Word Clarification-"Antique" For Letters

[Traintime]

Ignoring what complex lettering forms like "Text" or "Olde English Text" everyone may think is Gothic...the simple print style is all that is being referenced here. (Yes, that first one you learned in school. Straight up and down.) For American Philatelists of 1893, the term "Antique" was said to differ from Gothic in that the former was the style which included cerifs (their spelling). A modern source indicates that when the simple Gothic print was altered to the sans serif style (during that same era), the French used the word Antique to describe all sans serif lettering. So, what standard can we establish on this site for all uses regarding marks. That is, would "Antique letters" refer to simple Gothic with serif, or to simple Gothic without serifs (sans serif). Or is it being used in some other way.

[silvermakersmarks]

I agree that it would be great if we could standardise on a system but I think that using the term Gothic, given modern usage, for regular lettering would be just too confusing. Grimwade in his book on London marks uses the term "Roman" to mean normal lettering and "Gothic or black-letter" to refer to the older text type. I suggest therefore that we use Roman, Roman without/sans serif, Script and Gothic (or Black Letter) to refer to the 4 main styles which we see:





Phil