What best combination of fonts for Serif, Sans, and Mono do you recommend?

Question

Now that Xe(La)TeX is being increasingly used to deliver nifty documents, I am wondering if any recommendations have been published or discussed about the best combination of font families for mixing Serif, Sans Serif, and Monospace.

For example, I know that Kieran Healy uses a nice combination of Minion Pro, Myriad Pro, and Pragmata (a LaTeX template is available at kjh-vita). Likewise, according to the American Association of University Presses, Minion, ITC New Baskerville and FF Scala & 4. FF Scala Sans are the top three best fonts, but see Top Typefaces Used by Book Design Winners. I have been playing myself with Apple Garamond, Fontin Sans and Menlo (Apple default monospaced font shipped with OS X 10.6), because all are available with any combination of \itshape and \bfseries (as described in The XeTeX Companion).

So my question is just: What would you recommend as pretty looking and freely available fonts for typesetting a TeX or LaTeX document? Ideally, this should allow to use mathematical expressions as well. (one response per post please)

Answer 1

I prefer a combination of Linux Libertine for serif, Inconsolata for monospace and Calibri or Linux Biolinum for sans serif. Linux Libertine is burgeoning and has nice ligatures, swashes and all that, including a rather pleasing swashed capital Q. Prior to Libertine, I favoured Cambria for serif, considering it unusual but professional, but eventually decided that its serifs were far too heavy. I also considered Cambria unsuitable from the outset as a maths font, to the point that back when I used Word 2007 I fell back on Microsoft Equation Editor 3.0 (i.e. the equation object available in Office) rather than the built-in equation editor. I'm not sure what font it uses but at the time I considered it nicer than maths set in CM.

Both Inconsolata and Consolas are top-notch monospace fonts.

Answer 2

Palatino, Bera, and AMS Euler

I have really been enjoying AMS Euler as a math font lately. If you need completely free fonts, then I think that Palatino + Euler + Bera Serif/Sans/Mono for code, etc. is a pretty workable combination. (This is essentially the default combination used by the ClassicThesis package.) Both Palatino and Euler were designed by Hermann Zapf and work quite well together.

This combination can be used in almost any LaTeX installation, making it a viable combination for the arXiv for example. One must be a little careful to scale the Bera to match the x-height of the Palatino though, or it looks quite strange, but once this is adjusted, the combination looks quite reasonable. (Palatino Sans would probably be the best match, but is not "free".)

\documentclass{scrreprt}
\usepackage[scaled=0.88]{beraserif}
\usepackage[scaled=0.85]{berasans}
\usepackage[scaled=0.84]{beramono}
\usepackage{classicthesis}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage{mathpazo}
\linespread{1.05}
\usepackage[T1,small,euler-digits]{eulervm}

\newenvironment{note}[1][Note:]{%
  \par\vspace{0.5\baselineskip}%
  \sffamily\small\linespread{1.05}\selectfont
  \noindent\ignorespaces%
  #1
}{%
  \vspace{0.5\baselineskip}%
  \par\noindent\ignorespacesafterend%
}
\usepackage{listings}
\lstset{basicstyle=\ttfamily,breaklines=true}

\setkomafont{disposition}{}
\setkomafont{section}{}
\titleformat{\section}
            {\usekomafont{disposition}\usekomafont{section}}
            {\llap{\textsc{\MakeTextLowercase{\thesection}}\hspace{0.7em}}}
            {0pt}
            {\usekomafont{disposition}\usekomafont{section}\spacedlowsmallcaps}

\newcommand{\I}{\mathrm{i}}
\begin{document}
\chapter{Introduction}
\section{Palatino and Bera with Euler}
This style use Palatino for a body font, with $AMS\ Euler$ font for math: $y =
\sin(x)$:
\begin{equation}
  y = \int_0^x\cos(x)\,\mathrm{d}{x} = \frac{e^{\I x} - e^{-\I x}}{2\I}
\end{equation}
Both fonts were designed by Hermann Zapf and work quite well together
as long as you use the small characters --
\lstinline|\usepackage[small,euler-digits]{eulervm}|.  Code listings, etc. can
be typeset with \texttt{Bera Mono} to give it a slightly different feel.  Again:
you must be careful to scale this appropriately --
\lstinline|\usepackage[scaled=0.88]{beraserif}| and
\lstinline|\usepackage[scaled=0.85]{berasans}|, and
\lstinline|usepackage[scaled=0.84]{beramono}|.

\begin{note}
  I sometimes use Bera Sans for extended admonitions like this one so that they
  can quickly be separated from the text.
\end{note}

\end{document}

Answer 3

The Google Font Directory is worth browsing. It’s targeted at web authors but many (all? didn’t check) of the fonts found there are published under SIL license and thus can be used in other projects as well.

