When first considered, choosing a font to build your web pages in would seem like a simple choice. Just pick what you want and start creating, right? But the difficulty of trying to accomodate different browsers, computers, and reading preferences makes the choice a little more difficult. We also want to present an overall style which we feel is representative of our efforts.

Accomplishing all this means that you must choose a set of complimentary fonts that are readily accessable and which you believe the majority of researchers will have at their disposal. We have four font choices in use on the web site to meet these objectives.

First, we present our page site name, page headings, and other page elements in a script known as Edwardian Script. Any Time you see this font in use on the site you are actually viewing a graphic of the font created through Adobe Photoshop. This method of rendering these web page elements guarantees us that we will be able to preserve the look and feel of the site even if the viewer does not have this font on his or her computer.

There are three examples of the use of these graphics in the header of this page. For example, the word is actually a graphic representation of the word.

Second, we chose to use the Tahoma font style for the remainder of the web site because it was specifically developed for screen readability, and anyone who has installed a Microsoft program in the past five years has this font on their computer, even if they are unaware of it. You are probably reading this page in the Tahoma font style, but just in case you are not, here is what it would look like.

Third, when the Tahoma font style is not present, the web pages will display content in the Ariel font style. This font has been present on most computers for decades and should always be present. It looks very much like the Tahoma style and is also very easy to read.

Last, if neither the Tahoma nor the Ariel font styles are present the pages will default to the first Sans Serif font it finds on your computer. These fonts are generally easily read and will have many of the same characteristics as the other two.