Font Layout Overview The fonts and layout selected make a difference for students. Creating blocks or sections of content and making titles or key phrases of text bold are examples of how to make it easier for the reader to navigate or skim the material in the course. Consider the impact of: 1. Font Size 2. Font Face 3. Text Block Formatting Tip 1 - Font Size The most common problem is text is too small. Accepted guidelines include: • 12 Point for Body Text - For most documents, body text should be around 12 points. • 9 Point for Footnotes - If a document contains footnotes or endnotes, the font size should be around 9 points. • 24 Point for Presentations – If a Microsoft Office PowerPoint file is designed to be projected for an audience, the font size should be at least 24 points. Headers and sub-headers can be much larger, between 40-60 points depending on the slide layout. Tip 2 - Font Face For online reading, sans-serif fonts (e.g., Verdana) are generally considered more legible than serif fonts (e.g., Times New Roman). Serif fonts have flourishes on most letters and resemble the look of text created by a typewriter. Sans-serif are fonts without serif and have a more modern or minimalistic appearance. Recommended fonts include: Fonts Verdana Lucida Sans (PC) / Lucida Grande (Macintosh) Tahoma Georgia Book Antiqua (PC) / Palatino Linotype (PC) / Palatino (Macintosh) Helvetica 1 Notes Sans-serif font created to address the challenges of on-screen display Sans-serif font that is the default system font with Mac OS X Similar to Verdana with tighter letter spacing – heavy or bold weight Serif font designed for clarity on a computer monitor even at small sizes Serif font that was originally used in early desktop publishing and remains widely used Sans-serif font designed to create a neutral typeface with great clarity to have a wide variety of use Font Layout | Texas Woman's University Arial Calibri Trebuchet MS Century Gothic Cambria Garamond Times New Roman Comic Sans MS Sans-serif font that comes in many styles and packaged with all versions of Microsoft Windows Sans-serif font designed to replace Times New Roman as the default typeface in Microsoft Word and replace Arial as the default in Microsoft PowerPoint, Excel and Outlook Sans-serif font and is considered a core font for the Web by Microsoft Sans-serif font somewhat modern – light weight Traditional serif font with even spacing and proportions designed for on-screen reading Traditional serif font considered to be among the most legible and readable serif typefaces Serif font that is widely used Sans-serif font that is casual designed to imitate comic book lettering and used for informal documents NOTE: If a document is meant primarily to be printed, other font options can be used. Tip 3 - Text Block Formatting Avoid large blocks of italic text, colored text, underlined text, decorative fonts and capitalized letters. They make text difficult to read. Examples to avoid include: • All Italics • All Underlined • All Colored • All Decorative or Narrow Font • All Capitalized Letters • Justified Text 2 Font Layout | Texas Woman's University