CSS Font Families

In CSS, there are two types of font family names:

generic family - a group of font families with a similar look (like "Serif" or "Monospace")

font family - a specific font family (like "Times New Roman" or "Arial")

Font Family

The font family of a text is set with the font-family property.

The font-family property should hold several font names as a "fallback" system. If the browser does not support the first font, it tries the next font, and so on.

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.

EXAMPLE:

Specify the font for three paragraphs:

.serif {
font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
}

.sansserif {
font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}

.monospace {
font-family: "Lucida Console", Courier, monospace;
}

Specify the "Impact" font for a paragraph:

p.impact {
font-family: Impact, Charcoal, sans-serif;
}

Font Style

The font-style property is mostly used to specify italic text.

This property has three values:

normal - The text is shown normally

italic - The text is shown in italics

oblique - The text is "leaning" (oblique is very similar to italic, but less supported)

EXAMPLE:

p.normal {
font-style: normal;
}

p.italic {
font-style: italic;
}

p.oblique {
font-style: oblique;
}

Font Weight

The font-weight property specifies the weight of a font:

EXAMPLE:

p.normal {
font-weight: normal;
}

p.thick {
font-weight: bold;
}

Font Variant

The font-variant property specifies whether or not a text should be displayed in a small-caps font.

In a small-caps font, all lowercase letters are converted to uppercase letters. However, the converted uppercase letters appears in a smaller font size than the original uppercase letters in the text.

EXAMPLE:

p.normal {
font-variant: normal;
}

p.small {
font-variant: small-caps;
}

Set Font Size With Pixels

Setting the text size with pixels gives you full control over the text size:

EXAMPLE:

h1 {
  font-size: 40px;
}

h2 {
  font-size: 30px;
}

p {
  font-size: 14px;
}

Set Font Size With Em

To allow users to resize the text (in the browser menu), many developers use em instead of pixels.

The em size unit is recommended by the W3C.

1em is equal to the current font size. The default text size in browsers is 16px. So, the default size of 1em is 16px.

The size can be calculated from pixels to em using this formula: pixels/16=em

EXAMPLE:

h1 {
font-size: 2.5em; /* 40px/16=2.5em */
}

h2 {
font-size: 1.875em; /* 30px/16=1.875em */
}

p {
font-size: 0.875em; /* 14px/16=0.875em */
}

Use a Combination of Percent and Em

The solution that works in all browsers, is to set a default font-size in percent for the <body> element:

EXAMPLE:

body {
font-size: 100%;
}

h1 {
font-size: 2.5em;
}

h2 {
font-size: 1.875em;
}

p {
font-size: 0.875em;
}

Responsive Font Size

The text size can be set with a vw unit, which means the "viewport width".

That way the text size will follow the size of the browser window:

EXAMPLE:

<h1 style="font-size:10vw">Hello World</h1>

Google Fonts

If you do not want to use any of the standard fonts in HTML, you can use the Google Fonts API to add hundreds of other fonts to your page.

Just add a stylesheet link and refer to a font family of your choice:

EXAMPLE:

<!DOCTYPE html>
<html>
<head>
<link rel="stylesheet" href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Sofia">
<style>
body {
font-family: "Sofia";
font-size: 22px;
}
</style>
</head>
<body>

<h1>Sofia Font</h1>
<p>Lorem ipsum dolor sit amet, consectetuer adipiscing elit.</p>

</body>
</html>

Font Property

To shorten the code, it is also possible to specify all the individual font properties in one property.

The font property is a shorthand property for:

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

EXAMPLE:

Set some font properties with the shorthand declaration:

p.a {
font: 20px Arial, sans-serif;
}

p.b {
font: italic small-caps bold 12px/30px Georgia, serif;
}