Serif, Sans Serif, and Graphics Fonts

By their appearance, fonts are divided in three broad categories. A font is recognized as Serif if its characters are marked with fancy ends. Examples of popular Serif fonts are Times New Roman, Courier New, Georgia, or Garamond. Serif fonts are suitable in printable formats. If you observe the characters of paragraphs in a regular book, you may notice that they usually use a Serif font.
A font is said to be Sans Serif if the ends of its characters don't display the fancy ends of Serif fonts. Examples of popular Sans Serif fonts are Arial, Verdana, Haettenschweiler, or Tahoma. Sans Serif fonts are usually used as headers of paragraphs or when users may spend a great deal of time reading. For example, most web pages display their text in Sans Serif fonts
Serif and Sans Serif fonts are used to display readable characters. The last category of fonts display graphics as non-readable characters. Examples of graphics fonts are Webdings, Wingdings, or Wingdings 2. You use graphics fonts if you want to display small graphics without having to use a drawing application.