When I started in tech writing, it was generally accepted that Times New Roman was THE font to use for printed manuals. No ifs, buts, or maybe – Times New Roman size 11.
If you look at the fonts used on CNN, Yahoo and Guardian sites, you’ll see that some use serif, while others favor sans-serif.
Serif are fonts with ‘feet’ like Times Roman, while those without (i.e. sans) serif include Verdana, Arial and the like.
Fonts that work on Windows and Mac OS include:
- Verdana
- Georgia
- Comic Sans
- MS Trebuchet
This is the most popular of serif fonts, while Times New Roman is more common on recent operating systems.
Times ABCDE abcde 012345
Times (also called Times Roman) is available on Macintosh and Unix computers. Times was originally designed for newspapers.
Times New Roman
Times New Roman is Microsoft’s version of Times. It comes pre-installed on both Windows and most Macintosh computers.
These mimic typewritten output and are often used when writing code.
Courier is the popular monospace font. It is available on Macintosh and Unix computers, and is a core PostScript font.
ABCDE abcde 012345
Verdana
Verdana has large lowercase letters which makes text easy to read on the web.
ABCDE abcde 012345
Jakob Nielsen’s Alertbox makes the folowing suggestions:
- Do not use absolute font sizes in your style sheets. Code font sizes in relative terms, typically using percentages such as 120% for big text and 90% for small text.
- Make your default font size reasonably big (at least 10 point) so that very few users have to resort to manual overrides.
- If your site targets senior citizens, use bigger default font sizes (at least 12 point).
http://www.useit.com/alertbox/20020819.html
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