Fonts Fonts Fonts

This article is part of the Joy Gems series which originally appeared in The Joy Gems Newsletter and/or The Home Page Helper Network on ryze.com, a business networking community.

Download this article as an Adobe Acrobat file.

Originally Published: February 2. 2006

I have a confession to make. I'm a Fontophile.

I love all sorts of fonts. Fat ones, tall ones, skinny ones. The more I learn about fonts one thing becomes apparent. Bound up in the ascenders and descenders of the wide variety of fonts is not just the history of print or electronic media but the history of civilization itself. It's no stretch to say that if you understand the history of fonts you'll know a lot about how we got to where we are today.

There is no standard method of defining typeface, type family, or even the word font itself. Most people think they know what is meant by "font," but there are different definitions which can lead to some trouble. For this issue of Joy Gems I'll get to the practical and worry about technical definitions some other day. You'll know what I mean. :-)

Here are a few questions that come up all the time when people put together web pages.

1. What are the basic types of fonts?

There are five widely recognized generic font types: serif, sans- serif, cursive, fantasy, and monospace. They all share common characteristics but it's their differences that make them best suited for specific media.

I love the names of these puppies!!

Generic Type	Typical Use	Example
Serif	print	times new roman, georgia, garamond
Sans-serif	web, electronic publishing	arial, helvetica, verdana, trebuchet
Cursive	calligraphy	caflisch script, corsiva
Fantasy	gaming programs	alpha geometrique, critter
Monospace	depiction of computer code	courier

2. Why do we see the same old fonts again and again on the web?

Much of that has to do with the simple geometry of screens, monitors, and most important, picture elements (pixels). These display types do a miserable job of rendering rounded edges. Thus we stick with the safe - but readable - sans-serif fonts (fonts devoid of those curly-cued edges most notably seen with a serif font).

That's why the most commonly used fonts are arial, helvetica, verdana, trebuchet, and comic. While they all happen to print rather well, you can set up a Cascading Style Sheet specifically designed for print jobs. (Sounds like a future Joy Gems.)

There was a time when it was thought a user would be able to automatically download a font used on a page that was either rare or designed for that page or site. Had that happened no doubt we would have seen a wider variety of fonts in our pages but that idea - downloadable web fonts - has come and gone.

3. When I choose a font for my web page why should I always define a backup and generic font?

What if you, web designer or author, want to use the gooboo font? You love gooboo, a show stopping sans-serif font, but you're not sure if anyone else has it on their computer. To solve that problem, and still make gooboo the default font for your web pages, you could write a style rule like this:

body
{font-family: gooboo,arial,sans-serif;}

In the event that the user's computer doesn't have gooboo (and they won't because I made it up), the browser will automatically select the secondary font, arial. If arial is not around (wouldn't that be breaking news?), then the browser would choose any available generic sans-serif font.

4. Where can I learn more about fonts?

• Web Type 101, a primer
• The W3C's CSS Font Specifications (nothing left out)
• The World Of Fonts (great history article)

5. Where can I buy fonts - or get them free?

Remember, you get what you pay for. Chances are the freebie fonts are not going to render as well as the fonts where you need to put cash on the barrelhead. These sites also have a lot of information on fonts as well.

• 1001 Free Fonts
• SimplytheBest Fonts (who knows?)
• Search Free Fonts
• Fonts.com (mon favorite!!)

As I said, I love fonts. The ability to match your font with your message - now that's an art!!