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Type lab

Cyrillic support is not the same as Serbian support

D. Svilenković

A font may contain Cyrillic and still show Russian italic forms or omit Serbian characters. I checked the files rather than trusting a catalogue filter.

What was tested

The check covered 103 Google Fonts with Cyrillic. It inspected Serbian characters ђ, ј, љ, њ, ћ and џ, Latin č, ć, đ, š and ž, and OpenType localised forms for б, г, д, п and т.

Full and neutral Serbian italics

Twenty-three fonts contained a full set of Serbian italic forms, including Noto Sans, Noto Serif, Open Sans, Source Sans 3, Source Serif 4, Piazzolla, Ysabeau and Ubuntu. Thirteen more used a neutral slanted form that avoids Russian handwritten shapes.

Traps found in real files

Some families lack required Serbian Cyrillic characters. Others provide a partial localised substitution. In Bitter and Geologica, Serbian language metadata can also affect upright forms in problematic ways in the tested versions. A file-level check and a browser sample are both necessary.

The complete filter

The full 103-font catalogue includes generated glyph samples, source links, licence data, weights and warnings. It is available on the paired Serbian catalogue; the specimen text is intentionally Serbian.