SBL Releases New Hebrew Font

The Society of Biblical Literature announces a new Hebrew font, and even better,- new Greek fonts to be released in the near future.Academic writers and those who publish books on the ancient world and the Bible can now use a Hebrew font that is visually pleasing on computer screen and printed page, and facilitates the exchange of texts between computers, thanks to the joint efforts of the Society of Biblical Literature, SBL Font Foundation, and Tiro Typeworks. Until now, texts composed with a Hebrew alphabet were not easily transferred from one computer to another, or would read well on screen but not on paper — annoyances familiar to those in the publishing world. The solution was to design a more readable font in Unicode, a text encoding standard that assigns a unique universal code for each character and works across diverse computer platforms. The new typeface, designed in a Sephardic style suited for screen and print readability, offers clear distinction between similar Hebrew letters.

The font is provided without cost to individuals for non-profit use; commercial use is reserved for members of the SBL Font Foundation. The font and more information about the foundation are available online at http://www.sbl-site.org. The SBL plans to release new Unicode fonts for Greek and Latin later this year, with other ancient languages to follow. The complete series will include all symbols needed to produce critical editions of biblical and related texts. You can read more on the fonts available at SBL here.