Noto fonts facts for kids

Quick facts for kids
Noto

Category	Sans-serif (humanist); serif (transitional); non-Latin
Classification	Sans-serif (humanist); serif (transitional); non-Latin
Commissioned by	Google
Date created	2012–2020
Date released	2013
License	SIL Open Font License & Apache License

Noto is a huge collection of over 100 different fonts. These fonts are made to show all the different writing systems, called scripts, that are part of the Unicode standard. Unicode is like a giant list of all the characters used in languages around the world.

As of 2016, Noto fonts covered all 93 scripts from Unicode version 6.1. In total, Noto fonts can display almost 64,000 characters. This is less than half of all the characters in Unicode 15.0.

Google asked for the Noto font family to be created. The main goal was to make sure all these different languages and scripts look good together. This means they should have similar heights and line thicknesses. Noto fonts are available for free under the SIL Open Font License.

What Does Noto Mean?

When a computer tries to show text, sometimes it can't find the right font for a character. When this happens, it often shows a small empty box instead. These empty boxes are sometimes called tofu because they look like small blocks of the food.

Google created Noto to get rid of this "tofu" on the internet. The name Noto comes from "no tofu."

Noto Font Features

Fun with Emoji

Color emoji from Noto Emoji Project.

The Noto Emoji Project makes colorful and black-and-white emoji fonts. You probably see the color version every day! It's used on many Google apps like Gmail, Google Chat, and YouTube. It's also used on Android phones and ChromeOS computers. Even the Slack app uses it on Windows, Linux, and Android.

Latin, Greek, and Cyrillic Letters

Noto Sans and Noto Serif are two main types of Noto fonts. They include letters for Latin (like English), Greek, and Cyrillic (like Russian) languages.

Noto Sans is based on other fonts called Droid Sans and Open Sans. Noto Serif is based on Droid Serif. A designer named Steve Matteson helped create them.

Chinese, Japanese, and Korean (CJK) Fonts

Source Han Sans, the Adobe/Google collaboration rebranded as Noto Sans CJK for East Asian scripts

The Noto CJK fonts are special versions of fonts made by Adobe and Google. CJK stands for Chinese, Japanese, and Korean. These fonts include characters for these languages, as well as Latin letters and numbers.

There are also special versions of these fonts that combine many styles into one file. This helps save space on your computer.

How Much Does Noto Cover?

As of December 2020, there are 195 Noto fonts. Most of them are sans-serif (without little "feet" on the letters), and some are serif (with "feet").

Noto fonts cover 150 out of the 154 scripts that were part of Unicode version 13.0. They also cover many symbols and emoji that don't belong to a specific script.

The Noto Sans Symbols fonts have a huge variety of symbols. This includes signs for alchemy, dingbats (like arrows or stars), numbers in circles, playing cards, and even musical symbols. They also have many math symbols.

Here's a quick look at how much of Unicode the Noto fonts covered in April 2021:

List of Noto Fonts

Noto has many different fonts, each designed for specific languages and scripts. Here is a list of some of them:

Where Noto Fonts Are Used

Many computer programs and operating systems use Noto fonts. For example, LibreOffice, a free office suite, has included Noto since version 6.0.

Since 2019, IKEA, the famous furniture company, uses a special version of Noto Sans called Noto IKEA. They use it along with the regular Noto Sans fonts. These fonts replaced Verdana as IKEA's main company font.

See also

In Spanish: Google Noto para niños