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Academic Appeal: The 11 Best Fonts for Academic Papers

• BY Bogdan Sandu
• 26 February 2024

Imagine settling into the rhythm of crafting your academic magnum opus—the words flow, ideas chime, yet it all hinges on how your prose meets the reader’s eye. You’re well aware that  the best fonts for academic papers  don’t just whisper to the intellect; they shout to the discerning critic in each evaluator. Here unfolds a narrative, not merely of  typography  but your academic saga’s silent ambassador.

In forging this guide, I’ve honed focus on one pivotal, often underestimated player in the academic arena:  font selection .

Navigate through this roadmap and emerge with a treasure trove of  legible typefaces  and format tips that ensure your paper stands hallmark to clarity and professionalism.

Absorb insights—from the revered  Times New Roman  to the understated elegance of  Arial —paired with indispensable  formatting nuggets  that transcend mere compliance with  university guidelines .

Dive deep, and by article’s end, unlock a dossier of sage advice, setting your documents a class apart in the scrutinous world of academic scrutiny. Here’s to  typography  serving not just as a vessel but as your ally in the scholarly discourse.

The Best Fonts for Academic Papers

Traditional Choices and Their Limitations

Times new roman : ubiquity and readability vs. overuse.

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What is the standard/recommended font to use in papers?

I looked around but did not find that anyone has asked this before, but what are the fonts that are standard/recommended while writing academic reports/papers?

• publications

• 19 No need to search for the perfect font. You just download the latex/word template that the journal / conference provides and you stick to it. –  Alexandros Commented Aug 7, 2014 at 10:12
• 3 In my case there isn't a template, that is the problem. –  Man Commented Aug 7, 2014 at 10:12
• 1 @O.R.Mapper yes very true, although I assume if the OP was looking for the standard font of every language in the world for academic publishing, we could close it as "too broad" –  user-2147482637 Commented Aug 7, 2014 at 15:35
• 10 People stick with the Computer Modern default in LaTeX so much that I once had someone tell me a paper where I intentionally chose a different serif font "looked unprofessional." –  Matt Reece Commented Aug 7, 2014 at 17:32
• 3 Please do not be "that person" who has the only paper in the journal or proceedings with a different font from the others. –  Max Commented Aug 8, 2014 at 8:42

4 Answers 4

If there's no template, then the choice is yours. However, you should make sure to pick a font that's easy to read. The usual standards in academia tend to be the Times, Helvetica/Arial, and Computer Modern families. This doesn't restrict you from using fonts like Book Antiqua, Myriad Pro, Goudy Old Style, or Garamond, but they're definitely not standard.

• 9 As to Helvetica/Arial: I think conventional wisdom is that serif fonts are preferred for large bodies of text, while sans serif should be reserved for short chunks like labels, headings, etc. I've certainly never seen a published paper set entirely in Helvetica. Then again, in my field everyone uses LaTeX, so unless you make a special effort, everything comes out in Computer Modern. –  Nate Eldredge Commented Aug 7, 2014 at 15:52
• @NateEldredge: You are correct that serif fonts are easier to handle in large doses, but Helvetica is the "default" font for most "official" documents and reports throughout most of Europe. And this extends to preprints when not done in LaTeX. –  aeismail Commented Aug 7, 2014 at 15:56
• 14 Eurghhhhhhhhhhh. –  Nate Eldredge Commented Aug 7, 2014 at 16:14
• @NateEldredge: This is not undisputed. @ aeismail: It’s rather Arial due that popular operating system (which does not make this any better; not because of serif vs. sans-serif, but because I do not want to see that font anymore to the extent that I tweaked my browser to auto-replace any resembling fonts). –  Wrzlprmft ♦ Commented Aug 8, 2014 at 8:35
• @Wrzlprmft: True, it is normally Arial that is specified; fortunately the differences are small enough that I use Helvetica and no one complains. (And actually I'm starting to see more references to Helvetica nowadays.) –  aeismail Commented Aug 8, 2014 at 12:00

For an academic paper each publisher journal have their standards. These do not affect or are affected by the manuscripts sent in to the journal. Some journals specify fonts, commonly standard Times Roman, for their manuscripts. If the journal specifies something, follow that specification. Otherwise use a font that is easy to read. There is no need to use anything but a standard font for whatever typesetting/word processor system.

There isn't any.

Focus on the content, write using your favorite writing software's default font, and let the journal's typesetting staff worry about the looks of the published version.

For the subset of journals that do not take care of typesetting, first make sure they are legitimate, then use the template they provide.

If no template is provided discuss with your supervisor and colleagues whether the journal is really worth your time, if it is then use your favorite software's default font.

As others have mentioned, the standard font varies, but is usually a serif font such as Times New Roman, although sans serif fonts such as Arial and Helvetica seem to be gaining traction as well. Their is major disagreement over which is easier to read--serif or sans serif fonts, with no clear consensus on the outcome. For example, see this paper .

Font size is typically twelve point. Follow the guidelines on this one, and make sure to keep your font consistent. Nothing is more likely to get you minus points than some obvious monkeying with the font size, whether to lengthen your manuscript (most commonly seen in undergrad papers) or to fit your text into the page limit (the rest of us!).

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5 fonts that add credibility and professionalism to scientific research

by ikumikayama | Apr 29, 2013 | Uncategorized | 14 comments

Choosing the right fonts can affect how your scientific research is received.

Note: This is part 2 of a 2-part blog series about choices in fonts. You can read part 1 here .

You are dressed in your best. You edited the manuscript with a fine-tooth comb…but are your figures and images wearing flip-flops?

Last time we talked about fonts that suck professionalism out of your scientific research . In this article, we’ll talk about fonts that actually add credibility and professionalism to your research. Dress your research in a custom-tailored suit by just using these fonts!

My friend and colleague, Cassio Lynm described how a good figure should be like a billboard found in many highways around the country. Anyone who sees the billboard will understand what they are advertising in a split second. If someone is confused or gets the wrong idea, the image is not very successful.

Similarly, the best professional fonts should be one that’s easy to read with very little “bells and whistles”. When writing prose of informational value such as scientific research, a reader should pay attention to what the text is describing, not how the text looks.  A good professional font should be like air–we don’t really even pay attention to it most of the time.

Some of the fonts I’ll share with you today are considered “boring” and “overused” by some. These fonts are everywhere because they are champions of legibility and simplicity.  Make your work professional and trustworthy by using a time-tested font.

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1. Arial- “All-Around Champion with IBM Roots”

According to fonts.com , Arial is one of the most used typefaces of the last 30 years. Its electronic origins go back to 1982 for IBM laser-xerographic printers by designers Robin Nicholas and Patricia Saunders. When it came out, it was supposed to compete with Helvetica, which was one of the core fonts in Apple Computers in the mid 1980’s.

Arial letters have more round shapes and the edges of letters do not end in a horizontal line. Instead, the edges are at an angle.

Arial is an easy-to-read font in small and large blocks of text. Nature requests that the figure text be in Arial or Helvetica. It’s especially nice for figure labels and legends. When using Arial as figure legends, keep the font size small ~8 points for best results.

2. Helvetica- “All-Around Champion with Apple Roots”

Helvetica is the most heavily-used font. Helvetica was originally designed by a Swiss designer named Max Miedinger in 1957. The font was designed to be an easy-to-read font. The name “Helvetica” comes from “Helvetia” – Latin name for Switzerland. Actually, the font received a facelift in 1983-the newer version is called, you guessed it, Neue Helvetica.

