How to set font to Serif in Beamer title only

Question

I want to use a serif font for the title in the title slide only. I have tried:

\documentclass[12pt]{beamer}
\usefonttheme[stillsansserifsmall, stillsansseriftext]{serif}
\title{\sc Great title} 
\date{\tiny Blah blah}  
\author{Fred} 
\begin{document} 
\begin{frame}
\titlepage
\end{frame}  
\end{document}

To be clear I want all the presentation in sans serif except for \title{\sc Great title}, which I want in serif. In the above the title is sans serif though individual slide titles would be in serif.

Answer 1

The problem

The problem arises because you are using very old and deprecated two-letter font commands, which, as you have discovered, yield unexpected effects when combined together. Here's what you probably tried first:

\documentclass[12pt]{beamer}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\title{\rm\sc Great title} 
\date{\tiny Blah blah}  
\author{Fred} 
\begin{document} 
\begin{frame}
\maketitle
\end{frame}
\end{document}

If you compile this document, the title ends up in the sans font, and you also get the following warning saying that there is no sans small caps:

LaTeX Font Warning: Font shape `T1/cmss/m/sc' undefined
(Font)              using `T1/cmss/m/n' instead

The reason for this is in the way the old two letter font commands work. See the following for more discussion of this.

• TeX FAQ on Two Letter Font Commands
• Will two-letter font style commands (\bf , \it , …) ever be resurrected in LaTeX?

The solution

The solution is to use the proper font commands, \rmfamily and \scshape and then things behave as you expect:

\documentclass[12pt]{beamer}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\title{\rmfamily\scshape Great title} 
\date{\tiny Blah blah}  
\author{Fred} 
\begin{document} 
\begin{frame}
\maketitle
\end{frame}
\end{document}