Fonts for your content pages

What are the best fonts to use for content pages on the Internet? This is an important question for web design as well as writing content pages for ecommerce websites.

Fonts do not download with HTML pages. This means that when a web browser goes to display an HTML page, the fonts used to draw that page come only from the visitor’s own computer. If you use a font that your visitors don’t have installed, then your pages will not appear as you intended them to look.

It is important to choose a font that is easy to read and commonly available if you want your pages to display correctly on the Internet. 

There are five main types of fonts (font families):

• Serif fonts – these have decorative pieces on their ends (called serifs). Times New Roman is one of the most commonly occuring versions of this font on modern PCs
• Sans Serif fonts – do not have those descriptive pieces and are often used in headings. Arial is a commonly occuring example of a sans serif font.
• Cursive: These are fonts that look like human handwriting.
• Monospace: These are fixed width fonts and behave like typewriter spacing. Courier New is an example of a monospace font.
• Fantasy fonts are those that do not fall into any of the above category. Wingdings symbols is an example of a font in this category.

So what fonts are the best to use?

Here is a quick guide to fonts that are commonly occuring on Windows and Macintosh computers (without installing extra software) that you could use in your content pages.  There are similar versions available on Windows and Macintosh PCs so your content will be displayed in a similar way across different types of computers.  

If you have a font you really want to use and it is not available in this table, then you can always insert it as a graphic into your content. Design companies often do this with special headings. Don’t overdo it though as search engines can’t read the text inside images.

Our best advice is to use an HTML editor like Expressions that applies the font family names to your content instead of a specific font.

As a rule of thumb for printed material, graphic design handbooks often suggest a Serif font like Times for body text and a Sans-Serif font for headings.  Because people read differently on the Internet we generally suggest that our customers use sans-serif fonts like Arial for body text and product descriptions too. In our view, simplicity sells.