You can’t talk about text fonts without talking about serif fonts, and you can’t talk about serif fonts without mentioning the master of serifs, Dieter Hofrichter. Sina Nova is a prototypical example of his fonts, with a distinct style and a multitude of weights and OpenType features. Perfect for print or online text when you want to show something a little more classic.

One term you’ll hear thrown around when it comes to readable fonts is “x-height.” Simply put, x-height is how tall the lowercase characters are in relation to the uppercase. A high x-height usually makes a font more legible at smaller sizes, whereas a lower x-height adds more interest and flare for display type. Transat Text is a higher x-height version of its older sibling, Transat, and thus works great for small text sizes.

Back when fonts were sets of metal letters put in a typepress, they made adjustments at various sizes. Small text would be adjusted to be more legible for example. Fast forward to today when type designers make digital fonts that scale infinitely small or large. In this situation, you have to make decisions based on what sizes you’ll optimize for. Anglecia Pro by Mint Type balances this out by providing multiple versions of the font, emulating this practice. Anglecia Pro Text is balanced for, you guessed it, text at small sizes. With lower contrast and higher x-height, it looks as great on the web as it does in print.

What kind of list would this be without the quintessential web font for text? Proxima Nova is seen all across the web. One of the main reasons is that if you shrink it down - even with lower resolution monitors - you still get a font that is legible and clean. Thanks to its unique “a” you still get some of the fonts character even at small sizes, something lost in many other fonts.

Lastly, Queulat Condensed is a perfect example of two other text related points there are to make. First, slab serif fonts can also be great text fonts! Normally you see them in display, but if their slabs aren’t as pronounced, they can function the same was as other serifs, and make reading large blocks of text easier. Finally, sometimes you need to just fit more and more text in small spots, so try a condensed font, which allows you to fit more text in while keeping the overall font size a bit bigger. As for Queulat Condensed? Go with the alt versions for small text, the double story “a” makes it more legible at small sizes, especially with the light font weight.