Helvetica even has its own movie . I haven’t seen it yet, but please comment in the section below if you have.

Besides its Hollywood (Indie) status, Helvetica is a font that looks great on both print and on screen.  Nature , Science , and Cell request that their figure labels be in Helvetica. (If you need assistance setting up figures, I’m here to help). It looks great small as in figure labels, and it looks pretty good in large formats as posters. I lost count of how many figures I labeled using Helvetica, since that’s what one of the publishers used for their books.

3. Baskerville- “Tends to have positive influence on readers”

Baskerville’s history goes all the way back to 1757 when John Baskerville designed a typeface that works well in print and easy to read.  Mr. Baskerville preferred his letters simple and refined. He was also a writing master, so he had some ornamental letters like the upper case Q.

There was an  informal study  (not official, but some experiments here and there) that showed using Baskerville font increased trustworthiness of the text compared to other fonts. In the same study, Comic Sans had the most negative influence on the readers.

Baskerville is a serif font, which means that there are “tails” at the edge of the letters. Generally, serif fonts are better suited for print. This font works best when used in long blocks of text. Try to keep this font between 8 and 14pts for best results. This font looks dignified, so use this for your important professional occasions-award ceremonies, recognitions, etc.

4. Caslon- “When in doubt, use Caslon”

Caslon is another font with a long history. William Cason I designed the typeface back in the early 1700’s. This font is considered as the first original typeface from England. This font was very popular in colonial America, and it was used for many historical documents including the US Declaration of Independence.

Caslon is a serif font (with tails), and is best used in blocks of text. Like Baskerville, try to keep this font between 8 and 14 points for best results. Using this in a report or an application would be a good places.

5. Garamond – “Second best font after Helvetica”

This font’s history also goes way back. The font was designed by Claude Garamond (or Jean Jannon), who was commissioned to make a typeface for King Francis I of France (1515-47) to be used in series of books. The modern, electric version was revived in 1989 by Robert Slimbach.

Because there are different sources available for Garamond, there are numbers of different variations of the font. Adobe Garamond is the most popular and widely-available version today.

Garamond is still used extensively by French publishers. They also insist that Garamond be printed in size 9.  Some of the most famous publications in France are in Garamond such as Histoire de l’édition français.  The publishers prefer this font “for its beauty, its richness and its legibility” combined with “an uncluttered graphic style that underscores the rigour of essays and analysis providing a radical critique of contemporary society”.

Garamond is a great font to be used in long proses such as textbooks, dissertations and theses. Keeping it at 9 point is optional. In fact, my master’s thesis was in Garamond.

So that’s the 5 fonts that add credibility and professionalism to your scientific research. Did you find your favorite fonts here? Do you have other favorites? Please share your thoughts in the comment section. Also, please feel free to send this article along to those who might benefit from this short article.

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Now that you know about great scientific fonts, learn more about: PowerPoint Tips for the Scientist

Sources and Further reading:

Arial vs Helvetica – fonts.com

Research on font trustworthiness: Baskerville vs. Comic Sans

Caslon typeface

History of Garamond

Cell Press Figure Guide

Nature -Guide to preparing final artwork

Science Magazine: Preparing your manuscript

14 Comments

I’d rather like to know which font was used to write that article – it’s simple and readable, better than all presented above.

And the font being used for that article is Helvetica, which is one of the fonts mentioned above 😀

Hi Ewa! Great point. The font used is called “Open Sans” by Steve Matteson. For my blog, I made the font color dark grey to make it easier on the eyes, and also made them slightly bigger than average for easier reading. Hope this helps!

Hollo there, i liked the article but none of this fonts looks like the one used in the papers i read, (Journals of the American Chemical Society), do you know which one they use?

Hi There! Thank you for the note! ACS suggests Arial and Helvetica for their journal figures, so that’s what I introduced in this article–for the text, they might very well have their own custom font they use for their publications. I’ll dig into this a little deeper–thank you again!

I’m sorry, but this article is full of misinformation. Part 1 is a reiteration of articles that have been around for years. Absolutely nothing new there, and honestly, is there anyone even considering the typefaces you name there for scientific articles? Is it conceivable that anyone would use Curlz for his essay?

But my real concern goes to the second part. Arial and Helvetica are absolutely not scientific typefaces. The notion that ACS suggests these typefaces doesn’t make them suitable for scientific works. I think you ought to do research as to WHY these typefaces came recommended. Helvetica has history, as it won out of contemporaries like Univers as Helvetica was very heavily marketed. As a side note, Helvetica is actually based on the Akzidenz Grotesk model. Arial was designed to have the same metrics as Helvetica so it could be used on the same printers without having to pay a license fee to use Helvetica. Arial is more legible while Helvetica is more neutral and clear, but neither is particularly great.

So I would say Helvetica and Arial haven’t been chosen because they’re perfect. They’ve been chosen because they’re popular, and Arial is on every Windows computer, so people don’t have to purchase any fonts. I would say neither Arial and Helvetica are known to be particularly good to read. I suspect typefaces like Proxima Nova and Avenir will fair better. To be clear, I don’t think Arial or Helvetica are bad choices for labels and such, but to suggest them as top 5 typefaces, that’s very clearly misinformation.

“When using Arial as figure legends, keep the font size small ~8 points for best results.” For best results? Not entirely. It’s probably a good estimate, but in actuality the pt size should depend on the layout. I would recommend always making a test print to see if the text looks good in print, if that’s what it is intended for. Sometimes 0.2pts more or less could make the difference.

“Helvetica is the most heavily-used font.” I don’t think so. First off, Helvetica is not a font. It’s a typeface. Helvetica Regular would be a font. Helvetica is the most heavily-used typeface in graphic design, and likely the most heavily-used sans typeface. It’s not the most heavily-used typeface. At least, I would be very surprised if it was. I suspect Times New Roman is the most heavily-used.

“The font was designed to be an easy-to-read font.” No, Helvetica was designed to steal the popularity of Akzidenz Grotesk away.

Also, follow this link to see some of the problems of Helvetica at small sizes, and what professionals in the field have to say about it: http://spiekermann.com/en/helvetica-sucks/

“Actually, the font received a facelift in 1983-the newer version is called, you guessed it, Neue Helvetica.” Who would guess that the prefix for the new Helvetica would be German though? Small detail… Anyway, if you like Helvetica but want a more professional typeface (because really, Max Miedinger was not a type designer and as far as I’m concerned that shows), I can recommend Neue Haas Grotesk (a typeface that is true to the original Helvetica, but improved) or Neue Haas Unica (a more fresh looking Helvetica that deviates from the original).

“Helvetica even has its own movie. I haven’t seen it yet, but please comment in the section below if you have.” I have seen it a few times now. It’s quite a pleasure to watch, but there’s a lot of propaganda involved as well. You have the likes of Massimo Vignelli drooling over how great Helvetica is. The man was a pretty great graphic designer (although insisting on always using Helvetica has little to do with graphic design, as one ought to select the perfect typeface for the job, not use one typeface for every job), but he had no insight in type design. On the other hand, you have Erik Spiekermann formulate perfectly what Helvetica stands for. I would say for a type designer the Helvetica documentary is quite pleasant to watch. For the layman I’m afraid the documentary amounts to propaganda. It gives the layman the feeling this is one of the best typefaces out there and it’s simply not, by far.

