However, if you’ve got lots of text and little “white space” (blank areas) on a
page, consider Goudy or some other relatively weightless typeface to see if
you can lighten things up a bit. Garamond is perhaps the oldest typeface that
remains extremely popular. It will likely be around as long as people use
Western alphabets. It’s an excellent all-purpose choice for body text. Times
Roman (of various varieties) is also a safe choice for body text. Times New
Roman is the default font displayed in Internet Explorer unless an HTML font
element, or a CSS rule, specifies otherwise. The user can also change the
default font in IE by choosing Tools➪Internet Options, and then clicking the
Fonts button in the Internet Options dialog box that appears.
When you’re not too picky about typeface .....................................
If you’re not that concerned about which particular typeface is used, you can
specify generic sans or serif (use sans-serifor sans), like this CSS style that
enables the user’s browser to pick a serif font — probably Times New Roman:
body {font-family: serif;}
Also, because the <body>element is parent to paragraphs <p>and other chil-
dren, those children inherit this serif font too (unless a more specific selector
insists on another style).
You can combine a specific font request with a generic fallback position. If
Garamond isn’t available on the user’s machine, the user’s default serif font is
used in response to the following rule:
body {font-family: Garamond, serif;}
Using Font Variants .......................................................................................
When should you use italic, bold, underlining, and other typeface variations?
Most typefaces have several variants, with boldface and italic the most
common. Boldface is most often used in headlines. It’s big and thick. It’s
rarely used in body text because it’s too distracting. Like an all-uppercase
font, body text bold can be too much of a good thing.
If you want to emphasize something in body text, use italics, not all-caps or
bold or any other trick. Just italics.(Young people tend to emphasize body text
in all kinds of ways. In addition to cand ALL CAPS, they reverse the type
(white-on-black),underline, draw hearts, add rows of exclamation points!!!!!,
and so on. These tactics do add emphasis of a sort, but like someone who
thinks that shouting makes their argument stronger, these techniques are not
94 Part II: Looking Good with CSS
