Typography, i.e. the use of fonts, on Wikipedia can often be a source of heated debates. This is because Wikipedia has never set an explicit font in its default skin. This was true for Monobook, and still holds for Vector. The base font for these skins are simply defined as font-family: sans-serif. Likewise, the size of fonts are also subject to debates. Vector uses the definition of font-size: 0.875em;, which translates to 87.5% of the default fontsize set in a user's browser. Under Windows, the default fonts in browsers are normally defined as Arial at 16px for sans-serif, Times New Roman at 16px for serif and Courier New at 13px for monospace. 0.875 × 16 equals 14px exactly. However, all fonts shown here are 16px, the browser's default.

This essay is in development. It contains the advice or opinions of one or more Wikipedia contributors. Essays may represent widespread norms or minority viewpoints. Consider these views with discretion, especially since this page is still under construction.

Shortcut WP:TYPE

Below are some personal writings on web typography, and its potential use on Wikipedia. It focuses on fonts that are installed by default, as these provide a stable installed base. It also focuses heavily on Windows. Information relating to other platforms is very welcome.

Here are the tags to use if you wish to change the font in the text of an article.

Please note, fonts that have the same cap height, do not always match in x-height, making them hard to mix inline without scaling. Based on Arial as the base font, Comic Sans MS, Georgia, Trebuchet MS and Verdana are safe to use inline. Times New Roman is not safe to use inline without scaling. Although Courier New has a lower height, it remains legible, and is the de facto monospace font. (Arial Black and Impact are not listed, as these are header fonts.)

• Here are examples of code to use, for various fonts.
• Safe to use inline (see above for details):
  • <span style="font-family: Arial;">Arial</span>; the base font,
  • <span style="font-family: 'Comic Sans MS';">Comic Sans MS</span>,
  • <span style="font-family: Georgia;">Georgia</span>,
  • <span style="font-family: 'Trebuchet MS';">Trebuchet MS</span>
  • <span style="font-family: Verdana;">Verdana</span>
• Not safe to use inline (see above for details):
  • <span style="font-family: 'Times New Roman';">Times New Roman</span>
  • <span style="font-family: 'Courier New';">Courier New</span>
    
    
• below is how the font codes above would look when actually used.
• Safe to use inline (see above for details):
  • Arial, the base font
  • Comic Sans MS
  • Georgia
  • Trebuchet MS
  • Verdana
• Not safe to use inline (see above for details):
  • Times New Roman
  • Courier New

On Macs, Helvetica, Times, and Courier are three core fonts used by Adobe's PostScript and PDF technologies. All three fonts have been included on every Mac going back to the 1980s, and they are the default "sans-serif", "serif", and "monospace" fonts in almost all web browsers.

On early versions of Windows, these names referred to pixelated versions of the core PostScript fonts. As technology improved, rather than adopting the Mac fonts, Microsoft substituted Helvetica with Arial, Times with Times New Roman, and Courier with Courier New. All six of the aforementioned fonts have been included on Macs since the 2000s.

When displaying code, a monospaced font helps keep code readable and maintain formatting consistent, but there are caveats. Below are some common monospaced fonts.

Not all monospaced fonts come with a bold weight variant, causing bold text to misalign with the rest of the text. Andalé Mono and Lucida Console suffer badly from this. That leaves Courier, Courier New, Menlo and Consolas as the only safe choices when bold and italic highlighting is used. Courier New is the safest choice as it is the only monospaced font that is guaranteed to look the same on both Windows and Mac. However, Courier and Courier New are serif fonts, and sans-serif monospaced fonts are typically used for coding. That leaves Menlo and Consolas as the only sans-serif coding fonts. However, since Menlo and Consolas aren't included in both Windows and macOS at the same time, consider using Menlo and Consolas in a font stack.

Starting in 2020, Firefox for Mac has started using Menlo (instead of Courier) as the default "monospace" font.

When describing emojis, it helps to use a font that actually includes the glyph for that emoji. Most recent operating system versions include an emoji font, below are some common ones.

Mozilla Firefox and Thunderbird also package Twemoji Mozilla, derived from Twemoji, and use it as a fallback if a system-wide emoji font isn't available.^[6][7]

• Here are example emojis without specifying an emoji font:
  • 😀♥✏⚠⤴⤵
• Here are example emojis with an emoji font stack:
  • 😀♥✏⚠⤴⤵

• Wikipedia:Rendering math