“Besides its Hollywood (Indie) status, Helvetica is a font that looks great on both print and on screen.” Absolutely not! On Windows computers, websites set in Helvetica tend to look horrendous. The problem is that Helvetica is not well hinted, and so rendering problems occur. Helvetica was obviously not designed for monitors. Neue Helvetica doesn’t have the rendering problem to the same extent I believe, but relatively few people have Neue Helvetica, so it wouldn’t be wise to use that on your website, unless you embed the fonts. For websites I highly recommend using Arial rather than Helvetica.

“Baskerville’s history goes all the way back to 1757 when John Baskerville designed a typeface that works well in print and easy to read.” Easy to read? Not particularly, though it’s not bad either. Baskerville is a transitional typeface, meaning the weight modulation is vertical and the contrast is high. This is the tradition of the Baroque, but it’s not the most pleasant to read. However, Baskerville does look quite academic. For typefaces that are more pleasant to read, I would look at the Garalde style. Garamond and Caslon belong to that classification. They have a diagonal weight modulation, which naturally leads the eyes to the next letters. Typefaces with vertical weight modulation and high contrast tend to feature a fence effect, which disturbs the reading experience. To see this effect well, look at Didone typefaces like Didot and Bodoni.

“This font works best when used in long blocks of text. Try to keep this font between 8 and 14pts for best results.” 14pt seems quite large. Try 9–12pt. This goes for any serif typeface to be used for body text that is intended for print (for the web try 10–14pt, also depending on which device it’s intended for). But again, it will depend on the layout, and always make test prints to make sure it’s pleasant to read.

“Garamond is a great font to be used in long proses such as textbooks, dissertations and theses. Keeping it at 9 point is optional. In fact, my master’s thesis was in Garamond.” I distinctly remember years ago I noticed my Harry Potter book was set in Garamond. Both Garamond and Caslon are still used extensively for books.

However, Garamond may be a bit much for scientific documents. It’s quite classical and it has a low x-height, which these days is not preferable. Caslon is a bit less expressive and has a taller x-height. I would say Caslon is probably better for scientific articles.

One group of typefaces that certainly seems to be missing here is Century. Typefaces like Century Roman and Century Schoolbook. They belong to the Clarendon classification and are reminiscent of typefaces like Baskerville. These typefaces have been popular since the late 19th century and are still used extensively in academic literature. But I suppose you should also make a consideration of whether your article should be about the most comfortable typefaces to read, or the best suitable for scientific work, because they most certainly don’t amount to the same thing, yet you seem to be equating the two in this article.

Hi Martin! Thank you so much for your in-depth note! I have to look over and digest all your excellent points. Would you be open to expanding your writing and be a guest author or send me a link to your website/blog so the readers can have more information about what types to use for their work?

THE quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog!!!!!

Leelawadee is a bit underrated. It is easy on the eyes, and simple. It could use a bit of a TimesNewRoman-punch to it, though.

Where can I download Helvetica from? I couldn’t find it anywhere

Seriously? I don’t know what this smug guy does with typography, in which he seems to be well versed, but if he were to take up writing he would need to work on his grammar.

I’m not an expert on fonts, but I’m currently using Helvetica for headlines and other Sans text in my thesis and DejaVu for the main text. Feels pretty scientific to me 🙂

I enjoyed the historical aspect of this article. Thanks! PS. I see you use a sans serif font.

How i download these font types?

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Ten simple rules for typographically appealing scientific texts

Lars ole schwen.

Fraunhofer Institute for Digital Medicine MEVIS, Bremen, Germany

Introduction

Text is ubiquitous in everyday scientific work—when was the last time you spent 5 minutes working without writing, reading, or interacting with any kind of equipment that had text (scales, labels, brand name, etc.) on it? Most forms of communicating ideas and findings in science are based on text, e.g., BSc/MSc/PhD theses, manuscript drafts, grant proposals, reports, or job applications. In addition, text appears in figures, (electronic) slides for presentations, and posters, i.e., in formats focused more strongly on a graphical presentation.

All these documents are usually written to convince the audience of the quality of your ideas or results, ultimately with the goal of a positive evaluation (grading, decision on funding/hiring, etc.). A good visual appearance of the text and graphical elements is key for making a good first impression on the audience. When sustaining this impression by clearly structured and well-written text, professional layout is again important because less-than-optimally typeset texts distract the audience from fully appreciating the high-quality content [ 1 ]. Even though single visual inconsistencies cost the readers only a fraction of a second, these interruptions to the flow of reading add up and subconsciously frustrate the readers, possibly undermining your credibility. Poor visual appearance and language can be spotted at first glance in Fig 1 , and incorrect content (or a confusing structure, not shown in Fig 1 ) take much longer to notice. Properly formatting text is particularly challenging in interdisciplinary fields like Computational Biology, where authors are faced with a variety of text elements, e.g., Greek characters, mathematical formulas, chemical formulas, and source code listings. Similar to inconsistent writing style, inconsistent formatting may indicate plagiarism, e.g., stray dashes resulting from copying and pasting hyphenated text, garbled characters, and fonts/formatting copied from the source.

Poor formatting, incorrect language, or wrong contents?

Scientists frequently need to produce final document layout themselves, either from scratch or based on a template—where some templates are well designed and others are, well, “designed.” If a template is given, fewer decisions need to be made, but some typographical knowledge is still helpful to understand the template and to deal with issues unforeseen therein. Ideally, the actual typesetting is subsequently done by trained professionals, e.g., working with publishers, who know what they are doing [ 2 ]. Submissions should, in this case, follow the publishers’ guidelines and templates, but still be prepared carefully, as “reviewers’ opinion about a manuscript can be skewed by careless formatting” [ 3 ]. Typography is thus one of the tools of the trade for scientists.

This article is meant as a practical guide for typesetting scientific texts, including motivation for the recommendations. While focusing on the intended layout, the rules also provide hints on how these results can be obtained in common text processing/typesetting tools (such as Microsoft Word/LibreOffice Writer, Google Docs, and LaTeX). These rules are meant to complement

• detailed typography textbooks or reference books [ 4 – 7 ] by providing hands-on recommendations for everyday scientific writing;
• software manuals (typically focused on features and how to achieve specific formatting) by explaining which formatting makes sense in which case;
• style manuals [ 8 – 10 ];
• tips for scientific writing [ 11 – 17 ] and collaboration tools [ 18 – 21 ]; and
• specialized recommendations for slides [ 22 , 23 ] and posters [ 24 , 25 ].

The rules primarily apply to English (specifically American English), and many of them also apply to other languages using the Latin alphabet and beyond. However, ligatures and diacritics (Rule 2), punctuation and its spacing (Rule 2), hyphenation (Rule 3), and number formatting (Rule 8) vary between languages.

Rule 1: Fonts—Choose a suitable (type)face for your work

Fonts should be chosen according to the intended function. Documents primarily consisting of text are usually typeset in serif fonts where letters end in horizontal lines (see Fig 2A ) guiding the readers’ eyes through the lines like a “railroad track” [ 26 ]. Moreover, serifs provide distinctive shapes of words ( Fig 2B ). This allows more easily reading text by fixing a few points in each line (saccades, [ 27 ]) rather than continuously reading each individual letter. These properties generally make serif fonts easily readable.

(A) Terminology to describe the “anatomy” of glyphs. (B, C) Samples of serif (B) and sans serif fonts (C), all of them nominally of the same size (but notice the differences in width, x versus ascender/descender height and overall apparent size). (D) Confusing use of fonts for a purpose they were not designed for.

