A page from a Ming Dynasty edition of the Book of Qi

There are three major families of typefaces used in Chinese typography:

• Song / Ming
• Sans-serif
• Regular script

Ming and sans-serif are the most popular in body text and are based on regular script for Chinese characters akin to Western serif and sans-serif typefaces, respectively. Regular script typefaces emulate regular script.

The Song typeface (宋体 / 宋體, sòngtǐ) is also known as Minchō (明朝) in Japan and Ming typeface (明体 / 明體, míngtǐ) in Taiwan and Hong Kong. The names of these styles come from the Song and Ming dynasties, when block printing flourished in China. Because the wood grain on printing blocks ran horizontally, it was fairly easy to carve horizontal lines with the grain. However, carving vertical or slanted patterns was difficult because those patterns intersect with the grain and break easily. This resulted in a typeface that has thin horizontal strokes and thick vertical strokes. To prevent wear and tear, the ending of horizontal strokes are also thickened. These design forces resulted in the current Ming typeface characterized by thick vertical strokes contrasted with thin horizontal strokes; triangular ornaments at the end of single horizontal strokes; and overall geometrical regularity.

Sans-serif typefaces, called black typeface (黑体 / 黑體, hēitǐ) in Chinese and Gothic typeface (ゴシック体) in Japanese, are characterized by simple lines of even thickness for each stroke, akin to sans-serif styles such as Arial and Helvetica in Western typography. This group of typefaces, first introduced on newspaper headlines, is commonly used where legibility and neutrality is desired.

Regular script typefaces are also commonly used, but not as common as Ming or sans-serif typefaces for body text. Regular script typefaces are often used to teach students Chinese characters, and often aim to match the standard forms of the region where they are meant to be used. Most typefaces in the Song Dynasty were regular script typefaces which resembled a particular person's handwriting (e.g. the handwriting of Ouyang Xun, Yan Zhenqing, or Liu Gongquan), while most modern regular script typefaces tend toward anonymity and regularity.

A page from a Song Dynasty publication in a regular script typeface which resembles the handwriting of Ouyang Xun