One font (also found there) that I really like is Vollkorn which has a nice, rounded, distinctive look that is still very readable.

Answer 4

My university recommends the Microsoft family: Cambria for serif, Calibri for sans, Cambria Math for math, and Consolas for monospace. They all came with my Mac. I'm not sure that the university's recommendation is the most informed one, but those are designed to go together.

To see these in a sample document, insert the following into your preamble

\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{Cambria}
\setsansfont{Calibri}
\setmathrm{Cambria Math}
\setmonofont{Consolas}

(and use XeTeX.)

Answer 5

I'm strictly an amateur in this department ... If you don't want to buy PragmataPro (which I love, and for me was worth buying because I use it as my default text-editing font), Bera Mono is also quite nice and it comes with texlive. Consolas/Inconsolata is great as well, as you say. Myriad Pro used to come bundled with Adobe Reader (I'm not sure about the current version). For body text, Charis SIL is a good, free descendant of Bitstream Charter. Super-complete sets from big foundries are indeed often extremely pricey, but there's also a market segment -- something like, e.g., Calluna -- where the fonts are more reasonably priced and work very well if your document is not extremely complicated in its structure. As you say, though, if you want to typeset any amount of math your choices narrow down quickly.

Answer 6

Minion and Myriad always come with Acrobat Reader, for free, and can be downloaded as a font pack for Linux or found at C:\Program Files (x86)\Adobe\Reader 10.0\Resource\Font or some similar directory structure on Windows. If you ever install other Adobe products, even as a trial, you might have even more choices.

Answer 7

Here is the combination I'm using for my thesis:

• Serif: TeX Gyre Pagella
• Math: TeX Gyre Pagella Math
• Sans: URW Classico
• Greek Sans: Segoe UI
• Monospace: Lucida Sans Typewriter

Since I wanted to have the same font (family) for math and running text, I chose Pagella as the main font from the little list of choice. URW Classico is a Optima clone and can be downloaded for free in some URW bundles. It fits very well to Palatino (clones). Infact it works too well in the running text, hence you cannot use it as emphasis. But I only used it for the chapter title and the figure text. In the figures I also needed sometimes greek letters. The URW Classico has only two or three of them and they look really ugly. Therefor I used Segoe UI for the greek sans alphabet. I took Lucida Sans Typewriter, because it has the typewriter character some monospace fonts are missing. On the other hand it does not look too thin and wide as Courier New in my eyes.

Example code:

% !TeX program=xelatex
% !TeX encoding=UTF-8
\documentclass[a5paper, 10pt]{scrartcl}

\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{amsmath}
%%%%%
% Font
%
\usepackage{unicode-math}
%
% Roman
%
\setmainfont[Ligatures=TeX, Numbers=OldStyle,
    SmallCapsFeatures={LetterSpace=10, WordSpace={1.5}}]{TeX Gyre Pagella}
%
% Math
%
\setmathfont[math-style=ISO, bold-style=ISO]{TeX Gyre Pagella Math}
% put limits over the integral
\removenolimits{\int}
% cramped style for inline math
% (only works with lualatex)
%\everymath{\crampedtextstyle}
%
% Sans
%
\setsansfont[Scale=MatchLowercase,Ligatures=TeX]{URWClassico}
%
% Monospace
%
\setmonofont[Scale=MatchLowercase]{Lucida Sans Typewriter}
% used for tables
\def\liningnumbers{\addfontfeature{Numbers=Lining}}

%
% Sans mu and Omega
%
\newfontfamily\mufont[Scale=MatchLowercase]{Segoe UI}
\def\sansmu{{\mufont µ}}
\def\sansOmega{{\mufont Ω}}

\usepackage{microtype}

\usepackage{url}

\begin{document}
    \section{Introduction}
    Here is some random text that should present the font combination
    of \TeX{} Gyre Pagella for the running text, \TeX{} Gyre Pagella Math for
    math, URW Classico for sans text and Lucida Sans Typewriter. Here is a
    small math example:
    \begin{equation}
        \int_{0}^{\infty} \mathup{e}^{-\frac12 t^2}\operatorname{d}\! t = \sqrt{\frac{\pi}{2}}\text{.}
    \end{equation} 
    Next, we take a look on some \textsf{sans words}. As you can see, the sans font fits very well, too well if you want to use it to emphasize text.
    And finally a small example for the mono spaced font:
    \url{[email protected]} is an email address. Probably no one will answer.