In contrast, posters, slides, and figure annotations containing only little text and incomplete sentences require each word to be clearly legible. In this case, sans serif fonts are more suitable ( Fig 2C ). Nonproportional (typewriter-like) fonts where each glyph has the same width have a technical appearance and are used, e.g., for source code listings. Calligraphic, handwritten, or otherwise creative fonts may lack a serious appearance and should be used with care in scientific content, e.g., if a handwritten/sketched look is intended [ 28 ]. Besides the function, fonts can convey characteristics like elegant, modern, or traditional (see Fig 2D ) [ 29 ].

In 1 document, only as many fonts as necessary should be mixed. Fonts should be combined to complement each other with the intended level of contrast and with matching x height and length of ascenders/descenders. The main font for the text should include all required diacritics (e.g., for proper names), non-Latin characters (e.g., Greek), and symbols (e.g., arrows or for mathematical formulas), cf. Rule 2.

Rule 2: Individual characters and words—Get the details right

Text is composed of single characters including (uppercase and lowercase) letters, numbers, punctuation, characters with diacritics, and symbols. Typographically, however, text is composed of glyphs, representations of characters in a specific shape and design.

Certain combinations of letters appear differently when combined, forming so-called ligatures (e.g., the “fi” in the word fish in Fig 2A ). Ligatures enhance readability by avoiding visual gaps inside words and are examples of 1 glyph representing multiple characters.

Punctuation is used to structure sentences and should use correct glyphs (cf. Fig 3A ).

(A) Typographically correct symbols make a difference between sloppily written and conveniently readable texts. (B) Many language use the Latin alphabet combined with different types of diacritics and additional characters.

Quotation marks exist in 2 forms: straight/dumb (as typed on the keyboard) and typographic form. In English, raised 6/66 and 9/99 forms as shown in Fig 3A are used as opening and closing quotation marks, respectively, depending on whether you follow a style using single or double quotes. Punctuation is placed before or after closing quotation marks depending on whether it is part of the quote, except for periods and commas always placed before the closing quotation mark [ 10 ]. Apostrophes have the raised-9 form of a closing single quotation mark. Prime and double prime symbols are used, e.g., for feet/inches, arcminutes/arcseconds in geographic latitude and longitude (cf. Fig 3B ), and derivatives in mathematics and to indicate positions of carbon on ribose rings in molecular biology. Neither of these symbols should be confused with accents (see below).

Dashes come in 3 flavors. For hyphenation (see also Rule 3) and compound words, a standard dash (-) is used. The slightly longer en dash (–) is used for ranges (e.g., pages 24–33), sometimes as the symbol in bullet lists (see Rule 6), and to indicate naming after separate persons (e.g., the Michaelis–Menten reaction) as opposed to hyphenated names (e.g., 2008 Nobel laureate Françoise Barré-Sinoussi). The minus sign is typically similar to the en dash. The em dash—as shown here—is used as a phrase marker—or for adding afterthoughts. However, besides unspaced em dashes, spaced en dashes are also recommended for these purposes [ 7 ].

Accents and other diacritics (cf. Fig 3B ) may be complicated, in particular outside one’s native language. Still, they are worth getting right—imagine what a picky reviewer will think about your scientific work if you cited them, but did not even manage to spell their name correctly.

Correct symbols that cannot directly be typed can be selected/copied from a character table or entered via their respective Unicode code points. Both these options are tedious. Using defined macros or auto-correction features of the text processing software can be more convenient, but do not always work as intended and should be checked.

Rule 3: Lines and paragraphs—Keep the text flowing

Paragraphs consist of lines of text (see Rule 5 for a discussion of line width). Paragraphs can be typeset left-aligned, centered, right-aligned, or fully justified; cf. Fig 4A . Justifying text requires aligning both the left and right ends of lines, and this is commonly achieved by stretching the spacing between words. Paragraphs in continuous text are usually typeset justified. This is most convenient to read as paragraph breaks can be spotted easily, and there is no random graphical emphasis on words at the beginning or end of lines which are longer than the surrounding lines. Shorter pieces of text can also be typeset left-aligned, e.g., on posters and slides. Centered and right-aligned text is sometimes used for headings, displayed equations, or tables (cf. Rule 7). Such alignment is not suitable for longer texts as it makes finding the next line inconvenient ( Fig 4A ).

(A) Left-aligned text randomly emphasizes words appearing at the end of the line (indicated in orange); right-aligned text makes finding the next line unnecessarily difficult for the readers (indicated in blue); centered text combines both disadvantages; and justified text avoids these issues and has the calmest appearance. (B) Examples where hyphenation or line breaks interrupt the flow of reading (hyphenation examples from p. 115 in [ 30 ]). (C) Indenting the first line of paragraphs (except after headings) clearly indicates where a new paragraph starts, and this may be unclear at the top of a page otherwise.

Line breaks in paragraphs should not interrupt the flow of reading. To prevent undesired line breaks, e.g., between numbers and their unit ( Fig 4B ), non-breaking spaces should be used.

Words may need to be hyphenated to avoid large gaps in lines in justified text. Text should be hyphenated by the respective feature of the text processing/typesetting software. Automatic hyphenation usually works well if language settings are correct, but should be checked for misleading hyphenations ( Fig 4B ). Enforcing hyphenation by manually entering dashes and spaces/line breaks may lead to stray dashes when fur-ther editing the text.

The first line of paragraphs is frequently indented ( Fig 4C ) to clearly indicate that a new paragraph has started (except immediately after headings where indentation would be redundant). In contrast to vertically spacing paragraphs, indenting is also visible after a page break, below a figure, and after lists.

Alignment, indentation, and other formatting of paragraphs should not be applied manually for each paragraph, but via suitably defined paragraph or document styles. Ideally, this is provided by the document template.

Rule 4: Emphasize what is important, and only that

Not all words in a text are equally important, and some need to be distinguished visually. Visual emphasis, however, should not happen by accident (e.g., because a word happens to appear at the end of a line or because a symbol needs to be used from a different font). Instead, emphasis should result from a conscious decision, and a suitable and consistent way of formatting different types of importance should be used. The main purposes of increased visibility of words are.

• structuring (providing “entry points” on the page where one could start reading),
• emphasis (where stressing something only makes sense within the context), and
• markup (e.g., in bibliographies or for syntax highlighting in source code).

Typographically, there are different variants of highlighting ( Fig 5A ), ranging from subtle to highly prominent. The prominence of emphasis can be characterized by the change of “color” [ 7 ] (or “type color” [ 31 ]), i.e., how dark the page appears at some location when viewed out of focus. Larger changes of type color are more prominent highlighting and easier to spot when just glancing at the page/poster/slide. Italic (no change in type color) is usually the formatting of choice for emphasis within context. In contrast, bold (notable change in type color) is useful, e.g., for headings or terms defined in a glossary. Small caps (no change in type color) are sometimes used to distinguish family names from given names or real-world from model entities. Underlining used to be one of the few possibilities of emphasis using a typewriter (see Fig 5B ), but is neither particularly nice nor useful nowadays.

(A) Text in italics, small caps, or a matching alternative font does not change the type color of the page and emphasizes words within the context while reading. Bold text, uppercase letters, and different colors are more prominent and serve as “entry points” to the text. Using a contrasting alternative font, letter spacing, and underlining words forms an even stronger visual contrast, but is challenging to get looking good. (B) In the era of typewriters, authors were much more limited in using emphasis in their texts. (C) Italic, bold, and small caps should be used as properly designed font variants and not be faked by slanting (making the text look unnatural), making lines thicker (leading to, e.g., shrunken eyes and unbalanced spacing), or scaling capitals (making glyphs skinny). (Disclosure of image manipulation: text typed using a mechanical typewriter was digitized and edited for clarity, and color channels of the RGB image were manipulated to imitate red text from a 2-color ink ribbon).

