphs in the basic Latin subset.

Where Expletus Sans works

Section and page headings

The broken joints are legible details at heading sizes and give titles a distinct texture.

Wordmarks

Open joints and angled stroke ends make a short name recognisable without added ornament.

Pull quotes and intro lines

Italics in all four weights allow an emphasised quotation in the same display style.

Signage and wayfinding titles

SemiBold and Bold keep the gaps visible on large panels read from a distance.

Animated weight changes

The 400 to 700 axis lets a headline shift weight smoothly in CSS.

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

Character sets found in the files: 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 Expletus Sans

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 Expletus Sans 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: "Expletus Sans";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/ExpletusSans-Italic-VariableFont_wght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 400 700;
  font-style: italic;
  font-display: swap;
}
@font-face {
  font-family: "Expletus Sans";
  src: url("/assets/fonts/ExpletusSans-VariableFont_wght.ttf") format("truetype");
  font-weight: 400 700;
  font-style: normal;
  font-display: swap;
}

body {
  font-family: "Expletus Sans", sans-serif;
}

Or load it from the official source. Google Fonts serves Expletus Sans 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=Expletus+Sans:ital,wght@0,400..700;1,400..700&display=swap" rel="stylesheet">

Things to know

Not for long text

The makers themselves advise against using Expletus Sans for long passages.

Starts at Regular

The weight axis runs from 400 to 700. No light weights exist.

Basic Latin only

The Latin Extended set is not included in this version, nor are Cyrillic or Greek.

Two variable files

The package has one variable TTF for upright and one for italic; static instances are not included.

FAQs

Similar fonts

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