http://typophile.com/node/12463

true italics vs. oblique

I sometimes refer to the serifs in this style as pot hooks, I phrase I once came across (used derogatorially) which stuck with me, seeming objectively quite apropos.

You could say "cursive, non-joined".

Sloped roman vs. italic.

The serifs on the sloped roman are bilateral, abrupt (emphasize the end of the stroke).
The serifs on the italic are unilateral, adnate (lead into the next stroke).

I think "cursive" is a(nother) good term. There are also upright italics with similar traits of handwritten forms.

Another relevant concept: folded.
This term was used by Stanley Hess in The Modification of Letterforms to describe the way in which the curved stems of letters may be configured—for instance, the c and s in Frutiger are unfolded, but the grotesque c and s of Helvetica have folded forms.
These cursive terminals/serifs or entry/exit strokes are folded back against the letter.

Joshua, how can they be adnate if they're not connected?
Adnate means "growing from", i.e. a bracketed serif or an old-style triangular terminal may be considered adnate, growing from the stem, as opposite to a slab-like didone serif or a ball terminal, which appear attached.

Thanks so much everyone! :D I'm learning a lot here.

Btw: Almost all uppercase letters are — still — oblique, even in otherwise cursive italics. Six hundred years of type design haven’t managed to shake off that tradition.

Now there's an interesting category, e.g.
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/bitstream/bernhard-tango/
http://www.fontshop.com/fonts/singles/fontfont/ff_fontesque_ot_regular_i...

Any others?

Baskerville and some Goudy fonts have a few cursive (swash) capitals as default.

Baskerville! Goudy! Those are two of my absolute favorites. :D In one of my first design courses we were talking about type, and I had mentioned that they were both so gorgeous. A little bit afterwards one of the kids in my class had said that he thought "all serif fonts are ugly". Yeah, I had a pretty good laugh.

Thanks Nick and Tim.

a few cursive (swash) capitals

But cursive lowercase aren’t necessarily swash, are they? I’m not talking about the decoration, but rather the underlying structure. See Underware’s Auto Italic 2 for an interesting example.

…cursive lowercase aren’t necessarily swash…

However, "cursive" capitals are almost always swash alternates.
I was responding to your comment about uppercase being oblique.
Lucian Bernhard was the rare designer who combined a non-script, cursive lower case italic with cursive capitals.
Another of his:
http://new.myfonts.com/fonts/ef/bernhard-schoenschrift/

Any more?

Obliques do generally stink. But a slanted-Roman does not have to be a mere
oblique - and when done right it's functionally superior to a traditional Italic.
This was the topic of my talk at TypeCon-LA last year.

Baskerville: Nice design. Italics flawed.

BTW "pothook" is a traditional type term, used by many for decades now.

hhp

> Joshua, how can they be adnate if they're not connected?
> Adnate means "growing from"

That's how. They "grow from" the previous stroke, in the way that they would if the stroke and serif were made in one stroke of the pen, whereas to produce "roman" style serifs with a pen requires drawing the serif as a separate stroke or doubling back. Thus, "roman" serifs do not "grow from" the attached stroke in a natural way.

They are adnate with respect to the letterform they are attached to, not the following one, though they do suggest a link to the next letter.

However since type is never handwritten, the better way to use "adnate" is based purely on how the outline segments relate. So Times (I mean the upright style) for example has fully adnate serifs; Calluna's serifs are adnate on the left, and abrupt on the right.

hhp

An afterthought: