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CSS font-family Property

Topic: CSS3 Properties ReferencePrev|Next

Description

The font-family CSS property sets the font face to be used for element's text content. The font-family property should hold several font names as a "fallback" system. Start with the font that you want first, then any fonts that might fill in for the first if it is unavailable.

You should end the list with a Generic font family, which are five: serif, sans-serif, monospace, cursive and fantasy. The following table summarizes the usages context and the version history of this property.

Default value: Depends on the browser
Applies to: All elements
Inherited: Yes
Animatable: No. See animatable properties.
Version: CSS 1, 2, 3

Syntax

The syntax of the property is given with:

font-family: 
[ family-name | generic-family ] [, family-name | generic-family ]one or more pairs | initial | inherit

The example below shows the font-family property in action.

body {
    font-family: Arial, Helvetica, sans-serif;
}
h1 {
    font-family: "Times New Roman", Times, serif;
}

Note: If the name of a font family is more than one word, it must be in quotation marks, like font-family: "Times New Roman", Serif; etc.

For more commonly used font combinations, please check out CSS web safe fonts.


Property Values

The following table describes the values of this property.

Value Description
family-name The name of a font family. For example, "Times" and "Helvetica" are font families. Font family names containing whitespace should be quoted.
generic-family

Generic font families can be used as a general fallback mechanism when the desired font choices are not available. As generic family names are keywords, they must not be quoted.

A generic font family should be the last alternative in the list of font family names. The following generic families are defined:

  • serif (e.g. Times)
  • sans-serif (e.g. Arial)
  • cursive (e.g. Zapf-Chancery)
  • fantasy (e.g. Western)
  • monospace (e.g. Courier)

Learn more about font combinations.

initial Sets this property to its default value.
inherit If specified, the associated element takes the computed value of its parent element font-family property.

Browser Compatibility

The font-family property is supported in all major modern browsers.

Browsers Icon

Basic Support—

  • Firefox 1+
  • Google Chrome 1+
  • Internet Explorer 3+
  • Apple Safari 1+
  • Opera 3.5+

Further Reading

See tutorial on: CSS Fonts, CSS Text.

Related properties and at-rules: font, font-style, font-variant, font-weight, font-size,
line-height, @font-face.

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