Which font style?

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Avoid variety (see Use clear and simple design).

The fewer font styles you need, the better.

Use only one font attribute at a time. For example, make text bold, or italic, or underlined, but don’t make it bold + italic + underlined.

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Font style Bold

Bold text should identify information.

Make headings bold.

Within the body text, only make bold what you want to use as a visual label to support skimming.

Font styles Italic and Small Caps

It’s harder to read italic text than to read normal text, especially when reading on screen.

Avoid long text in italics; use italics only to emphasize individual words or phrases.

Don’t use small capitals at all. Their readability is very poor both in printed manuals and in online help.

Font style Underlined

In online help, use underlined text exclusively for hyperlinks. Even if links are not underlined in your document, don’t use underlined text for anything else; many users will click the underlined text because they think that it’s a link.

If you’ve underlined text in a printed manual, only use it for single words or short phrases. Long sections of underlined text are very difficult to read. What’s more, if you underline a long section, the underlining loses its function of pointing out what’s especially important.

Examples


Which font?

Which font size and font spacing?

Recommended character styles