Lettering style guides
Headstone lettering styles, and how to tell them apart
Most American headstones are lettered in one of a handful of styles. Knowing which one is on a stone is the first step to adding a date that matches: it narrows the choice of font, tells you what to measure, and helps a family and a shop talk about the same thing.
These guides describe each style by what you can see on the stone: the serifs, the contrast between thick and thin strokes, how wide the letters are, and the characters that give a style away. The style names are the trade’s generic descriptions, not products. Where we show samples, they are set in the open-licensed fonts Monumize uses, which are close look-alikes rather than any foundry’s originals.
Quick identification chart
Start with the serifs, then the contrast, then the width. The last column is the detail that usually settles it.
| Style | Serifs | Thick and thin | Letter widths | Giveaway |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Roman | Fine, bracketed, tapering to a point | Clear thick and thin | Vary a lot: wide O, M; narrow E, S | Round O beside a half-width E |
| Modified Roman | Short, blunt or slightly cupped | Moderate: thin strokes still sturdy | More even than classical Roman | Serifs look stubby next to the stems |
| Condensed Roman | Roman or modified Roman | Moderate | Narrow: O clearly taller than wide | Oval zeros in the dates |
| Old English | Diamond and pointed terminals | Heavy verticals, hairline flourishes | Narrow and dense | Curves are broken into angles |
| Script | None; strokes join and loop | Formal: high; casual: low | Flowing, letters connect | Letters are joined on a slant |
| Block / Gothic (Sans) | None | Little or none | Regular or condensed | Strokes end square, with no serifs |
The six style guides
Roman
Serifed capitals with clear thick-and-thin strokes and classical proportions, where O is round and E is narrow.
Read the guide
Modified Roman
A Roman simplified for stencils: short blunt serifs, heavier thin strokes, more even letter widths.
Read the guide
Condensed Roman
Roman or Modified Roman drawn narrow: oval O and 0, near-vertical M, tight spacing.
Read the guide
Old English
Blackletter: dense, angular, broken strokes with ornate capitals, used for family names and headings.
Read the guide
Script
Joined, slanted handwriting styles, from formal copperplate with looped capitals to relaxed brush scripts.
Read the guide
Block / Gothic (Sans)
Plain sans-serif capitals with even strokes and no serifs, regular or condensed.
Read the guide
How to identify the lettering on a stone
- Photograph it square on. An angled photo makes letters look narrower or wider than they are. Soft, even light shows the edges of cut letters best.
- Find the dates. Dates are a good place to look. The digits 1, 4, 7 and 9 differ more between styles than 0 or 8, and month names supply telling letters: J in JAN., JUNE and JULY; G in AUG.; R in MARCH, APRIL and every month ending in -BER.
- Check the serifs. None at all points to Block or Gothic. Fine tapering serifs suggest Roman; short blunt ones, Modified Roman. Angular broken strokes are Old English; joined, slanted letters are Script.
- Check the width. If the zeros are clearly taller than they are wide, the lettering is condensed.
- Look at the names and dates separately. Many stones mix styles: an Old English surname, Roman names and dates, a script epitaph. A new date should match the existing dates, whatever the rest of the stone uses.
Old stones were often cut by hand, so expect variation from letter to letter. The goal is the closest style at the same height and spacing, checked beside the original before anything is cut.
Identify the style from a photo
Monument shops can upload a photo of the stone. Monumize reads the dates already cut, ranks the closest lettering styles in its catalog and lays the new date on the photo, then exports to-scale cut files. The first job is free.