A specimen book is meant to answer one question: what does this face look like when it is set as text, rather than as its own name at 72 points. Most online specimens answer a different question, because they load the face over the network and show it in a vacuum.

These pages do neither. Every face here is one your operating system already ships, requested through the same stack a real stylesheet would use. Nothing is downloaded. If a face is missing on your machine you will see the fallback, which is itself the useful information — that is exactly what your readers would get.

1. Georgia Drawn for screens before screens could render it properly. Still the safest serif for body text.
2. The system sans stack Five different typefaces wearing one CSS declaration. What that costs you.
3. The monospace stack Where ui-monospace lands, and why the fallback order matters more here than anywhere else.
4. Palatino A book face pressed into screen duty. Beautiful at 20px, thin at 14.
5. Verdana Engineered for low resolution and still winning at small sizes, whatever its reputation.