Announcement List

If you would like stay informed of updates to Charis and other SIL fonts, please subscribe to the SIL Font News Announcement List. For more information see About.

Our font announcements are also available through X (formerly Twitter) @silfonts.

Current Version

This package contains the fonts, documentation, webfonts (WOFF and WOFF2) and example files. Full source archives are available on Github. Note that the family name has changed from Charis SIL to Charis. See below for details of other changes.

See Version history for a list of the changes made in this version of the font. Since the changes for version 7 are so extensive we have summarized the most important ones in Version 7 Changes. Please read this before you upgrade from earlier versions.

Charis is also available through the TypeTuner Web service, which allows you to choose among the smart font features and download a font with those features preset. This enables them to work in many applications that do not fully support OpenType. Please note that the version 7 fonts available through TypeTuner Web no longer offer line spacing alternatives (Normal, Tight, Loose). If you need Tight or Loose variants the version 6.200 fonts remain available and support line spacing alternatives.

Charis and Charis SIL Versions and Variants

There are many font families based on the Charis design, as summarized in this table. Current versions are in bold. Additional information is provided in later sections.

Compact Versions

The Charis version 7 fonts do not have Compact variants. The default line spacing has been reduced to be closer, but not identical, to the previous version’s Compact line spacing. Most users should use the version 7 fonts and adjust line spacing explicitly within the application if necessary. If your application does not allow control over line spacing, you can use the version 6.200 Charis SIL Compact fonts, which remain available. If you need any of the new version 7 features or characters, but also need them supported in a compact version please contact us.

Special-Purpose Modified Variants

Modified versions of the Charis SIL version 6.200 fonts are available that have been ‘tuned’ to turn on certain features by default. These are available for some regions and include Literacy versions. These remain at version 6.200 and have not been updated to Charis version 7. If you need any of the new features or characters in this version, but also need them supported in the special-purpose modified fonts please contact us.

Version 5 Subsets

In the past, special subset versions of Charis SIL version 5 were created for specific uses. Those fonts still work and remain available. These are limited versions of the fonts that support only the characters needed for a particular area or use. Subsets are available for Africa, Americas, Asia/Pacific, Europe/Eurasia, Vietnam, Phonetic, Cyrillic (Basic) and Cyrillic Extended. With the exception of the Phonetic font, the font subsets are intended for orthographic use only. We have not put anything in the other subsets for phonetic, transliteration, or transcription use. For those purposes, use the Phonetic subset. We do not intend to update these fonts, however they may still work. We do not, however, recommend their use. In almost all cases the standard fonts are a better choice. Font size is less of a concern than it was years ago, particularly with improved compression technologies such as woff2.

Previous Versions

A detailed list of changes for each version of the fonts is on the Version history page. Previous versions can be downloaded from our Previous Versions archive.