CSS Fonts

Choosing the right font for your website is important!

Font Selection is Important

Choosing the right font has a huge impact on how the readers experience a website.

The right font can create a strong identity for your brand.

Using a font that is easy to read is important. The font adds value to your text. It is also important to choose the correct color and text size for the font.

Generic Font Families

In CSS there are five generic font families:

1. Serif fonts have a small stroke at the edges of each letter. They create a sense of formality and elegance.
2. Sans-serif fonts have clean lines (no small strokes attached). They create a modern and minimalistic look.
3. Monospace fonts — here all the letters have the same fixed width. They create a mechanical look.
4. Cursive fonts imitate human handwriting.
5. Fantasy fonts are decorative/playful fonts.

All the different font names belong to one of the generic font families.

Difference Between Serif and Sans-serif Fonts

Note: On computer screens, sans-serif fonts are considered easier to read than serif fonts.

Some Font Examples

Generic Font Family	Examples of Font Names
Serif	Times New Roman Georgia Garamond
Sans-serif	Arial Verdana Helvetica
Monospace	Courier New Lucida Console Monaco
Cursive	Brush Script MT Lucida Handwriting
Fantasy	Copperplate Papyrus

The CSS font-family Property

In CSS, we use the font-family property to specify the font of a text.

Note: If the font name is more than one word, it must be in quotation marks, like: «Times New Roman».

Tip: The font-family property should hold several font names as a «fallback» system, to ensure maximum compatibility between browsers/operating systems. Start with the font you want, and end with a generic family (to let the browser pick a similar font in the generic family, if no other fonts are available). The font names should be separated with comma. Read more about fallback fonts in the next chapter.

Example

Specify some different fonts for three paragraphs:

.p1 <
font-family: «Times New Roman», Times, serif;
>

.p2 font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
>

.p3 font-family: «Lucida Console», «Courier New», monospace;
>

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CSS Font

CSS font properties are used to adjust the appearance of the text in an HTML document. Using the CSS fonts properties, we can customize the font family, size, weight, style, and color of text.

• font-family: Helvetica — sets the font family of text to Helvetica within the body
• font-size: 16px — sets the font size of the text to 16px within the body

Basic Font Properties

In CSS, we have the following seven important font properties that are used to change different attributes of the text.

• font-family : defines the font applied to the text
• font-size : sets the size of the font
• font-weight : sets the thickness i.e increase the boldness or lightness of the font
• font-style : sets the font to italic or oblique
• font-variant : changes the font to small-caps
• font-stretch : expands or narrows the text
• line-height : sets the distance between lines of the text

We will learn about each of them in detail.

CSS Font Family

CSS font-family property is used to set the font face of the text on the webpage. For example,

        
CSS Font Family
  

Browser Output

In the above example, we have set the font family of the h1 element to the Courier, monospace . The browser tries to render the text of h1 in Courier font, and if not available, monospace is rendered.

Note: It is recommended to list the family name in quotation marks when it consists of multiple words. For example, «Times New Roman» .

CSS Font Size

CSS font-size property sets the size or height of the text. The values of font-size can be expressed by keywords, length units ( px , em , rem , etc), or percentages. For example,

        
Font size: 42px
 
Font size: 24px
  

Browser Output

CSS Font Style

CSS font-style property is used to style a font either with a normal , italic , or oblique face. For example,

        
Normal text
 
Italic text
 
Oblique text
  

h1.normal < font-style: normal; >h1.italic < font-style: italic; >h1.oblique

Browser Output

The possible values for CSS font-style are as follows:

• normal : text is shown normally
• italic : text is shown in italics
• oblique : text is leaned which is very similar to italic

CSS Font Stretch

CSS font-stretch property is used to widen or narrow the text by allowing us to select a normal , expanded or condensed face from the font’s family. For example,

        
Hello World
 
Hello World
  

Browser Output

Note: This property has no effect if the selected font family does not offer condensed or expanded faces.

CSS Font Variant

CSS font-variant is used to set the text to small-caps (uppercase letters but in smaller font size). For example,

        
This is the normal text.
 
This is the small caps
  

Browser Output

The possible values for CSS font-variant style are as follows:

• normal : default value and makes no change to the font
• small-caps : displays text in small uppercase letters
• initial : sets the text to initial value which is normal by default
• inherit : sets the text to value as of its parent element

CSS Font Weight

CSS font-weight determines the lightness or boldness of the text. It can be specified by using numeric or pre-defined keywords such as bold , lighter , etc. For example,

        
Normal Text
 
Bold Text
  

Browser Output

The weight available depends on the font-family that is currently set. If the specified font-family does not offer the requested font weight, the browser will simulate the lightness or boldness that approximates the requested weight.

CSS Line Height

CSS line-height property is used to set the height of the line box. It allows setting the height of the line independently from the font size. For example,

         
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum a neque et turpis tristique mollis quis imperdiet purus. Nunc molestie orci eu augue consequat, pellentesque faucibus magna pretium. Duis at viverra ligula. Nullam aliquam, leo ut tristique pretium, ligula arcu cursus turpis, nec rhoncus sapien urna vitae lacus. Fusce vel consectetur diam.
 
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit. Vestibulum a neque et turpis tristique mollis quis imperdiet purus. Nunc molestie orci eu augue consequat, pellentesque faucibus magna pretium. Duis at viverra ligula. Nullam aliquam, leo ut tristique pretium, ligula arcu cursus turpis, nec rhoncus sapien urna vitae lacus. Fusce vel consectetur diam.
  

Browser Output

The possible values for CSS line-height are as follows:

Line Height Values	Description
normal	default value, specifies the normal line height
number	specifies the number that is multiplied with the current font size to set the line height
length	sets the line height in px , pt , cm , etc
%	sets the line height in percent of the current font size
initial	sets the value to default value i.e normal
inherit	inherits the property value from its parent element

CSS Font ShortHand Property

The CSS font shorthand property is used to set multiple font related properties in a single declaration. This property helps to shorten the code by specifying all the font properties in one place.

The font property has the following syntax:

font: font-style font-variant font-weight font-size/line-height font-family;

The font shorthand property needs at least font-size and font-family values to work.

The order of the values provided in the above shorthand font property must follow the specified ordering. Default values are used if other values are omitted.

        
Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetur adipiscing elit.
  

h1 < font: italic small-caps bold 24px/1.2 "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; >/* The above code is equivalent to h1 < font-style: italic; font-variant: small-caps; font-weight: bold; font-size: 24px; line-height: 1.2; font-family: "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif; >*/

Browser Output

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