System fonts are the fonts already installed on your computer. Some are better than others. In printed documents they present three problems.

1. Many system fonts aren’t good. The Windows and Mac OS libraries have improved, but they’re still minefields of awful fonts. I won’t name names, but my least favorite rhymes with Barial.

2. In one square inch, an LCD screen that displays 100 dots per inch has less than 3% of the resolution of a laser printer with 600 dots per inch, so rendering a font accurately is much more difficult. See screen-reading considerations.

   Many system fonts have been optimized for the screen, not print. This comes at the cost of design details, which have been sanded off because they don’t reproduce well on screen (e.g., Georgia, Verdana, Cambria, and Calibri). Screen-optimized fonts look clunky on the printed page.

   

   Compare the two fonts above. In basic appearance, they’re similar. But Georgia was optimized for the screen; Miller was optimized for print. See the difference?

3. All system fonts are overexposed. Because these fonts are included with billions of computers, they’re used all the time. Not every typography project demands novelty. But if yours does, look elsewhere. For instance, please don’t adopt the slogan “A Design Firm Unlike Any Other” and then set it in Helvetica.

WARNINGThis chart is offered only as a harm-reduction device. In the long term, a diet of system fonts can be harmful to your health. My official advice remains the same: professional writers should use professional fonts. In the pages following, I suggest professional alternatives to the most common system fonts.

If you’re limited to system fonts, consult this chart and choose wisely. For print, the A list is best. For screen display, like presentations and websites, the A and B lists are fine. They’re also suitable for sharing draft documents. Avoid the C list if you can. F list, kapu.

Fonts plausible for body text are marked with ★. Others are usable for special purposes (for instance, letterhead).

This chart includes all the common Windows and Mac system fonts, plus the Microsoft Office fonts. System configurations differ, so not every font will be on your computer.

These rankings represent a blend of practical and aesthetic considerations, not absolute merit. Some fonts on the F list aren’t bad. They’re just inapt for professional writing. Similarly, some fonts on the A list are not my favorites, but they’re reasonably useful.

The A list: Generally tolerable Athelas ★ Avenir ★ Bell MT ★ Book Antiqua ★ Californian FB ★ Calisto MT ★ Century Schoolbook ★ Charter ★ Franklin Gothic ★ Garamond ★ Gill Sans ★ Gill Sans MT ★ Goudy Old Style ★ Helvetica ★ Helvetica Neue ★ Hoefler Text ★ Iowan Old Style ★ Optima ★ Palatino ★ Seravek ★ Sitka ★

The B list: OK in limited doses Agency FB Big Caslon Bodoni MT ITC Bodoni 72 Calibri ★ Candara Centaur Constantia Corbel Futura ★ Geneva Gloucester MT Extra Cond. High Tower Text ★ Modern No. 20 Perpetua ★ Rockwell Segoe UI ★ Tw Cen MT ★

Helping design Berlin Sans was my first professional gig as a type designer, way back in 1991.

The C list: Questionable Andale Mono Baskerville ★ Berlin Sans FB Bernard MT Condensed Cambria ★ Castellar Century Gothic Cochin Consolas Cooper Black Courier Courier New Didot Elephant Engravers MT Eras ITC Felix Titling Georgia Haettenschweiler Impact Lucida (all styles) Maiandra GD Menlo Niagara Solid & Engraved Onyx Plantagenet Cherokee Skia Times New Roman ★

The F list: Fatal to your credibility Algerian American Typewriter Apple Casual Apple Chancery Arial (all styles) Bauhaus 93 Blackadder ITC Bradley Hand ITC Britannic Bold Broadway Brush Script MT Bookman Old Style Century Chalkboard Chalkduster Chiller Colonna MT Comic Sans MS Copperplate Curlz MT Edwardian Script ITC Footlight MT Light Forte Freestyle Script French Script MT Gabriola Gigi Goudy Stout Harlow Solid Italic Harrington Herculanum Imprint MT Shadow Informal Roman Jokerman Juice ITC Kristen ITC Kunstler Script Luminari Magneto Marker Felt Matura MT Script Capitals Mistral Monaco Monotype Corsiva Noteworthy OCR A Extended Old English Text MT Palace Script MT Papyrus Parchment Playbill Phosphate Poor Richard Pristina Rage Italic Ravie Savoye Script MT Bold Segoe Print Segoe Script SignPainter Snap ITC Snell Round Stencil Showcard Gothic Tahoma Tempus Sans ITC Trattatello Trebuchet MS Verdana Viner Hand ITC Vivaldi Vladimir Script Wide Latin Zapfino … and all others

• Adobe uses its own text-rendering technology in Acrobat so that PDF documents display the same way on screen regardless of the underlying operating system.

• “My PDF will probably be read on screen. Shouldn’t I use a screen-optimized system font?” No. In Windows, certain system fonts (e.g., Georgia, Calibri) have been optimized by Microsoft for user-interface purposes. This is accomplished with hinting, which is extra software code stored in the font itself. Windows relies on this hinting when it draws text on screen (e.g., in Microsoft Word, or in a web browser).

  But Adobe Acrobat—what many people use to read PDFs—draws text on screen using its own technology that eliminates the screen-legibility advantage of these system fonts. Moreover, any PDF could also end up being printed. Therefore, as a rule, you’re better off using print-optimized fonts for PDFs, regardless of how you expect the PDF to be read.

• “But if I use a print-optimized professional font in my PDF instead of a system font, my readers probably won’t have the same font installed.” Right. But it doesn’t matter. When you generate a PDF, your fonts are embedded in the PDF to preserve the formatting.

• This is not true, however, on the web. Web browsers use the text rendering of the operating system. Thus, in Windows browsers, screen-optimized system fonts have traditionally held an advantage, because they look good and they’re already installed. (Indeed, the Microsoft fonts Georgia and Verdana were specifically created for web use.) But this advantage is rapidly fading with the advent of screen-optimized webfonts and the general shift toward higher-resolution screens. Still, for now, using professional fonts on a website requires a little more legwork than it does in PDF.

• Yes, I dislike Arial more than Comic Sans. Though it’s the undisputed king of the goofy fonts, Comic Sans is at least honest about what it is. But Arial is merely a bland, zero-calorie Helvetica substitute.

  

  For many, the two are indistinguishable. But for typographers, Arial contains none of the consistency and balance that makes Helvetica successful. For instance, the ends of the lowercase a, c, e, g, s, and t in Helvetica are exactly horizontal. In Arial, those ends are sloped arbitrarily. Reading Arial is like trying to have dinner on a tippy restaurant table.

  Still, the main issue is overuse. After 25 years as a system font, Arial has achieved a ubiquity that rivals Times New Roman. And like Times New Roman, Arial is permanently associated with the work of people who will never care about typography.

  You’re not one of those people. So use Avenir. Use Franklin Gothic. Use Gill Sans. Use one of the fonts listed in Helvetica and Arial alternatives. Or use something completely different. But don’t use Arial. It’s the sans serif of last resort.