around 12 to 14 points.

Above 12 points, most fonts of any family are perfectly readable. At smaller sizes,

sans serifs slightly edge out serifs in terms of readability, but this has a lot to do

with the inability of most computer screens to elegantly render the subtleties of

serif fonts.

Small sans serif fonts present difficulty for readers with dyslexia.

Use common typefaces

When producing Windows 95, Microsoft commissioned celebrity typographer Matthew

Carter to design screen-friendly fonts. The result was Verdana and Georgia, among others.

These were crafted with the goal of retaining legibility at both small point size and subjec-

tion to poor screen aliasing. In a study by Wichita State University, both faces—along with

Arial, the inbred cousin of Helvetica—scored high with users in almost all categories,

including reading time, perceived legibility, and overall font preference.4It would be a

criminal understatement to say Matthew Carter succeeded in his goals.

The advantage of Verdana and Georgia is that they are available on most PC- and Mac-

based computers produced since 1995. (Arial is installed on all PCs, and its nearly identical

twin Helvetica is installed on all Macs.) This widespread adoption, along with their

4. Michael Bernard, Melissa Mills, Michelle Peterson, and Kelsey Storrer, “A Comparison of Popular

Online Fonts: Which is Best and When?” Usability News 3.2, 2001 (psychology.wichita.edu/

surl/usabilitynews/3S/font.htm).

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familiarity and proven legibility, make them ideal carriers of web-based content. The trick,

then, is to make sure the CSS references them correctly.

Cascading style sheets provide web designers the means to discontinue the use of messy

inline tags and other display-related markup. In addition to creating far cleaner

HTML, CSS allows for advanced typographic control, such as general styling (italicizing and

bolding), employing small caps and drop caps, precise sizing through different units of

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measurement, and much more. With this much power, it is vital to write CSS type defini-

tions that accommodate different platforms.

For instance, all Windows-based and newer Mac-based machines have Arial installed, but