Emphasis in continuous texts should be used sparingly. If 80% of a text is emphasized, actually the remaining 20% of the text are most visible. In contrast, text not meant to be read as a whole may profit from extensively combining different ways of highlighting, e.g., markup in bibliographies or syntax highlighting in source code listings.

Pitfalls of highlighting are shown in Fig 5C . Italic, bold, and small caps of a font should only be used if available as properly designed variants. Automatically created variants (slanting glyphs, using thicker lines, or shrinking uppercase letters) are of lower quality (“Frankensteinian manipulation” [ 32 ]) and best avoided.

To achieve consistent visual emphasis throughout a document, suitable styles or macros should be defined and used. Naming these by purpose rather than appearance makes it easy to consistently change formatting when editing and revising a document (cf. Rule 9).

Rule 5: Pages—Visually distribute your story

Unlike information on web pages, printed material and presentation slides are arranged on separate pages of fixed size. Contents thus need to be distributed with page breaks at useful locations (unless, of course, only a single page or a poster is needed). Besides text, also non-text material (figures, tables, and footnotes) needs to be positioned on pages.

For good readability, lines should not be longer than 75 to 80 characters [ 7 ] or require additional line spacing; otherwise, the readers’ eyes cannot easily jump from 1 line to the next. Reducing the margin width is thus not a good way to squeeze more content into a given number of pages. Also, margins are needed for the readers simply to hold the document without fingers covering part of the content and to take notes. Only little text such as page numbers should be placed in the margin (top outside, bottom outside, or bottom center). Two-column layout allows more readable text per page, but makes placing wide elements like figures or tables more complex. One-sided layout with page numbers at the bottom center is more robust if readers will likely print the document themselves and might not use duplexing or might print 2-on-1 (swapping left and right pages).

If not defined by a template, one easy way [ 33 ] to define page margins (cf. Fig 6A ) is to first determine how wide the text block needs to be to fit about 70 characters on average. The page is then divided into an n × n grid such that using 2 stripes of cells each as the left and right margins leaves the desired text width. One and 2 horizontal stripes are then used as the top and bottom margins, respectively. For 2-sided layout, each page should have only 1 stripe as the inner margin. In both cases, additional space for binding may need to be considered. For 12-point Cambria text on an A4-sized page, this construction results in n = 12 and margins of 35 mm, 25 mm, and 50 mm on the left/right, top, and bottom, respectively. In contrast, using a default setting of 1-inch margins for a letter-sized page containing 10-point Times New Roman text results in about 115 characters per line, too much for convenient reading.

(A) One way to construct page margins for 1-sided and 2-sided layouts, also considering the type of binding used (here: spiral binding with narrower inner margin—glue or sewn binding requires enlarging the inner margin). (B) Figures (or tables) are commonly placed at the top of a page (or on figure-only pages), but not in between the text. (C) Orphans and widows, single lines of text separated from the rest of their paragraph, should be avoided.

Besides the running text, documents contain “floating” objects like figures or tables. These also need to be placed on the pages, typically at the top or bottom or on figure-only pages, ideally close to where they are referenced; see Fig 6B . Placing figures inside the running text would interrupt reading and may cause distracting page breaks. Instead, presenting figures in a separate “thread” outside the continuous text also permits readers to just browse through the figures and quickly find what interests them.

Footnotes, as the name suggests, are placed at the bottom of the page where they are referenced (which, clearly, should be done automatically). Footnotes are useful for relevant information complementing the main text without interrupting its flow (e.g., translations), see below for an example. Sometimes (e.g., to make presentation slides self-contained), footnotes are also used for literature references.

When optimizing page breaks, no single lines should be separated from the rest of a paragraph; see Fig 6C . Such single lines at the bottom and top of a page are denoted as widows (“have no future”) and orphans (“have no past”), respectively [ 33 ]. (The previous sentence is an example where a footnote would make sense: This vivid terminology is also used in other languages, e.g., the German terms for widow and orphan are “Hurenkind” [politically correct translation: offspring of a person working in the world’s oldest profession] and “Schusterjunge” [shoemaker’s apprentice].)

Text processing/typesetting software can places figures and partially prevent orphans and widows automatically, but this may require additional fine-tuning. Tricks for optimizing page breaks include rephrasing the text to make a paragraph on the affected page 1 line longer or shorter; enlarging the page vertically or breaking the page a line earlier; and moving, enlarging, or shrinking figures.

Rule 6: Lists—Present some content in structured form

Not all textual information is best presented as complete sentences in continuous text. In particular, as few text as possible should be used on slides [ 22 , 23 ] and posters [ 24 , 25 ]. Also in longer written texts, some information is best presented in (sub-)structured lists, either unsorted (itemized/bulleted) or sorted (numbered) lists; see Fig 7 . The readability of lists may profit from manually optimizing line breaks, in particular on slides and posters.

(A) Hard-to-recognize list, (B) properly formatted unsorted list, and (C) properly formatted numbered list.

Numbered lists are most useful for step-by-step instructions or if some of the entries are referenced from elsewhere (“item 5c” is more convenient than “the third sub-item of the fifth item”). Other common types of structured lists are glossaries (alphabetically sorted definition of terms where readers should quickly find the term they are looking for) and bibliographies (which additionally require cross-referencing from the main text). Itemized and numbered lists should be formatted consistently, i.e., they should be entered as the appropriate type of list and not by manually entering bullets/numbers and indentation; see Fig 7 .

Particularly in bibliographies, it makes sense to conceptually distinguish content and layout. Here, the same information (author, title, journal, volume, year, etc.) should be printed in 1 consistent style (format, referencing from the text, and sorting). Using suitable reference management integrated with the text processing avoids manually formatting bibliographies.

Rule 7: Figures, plots, and tables—Do not neglect the text outside the continuous text

Typography is relevant not only for the continuous text, but also for text in figures, plots, and tables. Figures convey content in easy-to-grasp graphical form, and plots present data in visual form, whereas tables provide precise numbers. Creating high-quality and well-readable figures [ 28 , 34 – 39 ] can be challenging, but is worth spending effort; well-designed figures with self-contained captions telling the main story are a useful way of reaching hurried readers just browsing through your work [ 15 ] or starting reading by looking at figures [ 40 ]. In particular, a good graphical abstract [ 41 ] or concept figure [ 42 ] can attract readers (even though the impact on citations is unclear [ 43 ]).

Figures may contain different amounts of text that should be consistent with the main text not only in terminology, but also in terms of fonts and symbols. Figures are often created in separate software, so consistency may be challenging. However, the limited capability of software is not a convincing excuse for low-quality figures (cf. Fig 8A versus Fig 8B ), and malicious readers could interpret it as limited capability of the author.

(A) Poor-quality plot: numbers are hard to read, symbols are not displayed properly, and color provides no additional information (except that automatic spell checking marked part of the axis labels as wrong). (B) Same data, better plot quality. (C) Poor-quality table: excessive lines and hard-to-read numbers, even in the right-aligned column due to the footnote symbol and numerals of different width. (D) Same information, better table layout.

Table formatting includes proper column alignment. While text should be left-aligned in columns, numbers in columns can only be compared conveniently if printed right-aligned and written in numerals that are all of the same width (table figures). Tables should not include too many prominent lines to prevent the impression of a “prison cell” (cf. Fig 8C versus Fig 8D ). Instead, tables can be structured optically by moderate spacing, light shading of every other row, or light lines. Whitespace is useful for structuring contents [ 44 , 45 ], elsewhere as well, e.g., in figures and lists (cf. Rule 6).

