Typekit Practice

Linking multiple fonts into a single family

Sean McBride, writing for Typekit:

Linking multiple fonts into a single font-family name allows us to access the individual weights and styles within the family with ease. As a bonus, when default rules for weight and style are applied by the browser (like bold for <strong> and italic for <em>), the correct fonts from the family are automatically selected, because the relationship between fonts has been properly described in a way that browsers can understand.

This is much better than linking each weight and style into a separate font-family name (like “ProximaNovaRegular”). Having a separate font-family name for each weight and style requires us to redefine the entire font-family stack (including fallbacks) over and over every time a new weight or style is called for. It also breaks browser default styles, and worse, it can cause some browsers to synthesize faux bold and oblique styles for fonts.