Choosing Hindi fonts for print, and which to avoid

The font is the voice of the page. For a book that people will read for hours, it matters more than many authors realise.

Start with how it will be used

A novel needs a font that is easy on the eyes at a small size over many pages. A heading or a title can be bolder and more decorative. Do not use the same font for everything.

For body text, look for a font that is clean, has an even rhythm, and does not tire the eye. Serif style fonts, which have small strokes at the ends of letters, are common for long reading in print. Some clean sans serif fonts also work.

Fonts to look at

There are a number of fonts designed for Devanagari that are free to use and widely available. Examples include the Noto family (Noto Serif Devanagari and Noto Sans Devanagari), Mukta, Hind and Sarala. Each has a different feel.

Always check the licence of any font before using it in a printed book. Many are free for commercial use, but not all.

How to test a font

Do not pick from a sample sentence. Set a full page of your own text in each candidate and print it. Then check:

• Comfort. Read a page. Does it feel smooth, or does something catch the eye?
• Conjuncts. Are all the combined letters clear and well shaped?
• Weight. Is the text too thin, so it fades on cream paper, or too heavy?
• Matras and dots. Do the small marks stay clear and distinct at the size you will print?
• Numbers and punctuation. Check that digits and quotation marks look right, and decide whether to use Devanagari or Western numerals consistently.
• Mixed text. If your book includes English words, check how the two scripts look side by side. Sometimes one font makes the English look too small or too large.

Size and spacing

Devanagari often needs to be set a little larger than Roman text to feel equally readable, since the letters have more detail. Line spacing should be more generous. Try a few combinations in print and compare.

Fonts to be careful with

• Very decorative fonts for body text. They look good in a heading and tire the eye over a chapter.
• Old legacy fonts, which depend on special encodings and may display wrongly on other systems. We cover this in another post.
• Fonts with limited letters. If a font lacks some conjuncts or the nukta forms, you will get gaps or substitutes.
• Any font you cannot legally use in a book that is sold.

Keep it simple

One font for body text and one for headings is usually enough. More than two starts to look untidy.

Finally, ask a few readers to look at two pages in different fonts and tell you which is easier. Their reaction is more useful than any rule.