Chapter 3. Font Properties

Typography is one of your most powerful tools for presenting organized, clean-looking documents. It's also the best tool for presenting chaotic, grungy-looking documents.

The fonts you use go a long way toward getting your message across in just the way you wantwhether that message is classical, grunge, or anything in between. Boldface, italic, and other typographic effects help designers guide a visitor's eye around the page.

CSS gives you the ability to control the appearance of fonts, also known as letterforms, in your Web pages. But with CSS, you can set more than just the font family, boldface and italic attributes, and the limited font sizes available with HTML tags. CSS allows you to go a step further and set generic font families, various levels of boldness, different types of italic, and any font size, using a variety of measurements, including point, pixel, and pica.