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It wasn’t that long ago I mentioned a new book about learning HTML and CSS from scratch, published online for free. Well, now there’s another one. This time the subject is typography on the web.

It’s called Professional Web Typography by Donny Truong. It’s a fairly quick read but it squeezes in plenty of handy practical advice with chapters on delivering web fonts, selecting body text, setting type in the browser, choosing headings, picking type for UI, seeing typographic details, and practicing typography.

Needless to say, the book is itself very nicely typeset. And you can pay what you want.

Legibility

Mary Dyson’s short book is available for free online as a lovely web book:

1. What do we mean by legibility?
2. How we read
3. Perspectives on legibility
4. What is measured and how
5. Overview of research: Type
6. Overview of research: Typography
7. Beyond legibility research

ET Book · Edward Tufte on GitHub

I’ve always loved the way that Edward Tufte consistently uses Bembo to typeset his books. Here’s a version made for screen and freely licensed.

Typography Handbook

You can think of this as a short book or a long article, but either way it’s a handy overview of typography on the web:

A concise, referential guide on best web typographic practices.

Mind you, I take issue with this assertion:

Establishing a vertical rhythm is simple.