CSS Modern Font Stacks

font-stacks.css

/* Modern Font Stacks */

/* System */
font-family: system, -apple-system, ".SFNSText-Regular", "San Francisco", "Roboto", "Segoe UI", "Helvetica Neue", "Lucida Grande", sans-serif;

/* System (Bootstrap 5.2.0) */
font-family: system-ui, -apple-system, "Segoe UI", Roboto, "Helvetica Neue", "Noto Sans", "Liberation Sans", Arial, sans-serif, "Apple Color Emoji", "Segoe UI Emoji", "Segoe UI Symbol", "Noto Color Emoji";

/* Times New Roman-based serif */
font-family: Cambria, "Hoefler Text", Utopia, "Liberation Serif", "Nimbus Roman No9 L Regular", Times, "Times New Roman", serif;

/* A modern Georgia-based serif */
font-family: Constantia, "Lucida Bright", Lucidabright, "Lucida Serif", Lucida, "DejaVu Serif", "Bitstream Vera Serif", "Liberation Serif", Georgia, serif;

/*A more traditional Garamond-based serif */
font-family: "Palatino Linotype", Palatino, Palladio, "URW Palladio L", "Book Antiqua", Baskerville, "Bookman Old Style", "Bitstream Charter", "Nimbus Roman No9 L", Garamond, "Apple Garamond", "ITC Garamond Narrow", "New Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook", "Century Schoolbook L", Georgia, serif;

/*The Helvetica/Arial-based sans serif */
font-family: Frutiger, "Frutiger Linotype", Univers, Calibri, "Gill Sans", "Gill Sans MT", "Myriad Pro", Myriad, "DejaVu Sans Condensed", "Liberation Sans", "Nimbus Sans L", Tahoma, Geneva, "Helvetica Neue", Helvetica, Arial, sans-serif;

/*The Verdana-based sans serif */
font-family: Corbel, "Lucida Grande", "Lucida Sans Unicode", "Lucida Sans", "DejaVu Sans", "Bitstream Vera Sans", "Liberation Sans", Verdana, "Verdana Ref", sans-serif;

/*The Trebuchet-based sans serif */
font-family: "Segoe UI", Candara, "DejaVu Sans", "Bitstream Vera Sans", "Trebuchet MS", Verdana, "Verdana Ref", sans-serif;

/*The heavier "Impact" sans serif */
font-family: Impact, Haettenschweiler, "Franklin Gothic Bold", Charcoal, "Helvetica Inserat", "Bitstream Vera Sans Bold", "Arial Black", sans-serif;

/*The monospace */
font-family: Consolas, "Andale Mono WT", "Andale Mono", "Lucida Console", "Lucida Sans Typewriter", "DejaVu Sans Mono", "Bitstream Vera Sans Mono", "Liberation Mono", "Nimbus Mono L", Monaco, "Courier New", Courier, monospace;

/* Monospace (Bootstrap 5.2.0) */
font-family: SFMono-Regular, Menlo, Monaco, Consolas, "Liberation Mono", "Courier New", monospace;

Thanks for this - super useful.

There's a stray comma in the wrong place on the Georgia based stack which breaks it "DejaVu Serif," should be "DejaVu Serif",

Cheers,

J.

Fixed it – Thanks for the tip.

Always helpful. Thanks for this.

Thank you.

Thanks Don, a great reference. I noticed another small issue: "Bitstream Vera Sans" is repeated in the Trebuchet-based sans serif rule. Not sure if you intended it to come before or after "DejaVu Sans"

Fixed it – Thanks for catching that.

I think I grabbed these stacks from css-tricks.com, and I'm pretty sure they grabbed them from this 2009 article, where you can see the same Bitstream Vera Sans error in the Trebuchet stack. And it looks like one or both of them copied from an even earlier article, but somehow doubled BVS in their mods. I updated based on the original, correct source, which is definitely worth reading to understand the strategy behind them.

In any case, it's impressive that these stacks still (mostly) hold up after all these years.