Writing Tip : Two great screen fonts: Georgia and Verdana

Two great screen fonts: Georgia and Verdana

Summary

This article describes two very readable screen fonts and provides download links to them.

Fonts that look good in print don't always look good on a computer screen. Reading information from a screen is easier if you use a font that has been specially designed for on-screen reading. Two such fonts deserve special mention: Georgia and Verdana.
 
Georgia is a lovely serif font, and Verdana is a highly-readable sans-serif font. When compared to older fonts like Times New Roman and Arial, they appear much easier to read on-screen. Look at the following comparisons:
 


The first thing you'll notice, is that Georgia and Verdana are wider than most fonts. This adds to their readability. Another interesting characteristic is that their lower-case letters are quite tall — they're around two-thirds of the height of the upper-case letters. (This is particularly clear with Verdana.) This also adds to their readability.
 
Here's what Microsoft has to say about these fonts:

The typography group at Microsoft contains some of the world's experts in creating type for reading on the screen. [They] commissioned world-renowned type designer Matthew Carter to create two new typefaces exclusively for Microsoft, designed specifically for screen readability. [The] Verdana and Georgia typefaces have become classics, especially with the growth in screen reading sparked by the Internet.