Typography, The Letters Do Matter!

January 13, 2009 by dashaver

Reading text on a computer screen is different than on paper. Web pages are made up of hypertext. Hypertext is a document in electronic format. Documents on the web are linked by hyperlinks; this is how pages are transversed on the World Wide Web. Hyperlinks should always be the same size of font as the text around them. Otherwise an uncomfortable page shifting occurs when the link is hovered over.

High Contrast Text

Use the highest contrast possible for text. Black text on white page is best. Black pages with white text are very hard to read.

Use A Sans-serif Font

Use an Arial or san-serif font. A font is set of letters, which have the same design and uniform size. Serifs are the little tails, which are on some letters. “Times” is a serif font.

Let The User Decide

Allow the size of font to be decided by the user. This means the font should be specified by variable sizes such as em’s or percents. Fonts specified using points or other specific sizes can be too small to read or uncomfortably large depending on the users computer and browser.

Two Fonts Per Page

Limit yourself to two fonts per website. A different font for the title or heading can look nice but after that readability get worse.

Do Not Use All Caps

Capitals should be limited to the first letter of a word. A paragraph or page in all caps is like an annoying person standing too close and talking too loud.
Use correct spelling and grammar and please just one period at end of sentence.