20 Best Web-Safe HTML Fonts for Your WordPress Website

Fonts play a large role in the overall visual appeal of a website. A carefully selected font will help convey the right message and establish branding consistency. To achieve this, a great web font should be readable and web-safe, meaning it renders well across different devices, browsers, and operating systems. However, choosing a suitable font is not always so easy. It’s common to come across fonts that are visually appealing but aren’t web-safe or vice versa. In order to help out, we’ve curated a list of the 20 best HTML web fonts for your website.

What Is a Web-Safe Font

Web-safe fonts are fonts that come pre-installed across most operating systems. This ensures that the fonts render as intended when accessed from various devices and browsers. Most popular examples of web-safe fonts include Arial, Times New Roman, and Helvetica.

What Are the Categories of HTML Fonts

In typography, each font is a member of one of five font families, categorized according to their design similarities. They are:

Cursive

Cursive fonts imitate handwriting, usually having the letters joined together in a looped, flowing manner. Many people associate this font type with individuality, expression, and calligraphy. It’s best to use this font type for headers, taglines, and blog post titles on your website, rather than the body text. When used as a default font, cursive can be hard to read.

Fantasy

The Fantasy font family generally features decorative attributes present on each letter. Popular among works of fiction, typefaces from this font set can help instantly communicate their genre and immerse the audience. For example, this font category is widely used in fantasy and sci-fi movies such as Star Wars, Harry Potter, and Frozen.

Serif

The most prominent style attribute of serif fonts is the presence of small, additional strokes by the edges of the letters. While initially used for ink printing purposes, the font style is now associated with a sense of formality and elegance. Websites mainly use Serif for body text, as it is highly legible and helps readers quickly skim written content. Popular Serif fonts include Times New Roman, Cambria, and Garamond.

Sans-serif

As a counterpart to the serif font category, Sans-serif fonts do not display additional strokes attached to their letters. Most fonts from this family feature similar widths, appearing both modern and minimalistic. Sans-serif fonts are legible in any size, making the typefaces a great choice for both print content and digital use.

Monospace

Each letter and symbol found in Monospace fonts are of the same width. Since the fonts are consistent and easy to distinguish, they are often the default font for typewriters and computer terminals.

20 Best Web-Safe HTML Fonts

Below are 20 web-safe HTML font options that you can apply to your content:

Arial
Arial Narrow
Times
Times New Roman
Helvetica
Courier
Courier New
Verdana
Candara
Geneva
Calibri
Optima
Cambria
Garamond
Perpetua
Monaco
Didot
Brush Script
Lucida Bright
Copperplate

Dishonorable Mention: Comic Sans

Comic Sans was based on lettering from comic magazines and was intended to be friendly and casual. However, this typeface is considered unprofessional and child-like by many. The reason this font is displeasing to the eye is because of its poor management of visual consistency. The letters lack uniformity in spacing, width, and height.

Why Should You Use an HTML Web Font

Using an HTML web font is crucial for your web design. It ensures the text on your website is consistent throughout all devices. Without an HTML web font, you risk losing visitors since your fonts can render as unreadable symbols when accessed from unsupported devices. Here are some reasons as to why you should use an HTML font for your website:

Consistent design. An HTML web font makes sure your chosen font is rendered properly throughout any browser and device.
Fallback font. If your preferred font doesn’t load correctly on a person’s browser, HTML web fonts will fall back to a default font found on the person’s device.
No download. You can easily embed HTML fonts from a web-safe font provider like Google Fonts to your HTML document.

How to Add HTML Fonts in WordPress

There are a couple of ways you can add HTML fonts in WordPress. In this section, we’ll go over two popular methods:

How to Add HTML Fonts Manually

Adding fonts manually is a great option if you want to avoid plugins or wish to add a custom font to your WordPress site. First, select and download a custom font from a web font provider such as Adobe Fonts, TypeNetwork, or Fonts. Once you’ve made a choice, convert the font into a web-friendly format. You can use the Webfont Generator to achieve this. After you’ve downloaded the file, upload it to the wp-content/themes/your-theme/fonts directory. Adding fonts manually using HTML can be a challenge since the HTML tag is a deprecated font tag in HTML5. Instead, people now use CSS properties to change font-family properties, color, face, and other font attributes. A popular method to further style your font is using inline CSS. It adds styles to a single HTML element with a CSS style attribute.

How to Add HTML Fonts Using Plugins

Plenty of plugins are available to add HTML fonts to your WordPress website – let’s look at one of them right now. Use Any Font (UAF) is a plugin that allows you to upload any custom font and automatically convert it into a web-safe font. Once you’ve installed the plugin, the Use Any Font tab will appear on your WordPress admin bar. Click on it and activate your API key. After the verification is complete, add your .ttf, .otf, and .woff font files and click upload to let UAF convert the custom fonts into web-safe fonts. Additionally, UAF is also compatible with Flatsome for live font customization on Flatsome Themes.

Conclusion

Using an HTML web font will make your site look consistent throughout different devices. Additionally, it will help create a professional, formal, or elegant look for the website, depending on the font used. In this article, we’ve provided the 20 best web-safe fonts to help with your decision. Let’s recap some of the choices: Arial, Times New Roman, Cambria, Monaco, and more. Keep in mind that each font has a unique flair, so make sure to choose one that is both legible and representative of your brand.

Irfan F. believes that technology and the internet can help improve our lives significantly. That’s why he shares his experience as a WordPress blogger to educate others. In his free time, Irfan enjoys good films and books.

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