Web Safe Fonts
Web safe fonts are fonts that are included with most operating systems, the implication of such high availability is that a designer can expect typography involving web safe fonts to appear exactly as intended to most users. Below are non-exhaustive lists of some fonts that are considered web safe at the time of writing, categorized by CSS generic font families.
Web safe serif fonts:
- Georgia
- Times New Roman
Web safe sans-serif fonts:
- Arial
- Tahoma
- Trebuchet MS
- Verdana
Web safe monospaced fonts:
- Courier New
It is worth noting that font stacks with fallback options including a generic font family should still be used even if your design uses only web safe fonts. For example:
p {
font-family: Tahoma, Arial, sans-serif;
}A Note on Web Fonts
Just because some fonts are safer than others does not mean you should confine your designs to using only web safe fonts. Modern designs with CSS can also take advantage of web fonts to ensure consistent typography across operating systems.