About 15 years ago (or about the time that Desktop Publishing became both popular and possible because of new software) some of the worst looking newsletters and websites to ever have reached the civilized world, were published. The main reason that they were so bad was that people who always wanted to design publications, but never had, now had a chance to go at it. They tried all sorts of unusual looking fonts - tried them bold, in italics, in all the colors of the rainbow, slanted, wrapped around circles.

I know this for a fact, because I was one of them.

Now when people ask me what is a good font for developing websites, I give them these suggestions.

If you want a serif font (serif fonts are the ones where the letters - like T - have little feet on them). Newspapers and most printed work use serif fonts. Look at the New York Times newspaper. That is a good example. It is very readable. The font is Times New Roman. Another serif font is Georgia. This font was developed for website developers who liked the look of serif fonts and it was considered to be a little bit more readable on a computer screen than Times.

But most website developers use a san serif font (I think of them as "without feet") for their websites. The two most common are Arial and Helvetica, which are very similar. Several other san serif fonts that have been popular or developed for web use are Verdana, Tahoma and Trebuchet.

They all work. The problems you might run into with the last 3 fonts are that every web development program may not have them.

Another thing to think about is that what you put down on your website may look different when it shows up at the end of the internet on a different computer. Depending on what browser you use, such as Internet Explorer, Netscape or Foxfire, there are some things you might not see or may just plain look different.

My suggestion is to go with something simple and easy to read. Unless you are a designer, stick with keeping your body copy at about 10 pts or larger. And your copy headers at 12 points. You can get a bit fancier with your main headers - larger font size, colors, things like that - because there are fewer of them and they are meant to be a bit decorative.

Websites are a means of communication. If you can't read them on the other end, no matter how good or interesting they look, they aren't doing the job. So skip the "all caps" sentences. No alternating colors - green on this line, yellow on the next, red on the third line, etc. Make your sentences short. A long sentence in pale green or chartreuse can be almost impossible to read. Take a look at corporate websites. They may use little teeny print and fancy stuff like that - but the main copy that they write is usually in black or dark gray. They don't get paid if nobody reads their stuff.

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