XML in a Nutshell, 3rd Edition

Font Properties

Fonts are one of the most basic things designers want to set with CSS. Is the text italic? Is it bold? What typeface and size are used? CSS provides properties to set all these basic characteristics of text. In particular, you can set these properties:

font-family

This is a list of font names, separated by commas, in order of preference. The last name in the list should always be one of the generic names: serif, sans-serif, monospace, cursive, or fantasy. Multiword names like “Times New Roman” should be enclosed in quotes.

font-style

The value italic indicates that an italic version of the font should be used if one is available. The value oblique suggests that the text should be algorithmically slanted, as opposed to using a specially designed italic font. The default is normal (no italicizing or slanting). An element can also be set to inherit the font-style of the parent element.

font-size

This is the size of the font. This should be specified as one of the values xx-small, x-small, small, medium, large, x-large, or xx-large. Alternately, it can be given as a percentage of the font-size of the parent element. It can also be specified as a length like 0.2cm or 12pt, but this should only be done for print media.

font-variant

If this property is set to small-caps, then lowercase text is rendered in smaller capitals like this instead of normal lowercase letters.

font-weight

This property determines how bold or light the text is. It’s generally specified as one of the keywords ...