The font family specified in the Cascading Style Sheets for the body text on this site is Bitstream Vera Sans, so if you’re using a modern browser and you have Bitstream Vera Sans installed on your computer, then that’s what you’ll see. If not, your browser will render the text in an alternative font.

“Ah,” you say, “but I do not have this Bitstream Vera Sans thingy. Will it cost me much moolah to acquire it?”

No! You can get the TrueType font files right here, right now, for free. And you can get Bitstream Vera Sans Mono, which I also call out on the style sheets for this site, for <code> and <tt> elements. And you can get Bitstream Vera Serif too, which I’m not using at the moment, but who knows what the future holds?

You can download the individual font styles, or the whole Vera family — and in your choice of compressed archive format, Zip (.zip) or StuffIt (.sit). (Need help decompressing archives? Note: this link opens in a new browser window.)

Bitstream Vera Sans

Vera Sans makes a pleasant alternative to that favourite web font, Verdana. Like Verdana, it has a fairly high x-height, but is a little more condensed, and more rounded. Verdana is quite a cool typeface; Vera Sans is a little warmer and cuddlier.

You can download the four TrueType font files here:

Zip format or StuffIt format

Bitstream Vera Sans Mono

Fancy a change from Andale Mono or Courier for monospaced applications? Vera Sans Mono might fill the bill nicely. Looking like a number of electric typewriter typefaces, it is more modern than Courier and less like the output of a dot matrix printer than Andale Mono.

You can download the four TrueType font files here:

Zip format or StuffIt format

Bitstream Vera Serif

Sharing some of the virtues of Matthew Carter’s Georgia, Vera Serif also makes a good screen font — an unusual characteristic amongst serif typefaces. Although the set lacks a true italic or oblique face, it survives the tilting, fake italicisation applied by many software programs quite well.

You can download the two TrueType font files here:

Zip format or StuffIt format

If you want all of the Vera fonts, you can download the complete set here:

Zip format or StuffIt format

This page was last modified on Thursday, February 26, 2009