<P> A second hiatus in interest in sans - serif appears to have lasted for about twelve years, when the Vincent Figgins foundry of London issued a new sans - serif in 1828 . Thereafter sans - serifs rapidly began to be issued from London typefounders . Much imitated was the 1830 Thorowgood "grotesque" face, arrestingly bold and highly condensed, similar in aesthetic effect to the slab serif and "fat faces" of the period . Intended for advertising, these typefaces, often display capitals, became very successful . Sans - serif printing types began to appear thereafter in France and Germany . </P> <P> Sans - serif lettering and fonts were popular due to their clarity and legibility at distance in advertising and display use, when printed very large or small . Because sans - serif type was often used for headings and commercial printing, many early sans - serif designs did not feature lower - case letters . Simple sans - serif capitals, without use of lower - case, became very common in uses such as tombstones of the Victorian period in Britain . The term "grotesque" became commonly used to describe sans - serifs . The term "grotesque" comes from the Italian word for cave, and was often used to describe Roman decorative styles found by excavation, but had long become applied in the modern sense for objects that appeared "malformed or monstrous ." </P> <P> The first use of sans serif as a running text has been proposed to be the short booklet Feste des Lebens und der Kunst: eine Betrachtung des Theaters als höchsten Kultursymbols (Celebration of Life and Art: A Consideration of the Theater as the Highest Symbol of a Culture), by Peter Behrens, in 1900 . </P> <P> Throughout the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries sans - serif types were viewed with suspicion by many printers, especially those of fine book printing, as being fit only for advertisements (if that), and to this day most books remain printed in serif fonts as body text . This impression would not have been helped by the standard of common sans - serif types of the period, many of which now seem somewhat lumpy and eccentrically - shaped . In 1922, master printer Daniel Berkeley Updike described sans - serif fonts as having "no place in any artistically respectable composing - room ." By 1937 he stated that he saw no need to change this opinion in general, though he felt that Gill Sans and Futura were the best choices if sans - serifs had to be used . </P>

Sans serif typefaces are often used for all of the following except