# Font for SDMB **URL:** \ **Category:** About This Message Board\ **Created:** [April 29, 2007, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/font-for-sdmb/402036 "2007-04-29T07:06:01Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 4\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2007, 7:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/font-for-sdmb/402036/1 "2007-04-29T07:06:01Z")
Is there a recommended font for reading the SDMB? If so, is it available for download (preferably free – money is a bit tight right now)? The reason I ask is that I occasionally see people posting characters that are not in my font file. These are mostly Chinese/Japanese/Korean/etc but also sometimes IPA symbols. Admittedly, I couldn’t read any of the Chinese/etc characters anyway, but it’d be nice to have something there besides an empty box. ---
**Author:** ![gotpasswords](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/c57346/32.png) [@gotpasswords](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/gotpasswords)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2007, 7:34am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/font-for-sdmb/402036/2 "2007-04-29T07:34:51Z")
It’ll depend on the language capabilities your PC’s been configured for. My Windows PC at work shows lots of boxes, my Windows PC at home shows most of the characters, but our Macs appear to be more fluent out of the box, and show everything. ---
**Author:** ![Duckster](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/duckster/32/1244_2.png) [@Duckster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Duckster)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2007, 8:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/font-for-sdmb/402036/3 "2007-04-29T08:21:53Z")
A quick view finds the following fonts used on the SDMB: [ul] [li]Trebuchet MS, Arial, verdana, geneva, lucida, lucida grande, arial, helvetica, tahoma[/li][/ul] All are sans serif fonts. The CSS font coding makes them deliberately redundant. The HTML code is configured for English. There is no need to download additional fonts. Short of knowing exactly which font set being used, as well as the language, and a strong desire, it’s not worth the effort. ---
**Author:** ![mnemosyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c4cdca/32.png) [@mnemosyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/mnemosyne)\ **Post date:** [April 29, 2007, 4:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/font-for-sdmb/402036/4 "2007-04-29T16:57:20Z")
I got annoyed at looking at the boxes when reading [hanzismatter](http://blogs.chinesepod.com/2006/01/26/hanzismatter/) so I downloaded the japanese character set by following the instructions [here](http://www.wikihow.com/Get-Japanese-Characters-(Kanji,-Hiragana,-Katakana)-on-Firefox) It worked for me. I think there are several language packs you can get directly from Microsoft.