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    Choosing Fonts

    Your choice of font also communicates something important about the overall tone and feel of your business. Some fonts (such as Tahoma and Trebuchet) are more relaxed than others. Times New Roman is all business. Courier New is a geeky programming (or typewriting) font. The look of the letters on your page will send a signal about your company’s personality—so choose carefully. And also consider the readability of the text—a whole page full of Courier New, for example, is likely to annoy your visitors (and they will click away to an easier-to-read page). When you have lots of text on a page, choose an easy-to-read font such as Arial or Verdana. These fonts are easy to read, even in small sizes (so you can fit more text on the page for the visitor to view).

    When you’re ready to choose a font for your page, follow these steps:

    1.
    Click the Font arrow in the Design Options group.

    2.
    Click the font family you want to use for your site (see Figure 4-7).

    Figure 4-7. Choose a font that is easy to read so that your site visitors will want to hang around awhile.

    [View full size image]


    Font Considerations

    Even though you probably have a number of interesting fonts on your computer, only a few will be effective on your Web site. Why is that? In order for text to be displayed properly on the screen, any font you use on your Web page must also reside on the visitor’s computer. If the visitor doesn’t have a particular font, the screen display will default to another font, which may wreak havoc on the appearance of your text. Office Live Small Business offers seven basic font choices that are found on all Windows computers:

    • Arial

    • Courier New

    • Georgia

    • Tahoma

    • Times New Roman

    • Trebuchet MS

    • Verdana

    To find out more about fonts on the Web, you can visit www.ampsoft.net/webdesign-l/WindowsMacFonts.html, which offers a comparison of fonts available on Windows and Macintosh systems. Additionally, this site includes links to a number of different displays so that you can see how fonts appear in different browsers.