Rule 8: Mathematical and chemical formulas—Do not let doubt enter the equation

Numbers should not only be correct, but should also be formatted appropriately. Numbers with more than 4 digits are grouped using commas between each group of 3 digits: 31,556,952. For decimal numbers, a period (“point”) is used as the decimal separator: 3.14. Following [ 10 ], ordinal numbers should be written as 1st, 2nd, 3rd, 4th, … without superscript letters. When reporting computer-generated results, notation like 5·10 −9 is easier to read than pasting 5e−9 verbatim (and shows that you know what the “e” stands for).

Formulas provide precise information in a very condensed form. They are difficult to get right in the first place, and incorrect typesetting can alter the meaning: consider, e.g., 2 3 = 8 versus 23, or the isotope 14 C versus 14 carbon atoms. Formulas are a particular example where correct typesetting is indispensable to show you understood what you have written. Shorter and simpler formulas can be included “inline” in the text ( Fig 9A and 9B ). In this case, font, font size, and the base line should match the surrounding text. More complex formulas, those to be cross-referenced by number or formulas too high to fit in the text without modified line spacing, are better written as displayed formulas ( Fig 9C and 9D ). From a grammar and punctuation perspective, also displayed formulas should be considered part of the sentences in the containing text. Depending on the text processing software used, formulas can be entered via math syntax or equation editors or (e.g., in case of complex chemical formulas) may need to be created in external software and imported as images.

(A versus B) Formulas in the text should use a font matching the text and match the baseline of the text. Mathematical variables should be typeset in italic, unlike text parts of formulas or certain functions. (C versus D) Similarly, displayed formulas should match the surrounding text and are easier to understand if properly aligned. (E) Chemical formulas include subscript and superscript indices around symbols for chemical elements.

In formulas, mathematical variables are commonly typeset in italic. However, mathematical functions like sin (sine), text (including, e.g., abbreviations in indices), units, chemical elements, and certain constants should not appear in italic ( Fig 9B, 9D, and 9E ). To make longer formulas easier to read, proper alignment and grouped brackets of matching size are helpful ( Fig 9D ).

Rule 9: Use templates and styles for automatic and consistent formatting

When writing texts, unfinished layout may distract from content and structure. However, these topics should be addressed and concentrated on first, see Rule 10. Using software like Microsoft Word, LibreOffice Writer, or Google Docs that uses the “what you see is what you get” principle, layout needs to be ignored actively, unless a structure view, disabled page preview, or similar is used. Writing text in markup languages (e.g., Markdown or LaTeX using “what you see is what you mean”) makes the separation of content/structure and format/layout easier, but requires more technological affinity.

Structure in texts should be defined by styles/macros declaring, e.g., a section heading as a “level 1 heading” rather than manually numbering it, formatting it to a specific font size in bold with additional line spacing, making sure it is not followed by a page break, etc.; see Fig 10 . Properly structuring in this way also permits automatically creating a table of contents, cross-referencing to section numbers without keeping them up to date manually, automatically using the same style, or conveniently switching the style if the template is changed. Similarly, figures and tables with captions should be included as such objects so that they can be positioned automatically at the top/bottom or on separate pages, again with the side effect of automatic numbering and cross-referencing.

(A versus B) Marking headings as the appropriate level of headings (instead of manually formatting it bold and larger) ensures consistent layout (Google Docs example). (C) Using automatically numbered headings and proper cross-references (rather than manually entering it) allows keeping them up to date automatically (Microsoft Word example). (D) Using a macro name indicating its purpose (rather than having to remember the formatting for a specific purpose) makes writing easier (LaTeX example).

Rule 10: Iterative writing and typesetting—Do first things first and last things last

Formatting manuscripts is an iterative process, just like writing the contents [ 12 , 16 ]. When drafting contents at an early stage of the writing process, it only makes sense to pay attention to typographic issues that will likely be missed or cause problems/increased efforts later. This includes proper structuring, cross-referencing, and using template styles/macros. When editing the text later on, effort should be invested in those parts to be kept in the final manuscript. Issues relevant at this stage include, e.g., the contents of proper formulas, tables, and figures. Only when the contents have been finalized, it makes sense to polish the layout by optimizing line or page breaks and figure placement. Prematurely polishing either language or layout of parts of text that are deleted later is wasted effort.

Solitary and collaborative [ 18 , 20 ] writing may use a different format/platform than the one used for formatting and finalizing the submission, e.g., one may collaborate via a Google Doc or via Markdown files in a Git repository followed by finalizing the layout in LibreOffice Writer or LaTeX. Moreover, input from one or different authors needs to be unified also on a technical level, regardless of the technical platform used. Enough time should be planned for the work needed to turn finalized content into a formatted document ready for submission.

Acknowledgments

The author would like to thank the organizers of CdE-SommerAkademie 2017 and the participants of the “Getting Things Finished” workshop for providing an inspiring environment where he wrote a substantial part of this manuscript. Moreover, the author would like to acknowledge Simon Kempny for fruitful discussions about a draft of this manuscript.

Funding Statement

The author did not receive funding for preparing this manuscript.

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Calibri vs Garamond: Can font choice make or break a research paper?

What your preference says about you.

Helen Robertson

Credit: Markus Spiske/Unsplash

19 June 2020

Markus Spiske/Unsplash

From Times New Roman to Garamond to Cambria, many authors and editors have a preferred font. But does it make a difference when submitting a paper to a journal?

It’s true that a manuscript should be judged on its scientific merit, not on the way it’s presented. But it’s also true that a well-formatted manuscript is more likely to give a good first impression to an editor or reviewer.

Fonts tend to evoke passionate opinions , because appear to have personalities – from serious to comic or gothic. It’s possible that, consciously or not, readers might associate the font choice with the personality or intent of the author.

Jesse Meyer, a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, says he was “overwhelmed” by the heat it generated when he took the topic to Twitter .

The sans-serif font, Calibri, for example, was revealed to be particularly divisive:

Because calibri is ugly. Anything is >> calibri. — Dr. Jessika (@famplanfan) April 30, 2020

Calibri is evil- no idea who thought it should be the Word default font- to me, anything written in calibri screams “I just didn’t care enough to use a reasonable font”- HATE IT (and my lab will back ne up if anyone doubts my vehemence on this topic! — Anita Corbett- VOTE EARLY (She/her) (@acorbe2) May 1, 2020

I use Calibri default as it is the default so avoids any judgement on the font choice, but now I see that using the default creates judgement that I'm too lazy to change the font! 🙃 — Harriet Johnson (@harrietfjohnson) May 1, 2020

Don't stand out for the wrong reasons

So, why is font choice so important to some people?

Kristina Gill, an archaeobotanist and archaeologist at the University of Oregon, believes that typeface should vary between formats.

For manuscript submission, she favours Times New Roman or Garamond, “which is a little more open and easier to read”. For presentations and posters, she prefers Calibri, which she says is easier to read at a distance.

Charlotte Flatebo, an applied physics PhD candidate from Rice University says “you can’t control how your research will work”, but you can control how you present your manuscript. “It’s a little piece of victory.”

For journal submission, don’t overthink it. It defies logic that a journal would reject a manuscript on the basis of typeface alone.

Many journals have no specific requirements regarding format for submission, so if you prefer to write in a particular typeface – within reasonably standard fonts – it’s probably not going to hinder the likelihood of your paper being sent for review.

