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Not everyone has a Helvetica font installed; at least add the generic sans-serif as a fallback. (Though if the aim is to be reminiscent of a print newspaper, a serif font may still be the better choice.)

Why disable kerning? If the user's font has kerning information, surely a newspaper should respect it.

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You're completely right. Helvetica was just a suggestion as most newspapers use it and is widely supported, but he could and should add fallbacks (preferally sans-serif based). As for the kerning it appears something was messing up the spacing for his website and the combination of disabling kerning and letter spacing (even if counter-intuitive) seems to 'make it prettier' at least in firefox.

I'm a bit surprised by the statement that "most newspapers use it [Helvetica]", as my perception is that they mostly use a serif font. (How do you suppose Times Roman got its name?)

But perhaps this varies between markets/regions/languages/etc.

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