\end{document}

Answer 8

There's a nice, well-thought-out, apposite link here, though it doesn't adhere to the serif, sans, mono schema: http://laymanslayout.wordpress.com/freefacing/

Edit: After several hours of searching, I think Linux Libertine and Linux Biolinum is the safest, most convenient combination for Linux users. They look good together, and you get ligatures, small caps, etc. I tried to find something that would work well with LidoSTF, and Cabin almost fit the bill, but something seemed off. In any case, Libertine has more features than Lido, and is GPL.

Answer 9

I like Courier (note: not Courier New!) for mono, Marion for roman, and Cambria Math for math. They are a bit different weight, but scaling to x-height helps. Unfortunately, it should be mentioned, Marion lacks smallcaps.

\documentclass[11pt]{article}
\usepackage[fleqn]{amsmath}
\usepackage{fancyvrb}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\usepackage{unicode-math}
\setmainfont{Marion}
\setmathfont[Scale=MatchLowercase]{Cambria Math}
\setmonofont[Scale=MatchLowercase]{Courier}
\setlength{\textwidth}{24pc}
\setlength{\parindent}{1em}
\fvset{xleftmargin=2\parindent}
\begin{document}
\noindent
A number $n>1$ is prime if it cannot be written as a product of two integers $a$ and~$b$, both of which are larger than~$1$: \[
  n = a \cdot b.
\]

Here, have a \verb|primes| stream:
\begin{Verbatim}
(define (sieve s)
  (cons-stream
    (head s)
    (sieve (filter
            (lambda (x)
              (not
                (divisible? x (head s))))
            (tail s)))))

(define primes
  (sieve (integers-from 2)))
\end{Verbatim}
\end{document}

It looks like this:

Answer 10

How about the Lucida family? It is not free, but very nice.

Answer 11

I usually use TheSansMono condensed for code listing. Otherwise I use Consolas for Mono font.

For serif and sans fonts, and math fonts, below are some pairings I use frequently,

• Minion/Cronos/Minion math
• Minion/Syntax/Minion math
• Scala/Scala sans/Minion math
• Times (Linotype version)/candara/Math time pro 2
• Lucida bright/Lucida sans/Lucida math (new OT version)
• Palatino/optima/PAmath

Most fonts I use are commercial. Just those listed here will set you back by about $2000. So you may consider some free alternatives. I won't recommend the TeX Gyre fonts like Pagella. Their small caps, text figures are crap. Especially Termes and Hero. The only free fonts that I would you are Latin Modern and Euler math

If possible, I recommend get one set of good commercial fonts. The Minion and Times combo above are most versatile ones. You can use them in almost any technical documents. The former is a humanist design while the later is transitional. If a modern font is suitable for your documents, Latin modern is a good choice.

Scala/Palatino combos are a little bit too lively, calligraphic, for some purpose.

Lucida is good when you need to set in small size, with wide measure. It's highly readable.

Answer 12

The recent acmart class (from ACM, see https://ctan.org/pkg/acmart) combines Libertine, Biolinum and Inconsolata using the following pdflatex-compatible setup (I hope I'm not forgetting anything font-relevant from the class) — I just switched my thesis to using it and it seems to be looking extremely good. I'm posting the code because there's a million possible choices (texdoc newtxmath seems especially daunting), but the result looks pretty good.

\usepackage[tt=false]{libertine}
\usepackage[varqu]{zi4}
\usepackage[libertine]{newtxmath}

Only concern I run into: I feel Biolinum bold is not bold enough for the book title on the title page, even though it seems no less bold than Latin Modern Sans—I'd like a bolder or black variant, like Myriad Pro Black or Optima ExtraBlack. But since that's the only exception, I'd consider using a clearly distinct font just for the title (which is unique anyway).

Answer 13

Arkandis Digital Foundry offers a range of free font families. Some have LaTeX support packages for type1 and/or opentype versions; others could be used in the same way as other truetype/opentype fonts.

Answer 14

For anyone coming here and seeing that the often mentioned Font Inconsolata is not available with \usepackage{inconsolata}. The package was renamed and you can use it now with \usepackage{zi4}.

See also this question.

Answer 15

Times + Helvetica + Courier

This combination probably is the most widely used one (except for Knuth's Computer Modern). Although someone may dislike it, I still think it's rather formal and "scientific".

Here, I use the open-source version: XITS (Math) + TeX Gyre Heros + TeX Gyre Cursor.

EB Garamond

EB Garamond is a high-quality open-source humanist serif font. I use Libertinus Sans (a fork of Linux Biolinum) and Latin Modern Mono Light (maybe you can find a better one?) to match with it. EB Garamond has a fork for unicode-math: Garamond-Math.