Things you need to know about fonts

By | May 8, 2011

Linda has some questions about fonts
Can you please tell me about the different fonts that come installed with Windows. It seems like every version of Windows has its own fonts. And why when I send an email to my friend using some fonts (Franklin Gothic or Mistral), they don’t see the email with the same font as I used.  The same thing happens when I use some other fonts which I have downloaded. I’d really appreciate it if you could answer my questions. Thanks!

Our answer
Hi Linda. Your questions are some of the most frequently asked questions we receive.

First, there are font families, like Franklin Gothic, Arial, Tahoma, etc. Within each font family there may be several “children”. For example: Franklin Gothic is the font family, bold, italic, normal, etc. are the “children”. Most always if someone has the Franklin Gothic font family installed, they will also have the children in that family installed. If for some reason they don’t, and you specify Franklin Gothic italic, and they don’t have the italic child installed, they will see whatever Franklin Gothic font they have installed. So, the answer to the question is: Yes, they do have to have the font family installed and the exact font you specify or they won’t see exactly what you sent. The same holds true for the Mistral Font Family. If both computers have that font family installed, then your recipient will see the email exactly the way you sent it. If you use a child of a font family that the recipient does not have installed, they’ll see the same font family but not exactly in the way you sent it.

If you download and use a font that the recipient of your email does not have installed, they will see the email text in the default text (usually Arial or Calibri on Windows 7).

As far as Windows XP, Windows Vista and Windows 7 system fonts, that’s quite a challenge.  Rather than writing a long rambling article about the different system fonts in different versions of Windows, we’ll provide you pages that list system fonts for each of the versions of Windows that you mention:

Windows 7 System Fonts

Windows Vista System Fonts

Windows XP System Fonts

7 thoughts on “Things you need to know about fonts

  1. Darlene Anderson

    I don’t know what language this is, but it isn’t English and they are NOT on my computer. LOL

    I’ll try again later!
    Darlene

    Reply
  2. Darlene Anderson

    I erred in stating the website–I clicked on the SYSTEM FONTS FOR WINDOWS 7–and what I got was not in English. I wonder if anyone else had this occur.

    Reply
  3. Darlene Anderson

    I just clicked on the links for Vista and XP and in both cases, the pages were in English and so were the fonts.
    Very interesting!

    Reply
    1. infoave Post author

      All pages are in English. The font names for Windows 7 are in English.

      Reply
  4. Christine

    The link for system fonts for Windows 7 are not showing in English for me either.

    Reply
  5. Ruebene

    For Windows 7 the font names are in English, but most of the font samples are not.

    Reply

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