CSS font properties define the font family, boldness, size, and
the style of a text.
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")
| Generic family |
Font family |
Description |
| Serif |
Times New Roman
Georgia |
Serif fonts have small lines at the ends on some characters |
| Sans-serif |
Arial
Verdana |
"Sans" means without - these fonts do not have the
lines at the ends of characters |
| Monospace |
Courier New
Lucida Console |
All monospace characters have the same width |
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.
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.
Note: If the name of a font family is more than one word, it must be in
quotation marks, like font-family: "Times New Roman".
More than one font family is specified in a comma-separated list:
Example
p{font-family:"Times New Roman", Times, 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 Size
The font-size property sets the size of the text.
Being able to manage the text size is important in web design. However, you
should not use font size adjustments to make paragraphs look like headings, or
headings look like paragraphs.
Always use the proper HTML tags, like <h1> - <h6> for headings and <p> for
paragraphs.
The font-size value can be
an absolute, or relative size.
Absolute size:
- Sets the text to a specified size
- Does not allow a user to change the text size in all browsers (bad for accessibility
reasons)
- Absolute size is useful when the physical size of the output is known
Relative size:
- Sets the size relative to surrounding elements
- Allows a user to change the text size in browsers