What is the average book font

Some genres go hand-in-hand with a particular font size. It seems like an unspoken rule that more intellectual fiction requires a smaller font size, and therefore more concentration or eye-strain, whichever way you see it to read it. Nonetheless, a very slightly smaller font size communicates intelligence and seriousness, and will suit modern literary fiction and classic novels equally well.

Larger font sizes are more digestible, and will be more suited to typesetting 50 Shades of Grey than a Franz Kafka reprint.

So make sure to consider your readership, and the sort of font sizes they will be expecting to encounter. Of course, everybody has different preferences for book font size, and quality of eyesight can be a factor in shaping these preferences. But assuming most people will fall in the middle of the spectrum neither eagle-eyed nor poor-sighted these font size ranges for headings and body text should cut the mustard each and every time…. Make sure to think about your Leading too—as a general rule, try to make it a little more generous than the Auto leading value in InDesign.

Receive a copy of 10 Essential InDesign Skills, plus get monthly updates on new templates, fresh design inspiration and unmissable offers for creatives! Readability is dependent on legibility, which is how easily one letter can be distinguished from another.

Serif fonts help with readability, and are therefore preferable in the body of a book. Serifs help pull the text together, making it easier for the eye to move and recognize one letter to another, helping the eye to speed through long passages of text. Reading a line of text printed in sans serif is more tiring. For this reason, sans-serif fonts should be reserved for headings or other limited uses. Yet, how many books have you seen with a sans-serif font in the main body because the author preferred it that way?

In addition to being readable, the author wants the text to look inviting and welcoming. For both print and digital books, the typeface is part of the message.

Book designers will study a manuscript to get a feel for the tone of the writing before choosing a text font. The right text font for a book can complement the author's message. Talk about cold! As you will see, the developers of typefaces produced after the invention of the printing press knew something about readability.

The fonts we use today tend to have been created in the 14thth centuries, or at least based on that classical style. Caslon refers to a family of fonts first designed in by William Caslon I, an English type engraver. It was used extensively by the British Empire and throughout the American colonies, and was in fact used to set the Declaration of Independence! Caslon continues to be one of the most popular fonts today, with multiple offshoots, versions and interpretations.

When used in body text, this font conveys an inviting and readable feeling. It gives a feeling of a human touch, with warmth and familiarity.

Caslon is a good choice not just for historical novels, but also anytime a solid and dependable feeling is desired. Garamond — Developed in the 16th Century by Parisian engraver Claude Garamond, it is a popular font for books.

Jenson —A more recent addition to the world of fonts, Jenson was developed specially for Adobe Systems, but is based on a text face cut by Nicolas Jenson in Venice around Microsoft Word uses exactly 72 points to the inch.

This is known as a "Postscript point" since it was the first computer design system to use the per-inch convention. Postscript points aren't technically typesetting points; i.

Slightly means the round-off error is insignificant for all but the largest fonts. They support other units, like Didot point used in European typography. A pica is twelve points, or about one-sixth of an inch, or about four millimeters.

Use a different font for chapter titles. Helvetica is a good choice. It's the most popular sans-serif font. It's the most distinctive font from Times Roman that is still relatively easy to read.

It also looks good in bold. The Chicago Manual of Style Don't use small caps in a heading unless you buy a small caps font. The Small Caps feature that word processors offer you scaling down capitals isn't really small caps.

More about this later. If you use a small caps font, make sure the heading font isn't smaller than the text font. That would confuse readers. Instead, consider using the chapter title font e. Subheads should never be the last item on a page. In Microsoft Word, use Format Line and Page Breaks