Basic Typography

Most of web design is the designing of text – picking the fonts to use and shaping them with style sheets. The primary goal in designing text is to make it transparent, so it is there to support the information it presents, without intruding on it.

How paragraphs are presented is a central part of the design of useful and unobtrusive text. Following these few directions will make them easier to read.

For paragraphs (<p> tag) use:
Line height between 1.3 and 1.6em.
Font-size between 16px and 18px, depending on x-height of the font.
Text width between 30 and 35em.
A small reduction in word spacing can make the text flow more evenly: word-spacing:-0.05em
And don’t justify the text, it makes uneven spaces between words.
In all the text, including paragraphs, use:
Smart quotes ‘ ’ “ ” – not generic quotes ' "
A smart apostrophe ʼ – not a generic one '
An – (en dash) with a space on either side, instead of—(em dash) with no spaces.
Use Unicode for special characters – é not é for é, and  or “ not ” for “.

Any Unicode character can be inserted into a web page using either decimal or hexadecimal format in two different ways: decimal can be in the short form (A A) or the long form (A A), as can the hexadecimal – short form (&#X41; A) or long form (&#X041; A)

If anyone says san-serif is better than serif, or the reverse, ask which fonts they are talking about, since Georgia 123 ≠ Times New Roman 123 and Verdana 123 ≠ Arial 123.

Also find out which font-size, line-height and line-length will be used – they often matter more for readability than the font chosen.