Fonts are only one in­gre­di­ent of ty­pog­ra­phy. And mess­ing around with the font menu on your com­puter isn’t a sub­sti­tute for know­ing the fun­da­men­tals of type com­po­si­tion and text for­mat­ting. That’s why this chap­ter ap­pears in the mid­dle of the book, not the beginning.

But we’ve cov­ered that, right? So here’s the se­cret sauce: If you want the fastest, eas­i­est and most ob­vi­ous up­grade to your ty­pog­ra­phy, noth­ing beats a pro­fes­sional font.

As a de­signer of pro­fes­sional fonts—in­clud­ing the ones used in this book—am I bi­ased? Of course. But no one has se­ri­ously dis­puted that it’s true.

If you con­sider the al­ter­na­tives in this chap­ter and still pre­fer Times New Ro­man or other sys­tem fonts, I won’t think less of you. I’ll even con­cede that there are sit­u­a­tions, like emails and draft doc­u­ments, where sys­tem fonts are your best option.

But in gen­eral, for writ­ers who care about ty­pog­ra­phy, pro­fes­sional fonts are es­sen­tial tools.