In fact, the common message from editors is that font choice doesn’t matter, unless it’s really noticeable.

“If your font draws attention to itself, it’s the wrong font,” says Andrew Bissette, senior editor at Communications Chemistry , a journal published by Springer Nature, which also publishes Nature Index. “Your reader should be thinking about your argument, not your presentation.”

Focus on formatting

It’s more important, says Bissette, to focus on “good paragraph structure, clear design of figures, and sensible spacing between lines and paragraphs”.

In other words, font choice is probably an unnecessary concern.

Something that many journals do consider very carefully, however, is the type of font they publish in.

Historically, journals were read as physical copies; now, the vast majority of researchers read academic papers online. Trends in journal fonts clearly reflect this shift from print to digital.

For example, the new Nature typeface , launched in October 2019, was designed specifically for scientific writing, to accommodate the needs of technical content including equations, formulae and symbols while also optimizing readability on a small screen.

According to Nature creative director Kelly Krause: “We aimed for an overall impression of calm, rational intelligence with perhaps a dash of British formality and wit.”

So while the context of the writing can be an important consideration in typeface choice, for an individual researcher, it is mainly a question of personal preference.

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12 Best Fonts for Academic Papers in Microsoft Word

Good academic papers deserve good academic fonts. You might not have thought too much about which font you use before, but they play a big part in whether people will take your paper seriously or not. This article will explore the best fonts for academic papers.

Best Fonts for Academic Papers in Microsoft Word

The best fonts for academic papers are Times New Roman, Baskerville Old Face, and Georgia. There are plenty of good options, but you’ll mainly want to stick to serif fonts. They look much neater and more professional while showing that the reader can trust what you say.

Times New Roman

Times New Roman is the most famous font on Microsoft Word. It should come as no surprise that it’s a good pick when writing academic papers. It’s got everything you could possibly need when it comes to professionalism and readability.

Times New Roman is the best font to use in most situations. If you’re looking for a more formal font, you’ll find that Times New Roman ranks very highly on the list, regardless of what else is required.

It’s a fairly small font, which looks more appealing for an academic paper. A common pitfall that most people fall for is they try to use a font that’s too large, which can make their paper look less trustworthy and more informal. Neither of those traits is good for academics.

Baskerville Old Face

Baskerville Old Face is a great font to use in an academic paper. There have been studies in the past about different fonts and how they engage readers. It’s believed that Baskerville is one of the most reliable fonts, and the writer tends to be more “truthful” when using it.

Whether you buy into studies like this or not isn’t important. What is important is that Baskerville Old Face is a fantastic choice for most academic papers. It looks really good (like a more concise Times New Roman), and it’s very popular.

Baskerville is a fairly popular choice for published novels, so you might already be familiar with the font style. If you like the way it looks in some of the novels or publications you’ve read, you’ll find that it converts very well to your academic papers.

Georgia ranks very highly when looking for a formal font that will work well in an academic paper. It’s slightly larger than Times New Roman, but a lot of people say that this helps it to become a more “readable” font.

When writing academic papers, it’s wise not to overwhelm your reader with information. The more condensed the font is, the harder it can be to make sense of what you’re writing. With Georgia, this isn’t an issue.

Georgia might be one of the larger fonts listed here, but it makes for an easy read. Plenty of readers will be happy to read through an entire paper written in Georgia, but they might be a bit against reading one in something smaller.

Garamond is another decent option that can work well for academics. Garamond is the smallest font we have included on the list, which can allow you to get a lot of information into a very small space without overwhelming a reader too much.

While it’s not always ideal for including lots of information, Garamond does it really well. It’s readable and professional, allowing your readers to make sense of even the most concise explanations you might include.

It’s also quite a popular choice for many writers. You’ll find that it ranks quite highly simply because of how popular it’s become among a lot of writers on Word.

Cambria is a solid font choice that a lot of people like to use. It’s another default font (though it’s mainly reserved for sub-headings in most Word formats). It runs true to the font size, making it a fairly decent choice if you’re looking for something compact.

The serif style of this font makes it easy to read. It’s nearly indistinguishable from some of the other more popular serif fonts like Times New Roman and Georgia, which is why it is such a popular choice.

However, since it looks so similar, it can make it difficult for people to recognize the font or to figure out which font you’re using. While this isn’t the end of the world, it certainly won’t help you to create a unique feel for your paper either.

Book Antiqua

Book Antiqua is another suitable serif font. It’s not as popular as some of the others, but it looks really good as far as formal fonts go. People like it because it offers a slightly more authentic feel and looks like it could be used in a published novel or academic study.

It’s a standard-sized font, and it’s quite easy to read. A lot of people enjoy using it because it can offer a lot of character to their writing. You might not think that a font has that much power, but you’d be surprised once you try and use Book Antiqua a bit more.

Bookman Old Style

Bookman Old Style is another good font that can look like something out of a published paper. What makes this one special is its size. It’s quite a large font with a decent amount of width to each letter (without going too overboard with the letter spacing).

This font is quite popular for people looking to make their academic papers stand out. It’s not the same style as most of the other serif fonts, allowing your paper to bring a little bit extra that some other people might miss out on.

We encourage you to try this one in multiple different situations. It can work both formally and informally, depending on what you’re looking to get out of it.

Palatino Linotype

Palatino Linotype is a good font for many occasions. You’ll often find it used in academic papers because of the interesting style that comes with it. It looks like a classical font, which takes inspiration from some of the older styles of writing that came before computers.

If you want your academic paper to come across as a bit more traditional or formal, you’ll love this font.

Palatino Linotype offers a great deal of character without changing too much of the original formula that makes fonts like Times New Roman and Georgia so special.

Lucida Bright

Lucida Bright is a great font that is very large compared to most. It works well in academic papers, but you’ve got to make sure you know when to use it. If your paper is particularly word-heavy, it might not be wise to use a font that makes each word much larger.

For example, if you have a page limit on your paper, it might be wise to use a smaller font. Lucida Bright will definitely carry you far over that page limit before you come close to the words you might need to use to explain something.

Nevertheless, it’s still a very attractive font that looks really good in most academic papers. If you’re looking for something that’s stylish and readable, Lucida Bright is a good option.

Calibri is a sans serif font, and it’s the first of its kind on the list. We have only included serif fonts because they tend to be more readable and professional. However, Calibri can work really well if you’re looking for a slightly more approachable feel with your font.

Calibri is like the Times New Roman of the sans serif fonts. It is very popular, and most Microsoft Word versions come with it preloaded as the default font for most written pieces.

That’s what makes it such a valuable choice. You can use it in almost any situation (informal and formal) to a great degree.

Arial is another popular sans serif font that you will be able to use in your academic writing. You don’t always have to use the more formal serif fonts, and Arial is a great example of what can be achieved when you’re a little less formal with your presentation.

Arial is much larger than Calibri when the same font size is used. This makes it a lot more visually appealing, though you have to make sure you don’t overdo it with the number of pages it uses.

Before Calibri replaced it, Arial was also the default sans serif font on Microsoft Word. This has allowed it to be a fairly popular choice for many users, and it remains one of the most popular ones today.

Century Gothic

Century Gothic is the final font we want to cover. It’s a sans serif font that can work really well if you’re looking for a slightly larger font. It’s larger than Arial, making it an easy-to-read font that a lot of people like to utilize.

The only issue you might come across is that the size of it can make it seem much more informal. You should be careful with how you use this font, as it could take away from the professionalism or reliability of your academic paper.

