Goudy Old Style
typeface

Goudy Old Style (also known as just Goudy) is an old-style serif typeface originally created by Frederic W. Goudy for American Type Founders (ATF) in 1915.
Suitable for text and display applications, Goudy Old Style matches the historicist trend of American printing in the early twentieth century, taking inspiration from the printing of the Italian Renaissance without a specific historical model. Eccentricities include the upward-curved ear on the g and the diamond shape of the dots of the i, j, and the points found in the period, colon and exclamation point, and the sharply canted hyphen. The design is relatively light in colour.
History
In Goudy's autobiography, he described the italic based on study of sixteenth-century italics: "I studied many of the older italics and came to the conclusion that...some of the outstanding italics of the sixteenth century had little or no inclination and yet preserved their italic character".
Several variants, designed by several designers, were released in the ensuing years (all faces ATF unless otherwise specified).
By Goudy:
Goudy Old Style (1915)
Goudy Old Style Italic, inspired by Aldine designs.
Goudy Cursive, a "loose italic" adding swashes and more calligraphic alternate characters. Missing from most digitisations but included on the LTC release.
By Morris Fuller Benton:
Goudy Bold (1916)
Goudy Title (1918), a full size variation on Goudy's small capitals from the Goudy Old Style roman.
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This entry incorporates text from “Goudy Old Style” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.