Rendering of fonts on the internet is, like colours, a bit hit and miss. The only way to be sure that the user’s system will render your carefully chosen corporate style font correctly is to display it as an image. But this should be done sparingly because this will greatly increase download time and will be useless in telling the search engines what your site is about.
We do not recommend this method.
You should choose a font from the web safe range which most operating systems will recognise.
When writing web pages we often do not specify one particular font, but rather offer the user's system a range, coding the style something like: “Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif”; This tells the browser to use Arial if possible, failing that, Helvetica and if all else fails what ever it can as long as it is sans-serif.
To help you choose some of the common fonts are shown below: (If they all look like Times New Roman then your system does not have the actual font installed and has defaulted to the one it knows!)
These are the basic font families:
(The default font for this site is Arial - this means that this is the most likely font you will see if your system does not recognise the actual one requested)
Serif: AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz
Sans-serif: AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz
Monospace: AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz
Cursive: AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz
Fantasy: AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz
These should be safe:
Arial: AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz
Helvetica: AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz
Verdana: AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz
Geneva: AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz
Times New Roman: AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz
Courier: AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz
Courier New: AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz
Georgia: AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz
Times: AbCdEfGhIjKlMnOpQrStUvWxYz
As an example, our logo at the top of this page uses a font called "Colonna MT" and this is how it renders for you:
iia
Introduction | Why do I need a Web Site? | Launching into cyber space | Define your message | Database driven sites | Colour scheme and styles | Design and publication | Hosting | Promotion and Maintenance | Web Site Prices | Upgrade your web site | Web Doctor | Search Engine Optimisation | Database Solutions | Your Colour Scheme | Effects | Fonts and the Internet | Frames | Layout of your Site| Contact | Why Us? | Principles | While away some time
