One of the very first things that can grab the eyeballs of your website visitors is your text font. When you put up well-written content on your site, it’s important that you beautify it with some attractive font styles. The way you display your content, i.e. the overall look, is something that is going to get your visitors to read your content in the first place. But the hard fact is that, most web masters tend to overlook this crucial aspect of website enhancement.
There is another group of website owners who keep experimenting with multiple font styles for each of their web pages. Well, I wouldn’t call it the right strategy though – sometimes it can spoil the overall look of the website itself. The bottom line is, if you have set your heart on designing an eye-catching website, you should have an appealing and engaging font style. In other words, you need to dot the I’s and cross the T’s! As simple as that!
Here is a brief guide on how to make the best use of your text fonts:
- As a rule of the thumb, try not to use more than 3 font styles on a single page, as that could break up the flow of readers. Moreover it would appear like rookie writing to visitors, and therefore dent your entire writing professionalism.
- Don’t use varying fonts in the middle of the write-up until and unless there is a real need for it. May be, you can use distinctive running fonts in situations when you are quoting lines from an external source. In that case, it would add more meaning to what you do.
- Use different font sizes for your heading, sub titles, and taglines.
List of the best fonts for websites
There are oodles of font styles, which you can use to project your texts. Here is a list of the top 10 font styles:
1. Helvetica
2. Garamond
3. Bodoni
4. Footlight MT light
5. Frutiger
6. Officina
7. Akzidenz Grotesk
8. Times
9. Gill Sans
10. Univers
Which font to use in your website
I generally use Helvetica for my titles, Footlight MT light for my main content, and Georgia for my sidebars. You may try using each one of the aforementioned font styles in your titles, sub headings, taglines, and the smaller aspects in your content. Try and identify which combination suits your web pages well and stick to it. However, see to that you don’t cross the ideal limit of 3 font styles per page.
Let your primary font be simple and easy-to-read. That will be your accent font. You can use contrasting fonts for the other elements in your content. That would give a neat overall appearance to readers.
Which font to use for your printable content
While the above-mentioned list may be ideal for any online content, a more standardized font like Sans-Serif would be a perfect choice for a printable version of your online content. Sans-Serif is great for printed versions as it lets readers differentiate the letters easily. It makes sense because the printed versions have a much higher resolution than the online content. Some of the other print-friendly fonts are Georgia, Times New Roman, and Garamond.
Single-spaced fonts for your websites
Most website owners prefer having single-spaced fonts in their web pages. This is mainly because single-spaced fonts have standard width and spacing between themselves and occupy equal spacing in your web pages. Also called as fixed-width fonts, they can be used when you quote examples or provide instructions. The most commonly used single-spaced fonts are Courier New, Monaco, Lucida Console, and Courier.