What is the difference between a serif font and a sans serif font?

Serifs are semi-auxiliary subtleties or short enriching embellishments on the closures of a portion of the strokes that make up letters and images though Sans serif doesn't have these subtleties or twists.  

It is expressed that serif textual styles are typically simpler to read in bigger content zones like in books, magazines, in body content on sites. Sans serif textual styles are utilized consistently due to how clean they tend to look in those principle text zones.