The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
Clarendon vs Modern No. 20
Two Victorian-era serifs from rival British foundries, both still sold commercially today. Clarendon is a sturdy bracketed slab serif from the Fann Street Foundry (1845), while Modern No. 20 is a high-contrast 'modern' roman that Stephenson Blake issued in 1905 as a recut of a mid-nineteenth-century face.
Clarendon is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Roboto Slab, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Clarendon → Modern No. 20 is a commercial font, so it is shown here in Bodoni Moda, its closest free alternative. All free alternatives to Modern No. 20 →
The quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog
- Clarendon, credited to Robert Besley and engraved by Benjamin Fox, has heavy bracketed slab serifs, low stroke contrast, a large x-height, and ball terminals on letters like 'a' and 'c'.
- Modern No. 20 sits in the Didone tradition with far sharper thick-to-thin contrast, and Stephenson Blake restyled it around 1910 with shortened descenders before renaming it in 1955.
- Clarendon was conceived as one of the first matching bold faces for emphasis alongside body text, and the 1953 Hermann Eidenbenz recut for Haas made it a standard display workhorse.
- Modern No. 20 is pitched as a titling face: Microsoft's own description calls it 'the king of titling faces', though the original cut also held up below 10 point.
- Both are commercial, so licensing cost is a factor: Clarendon comes in many cuts (URW's version is on Adobe Fonts), while Bitstream's Modern No. 20 is a two-style family of Roman and Italic, and a 1993 Type Solutions version ships as a cloud font with Microsoft Office.
Clarendon
Reach for Clarendon when you want robust, friendly weight that survives small sizes and rough printing — signage, packaging, posters, and bold emphasis within text.
Modern No. 20
Reach for Modern No. 20 for elegant large-size titling — annual reports, title pages, book jackets, and editorial covers where its crisp hairlines can breathe.