freeCodeCamp/guide/english/css/fonts/index.md

---
title: Fonts
---
## Fonts
The CSS font properties define the font family, weight, size, variant, line height and style of a text.

### Font family
The font family of a text is set by using the `font-family` property.

It works with a *fallback* system, meaning if your browser does not support the first font, it tries with the next one and so on. If the name of the font is more than one word it must be surrounded by quotes. Either single quotes `(')` or double quotes `(")` can be used.

```css
p {
  font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif;   
}
```
In the above example, "Times New Roman" is the *family-name* of the font, while "serif" is the *generic-name*. Generic names are used as a fallback mechanism for preserving style if the family-name is unavailable. A generic name should always be the last item in the list of font family names.

Generic family names are:
* serif
* sans-serif
* monospace
* cursive
* fantasy
* system-ui

### Importing a font
In addition to specifying common fonts that are found on most operating systems, custom web fonts can be used as well. To import such a font, copy the font URL from the library and reference it in the HTML. [fonts.google.com](https://fonts.google.com/) is a popular place to find fonts to import, but there are many other resources.
```html
<link href="https://fonts.googleapis.com/css?family=Lobster" rel="stylesheet" type="text/css">
```
Then you can use the font that you have imported (in this example, `Lobster`) in your code as normal.

### Font style
The `font-style` property can be used to specify italic text.

This property has 3 values:

* normal - Text shown normally
* italic - Text shown in *italic*
* oblique - Text shown leaning

`italic` and `oblique` both look like the normal font but slanted. The main difference is that `italic` is a whole other version of the font, slanted at a particular angle and sometimes styled slightly differently. `oblique` is the original font but with the ability to be slanted at and angle to different degrees.

```css
.normal {
  font-style: normal;
}

.italic {
  font-style: italic;
}

.oblique {
  font-style: oblique;
}
```

### Font size
The `font-size` property sets the size of the text.

There are different types of font size values:

* `px` (pixels) - The default size of text being `16px`
* `em` - based on the current or inherited font size of an element
* `rem` - like `em`, but based on the base font-size of the document
* `small`, `medium`, `large` - known as absolute size values
* `%` - percentages

```css
.with-pixels {
  font-size: 14px;
}

.with-ems {
  font-size: 0.875em;
}

.with-absolute {
  font-size: large;
}

.with-percentage {
  font-size: 80%;
}
```

For more on these units, visit the MDN reference on [CSS Values and Units](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Learn/CSS/Introduction_to_CSS/Values_and_units)

### Font weight
The `font-weight`property specifies the weight (or boldness) of the font. Accepts keywords (`bold`, `normal`, `bolder`, `lighter`) or numeric keywords (`100`, `200`, `300`, `400` etc.) `400` is the same as `normal`.

```css
p {
  font-weight: bold;
}
```

### Font responsiveness
The text size can be set with a `vw` (viewport width) unit.
This will allow the text to adjust to the size of the browser window.

```html
<h1 style="font-size: 10vw">Hello World</h1>
```

Viewport is the browser window size. 1vw = 1% of viewport width. If the viewport is 50cm wide, 1vw is 0.5cm.

### Font variant
The `font-variant` property specifies if text should be displayed using small capitals. When the value `small-caps` is used, all lowercase letters in the text are converted to uppercase letters while appearing in a smaller font-size than the original uppercase letters.

```css
p.small {
  font-variant: small-caps;
}
```

### Font shorthand property
Font properties can be specified with the shorthand property `font`. 
It takes as values (in this order):
- font-style (optional)
- font-variant (optional)
- font-weight (optional)
- font-size (mandatory)
- line-height (optional)
- font-family (mandatory)

```css
p {
  font: italic small-caps 800 20px/1.5 Arial;
}
```

#### More Information:
- [MND - CSS Font](https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/docs/Web/CSS/font)
- [W3 Schools - CSS Font](https://www.w3schools.com/css/css_font.asp)
- [CSSFontStack](https://www.cssfontstack.com/)
- [Google Fonts](https://fonts.google.com/)
- [Google Docs: How to get started](https://developers.google.com/fonts/docs/getting_started)