While a good measure does improve the reading experience, it’s only one rule for good typography. Another rule is to maintain a comfortable font size. Designing on a desktop or laptop browser means that we are spending most of our time at an arm’s length from the text, and we don’t spend much time seeing how the text renders on small devices. A good font size (not too small) is readable. A good font size (not too big) promotes horizontal eye motion. A good font size with the proper line height will help your readers find what they’re looking for.
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Web fonts aren’t just font files that need to be secure and easy to implement. They affect the overall look of a website. And thanks for the thousands of fonts, but quantity is not as important as quality. A hundred knives that can’t cut a tomato won’t meet my needs when I’m making my kid a BLT. Make our lives a little easier and help us find the Web fonts we want to use!
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If people are on your website, they’re probably either skimming quickly, looking for something, or they’ve found what they’re looking for and want to read it as easily as possible. Either way, keeping text readable will help them achieve their goal.
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If you’re using Google Web Fonts on your websites, then there’s a very good chance that 1 in 5 visitors are seeing faux bold and italic versions of your fonts — even if you correctly selected and used all of the weights and styles. That’s because the implementation method recommended by Google Web Fonts doesn’t work with Internet Explorer 7 or 8.
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The practice of using a large letter to mark the start of a text has been around for almost two thousand years. Illustrated caps increased usability by marking important passages and guiding readers through the text. Unlike their historic counterparts, drop caps on the Web don’t add value in terms of usability or readability—and they are hard for Web developers to control, often rendering differently across browsers.
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