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Martin holds a Master’s degree in Finance and International Business. He has six years of experience in professional communication with clients, executives, and colleagues. Furthermore, he has teaching experience from Aarhus University. Martin has been featured as an expert in communication and teaching on Forbes and Shopify. Read more about Martin here .

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A variety of fonts are permitted in APA Style papers. Font options include the following:

• sans serif fonts such as 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, or 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode
• serif fonts such as 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, or normal (10-point) Computer Modern (the default font for LaTeX)

We recommend these fonts because they are legible and widely available and because they include special characters such as math symbols and Greek letters. Historically, sans serif fonts have been preferred for online works and serif fonts for print works; however, modern screen resolutions can typically accommodate either type of font, and people who use assistive technologies can adjust font settings to their preferences. For more on how font relates to accessibility, visit the page on the accessibility of APA Style .

Use the same font throughout your paper, with the following exceptions:

• figures: Within figure images, use a sans serif font with a type size between 8 and 14 points.
• computer code: To present computer code, use a monospace font such as 10-point Lucida Console or 10-point Courier New.
• footnotes: When inserting footnotes with the footnotes function of your word-processing program, use the default font settings. The footnote font might be smaller than the text font (and have different line spacing), and it is not necessary to change it.

Instructors and publishers vary in how they specify length requirements. Different fonts take up different amounts of space on the page; thus, we recommend using word count rather than page count to gauge paper length if possible.

Font is covered in the seventh edition APA Style manuals in the Publication Manual Section 2.19 and the Concise Guide Section 1.18

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Best Research Paper Font and Size: Best Styles for an Essay

The Best Word Font in Research Paper

As you edit and polish your research paper, you should know the suitable font when formatting. Many students struggle to locate suitable fonts that are appropriate for academia. Thankfully, most of the writing styles such as APA or MLA end this frustration by indicating the right fonts to use in your work.

Many instructors indicate the type of fonts students should use in their assignments. That is because some fonts are large hence prompting one to use more pages than indicated in the instructions section.

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Best Font for Research Paper

The choice of fonts can affect your academic writing work. The right font should make your work remain credible and professional. Dressing your work with the right fonts is procuring a suitable image.

Ideally, the best font for a research paper is the Times New Roman as it is clear and most requested by university and college faculties. Other common ones are the Arial and Calibri fonts, which are preferred because of their large size compared with New Times Roman.

Some fonts can be attractive but hard to read because they have several curls and curves.

When handling research work, use the correct font which has enough allowance between letters to avoid overcrowding.

The professional fonts should be easy to read. The good news for you is that Times New Roman is a popular choice for academic documents.

It is the safest option because most examiners are comfortable with it. Notably, New Times Roman has sound APA support.

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Best Font Size for Research Paper

The best font size for a research paper is point 12. This size is the most common ones, especially for New Times Roman, Arial or Calibri fonts. Basically, the size of the fonts should make your work to be readable without straining the audience. We measure size using ‘points’.

Most academic research papers use MLA, APA, and Harvard references and formats.

The point is a percentage of the screen that the font is occupying. For academic papers, the recommended size is 12 points. It is the most comfortable size for the audience without looking oversized or bulky.

 The font size plays a critical role in making your research work impressive and appealing.

The writer should use the official font size when submitting the project.

This size is key when you want to determine the number of pages that your project should carry.

We use font 12 to calculate and know the number of pages the entire work will have to avoid going beyond or under the given guideline.

If you use a different font size, you may exceed or hit below the word count leading to disqualification or any other penalty as the lecturer may decide.

Commonly Used Fonts for Academic Work

Different writing styles recommend certain fonts for students to use while tackling academic work. Some of them are as follows:

Times New Roman

Times New Roman has an authoritative look and feel. It became into practice in 1932 to enhance the legibility and economy of space. This Times New Roman has a narrow printing point that is easily readable.

Arial has been the most used font for the past thirty years. One of the characteristics of Arial fonts is that they have rounded faces. Furthermore, the edges of the letters do not manifest in the horizontal line. Instead, these edges are at an angle.

Besides, this font is easy to read whether used in both large and small blocks. It is a perfect format that one can use in academic work.

Calibri is a humanist font with variable strokes and designs. It is a pretty-looking font suitable for large displays such as presentations.

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Factors Determining the Font and Size for Academic Writing

1. teachers instructions.

When you receive your essay assignment, peruse through and find the preferred font type and size. Some professors are comfortable with particular fonts.

The professor will indicate the preferred font for your work. You can begin by writing and polishing your work with your font and size and later format it according to instructions.

Most academic papers target certain pages of the assignments.

For example, when the instructions demand that you use Times New Roman, you should stick to that for you to produce the right number of pages as guided by the instructions.

Teachers know that when you use a particular font and size for your research, you will produce the correct quantity after researching.

2. Your Eye Ability

One will feel comfortable when using certain fonts than others. Reading and writing while you are straining your eyes to see your work can be disastrous. The cool thing is you can settle for the fonts that can make your eye enjoy beholding your work.

Several fonts exist to use for your work without straining your eyes. However, you should ensure that you settle for the right font when formatting your final documents.

For example, some fonts have curls or curves that make affect the readability of your work. Such can make your professor respond unkindly.

If the professor did not offer guidance to you, then you can use the correct font according to the writing styles recommendations.

3. Teacher’s Font Preference and Eye Abilities

A teacher may instruct that you use certain fonts when submitting your project work. More importantly, even if it is not your favorite font to use, you should stick to the instructions and complete your work as guided.  

We have varying eye abilities. Some are comfortable and safe to use a particular font like Arial because they do not strain the eyes while using it. Some fonts are not friendly to some people when working, making your entire writing experience to be hostile.

If you can work well with 12 point font size, well and good. In case the lecturer wants point size 10, use a comfortable font during your writing and editing process then change it to the recommended size before submitting.

4. Type of the Academic work, Essays vs Graphics

The type of academic work dictates the type of font to use for effective delivery. If you are writing an essay, you should use the recommended fonts and sizes as per the writing styles. These styles are MLA, APA, and so on.

You should not use any font which is not official to any writing style. If unsure, it is sensible to consult your instructor and remain on the correct track.

On the other hand, you should also use the correct font when you are working with graphics in your academic projects.

Just like essays, the graphics also have official fonts that students should use when designing and captioning them. Sticking to the rules makes your work hold a professional appeal.

Graphics are the perfect ways of presenting information to make readers create the right perceptions at a glance. Luckily, you should caption them with the recommended fonts and sizes for better delivery.

5. Personal Preference

What appeals to one writer differs from what makes a different writer excited and comfortable. What does that mean? Different writers have varying impressions about what fonts and sizes work for them.

If the instructions for your projects are open to allow you to use multiple fonts from the given list, you should settle for your favorite from the list.

That implies that the instructor may be marking papers that will come with varying font types according to the writer’s preference from the given list of options.

6. Readability

There is no secret in this. Some fonts are more readable than others.

For example, when you are using Times New Roman as your favorite font, it will consume less space but score high on legibility.

Remember, a readable document is an attractive document. Do not compromise on this. Use the right font that is legible and easy to read.

Based on the recommended fonts for particular styles, choose the one that looks more attractive.

Check out our tips on how to name a research paper for more guidance on how to prepare your paper before submitting it. This may improve the clarity of your file and promote grading.

When not handling complex essays and academic writing tasks, Josh is busy advising students on how to pass assignments. In spare time, he loves playing football or walking with his dog around the park.

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