The standard font packages make global changes to the fonts in my document. What if I want to use a particular font for just a portion of my text?
There are separate answers for different flavors of TeX (quick links):
This is actually the hardest part. When you load a regular font package like helvet (which sets the default sans serif font to a Helvetica clone) it issues commands to set up the font using an internal name (Berry name), which is hidden to regular users. These names traditionally use a system of three or four letter lower case names for each font family. Usually these names are documented in documentation associated with the font.
Here is a list of the most common fonts, and their codes:
Family Font Name pag Avant Garde fvs Bitstream Vera Sans pbk Bookman bch Charter ccr Computer Concrete cmr Computer Modern pcr Courier ugm Garamond phv Helvetica fi4 (zi4) Inconsolata lmr Latin Modern lmss Latin Modern Sans lmtt Latin Modern Typewriter LinuxBiolinumT-OsF Linux Biolinum (formerly 'fxb' in older package versions) LinuxLibertineT-OsF Linux Libertine (formerly 'fxl' in older package versions) pnc New Century Schoolbook ppl Palatino qag TeX Gyre Adventor qbk TeX Gyre Bonum qzc TeX Gyre Chorus qcr TeX Gyre Cursor qhv TeX Gyre Heros qpl TeX Gyre Pagella qcs TeX Gyre Schola qtm TeX Gyre Termes ptm Times uncl Uncial put Utopia pzc Zapf Chancery
For some Greek fonts the codes are:
Artemisia artemisia
Baskerville gfsbaskerville
Bodoni bodoni
Complutum complutum
Didot udidot
Neohellenic neohellenic
Porson porson
Solomos solomos
Greek Times txr
Kerkis mak
LX llcmss
Default lmr
For others you can look at the fontname.pdf file here on page 4. See also the questions Berry naming scheme list of LaTeX font families and Quickest way to search for valid \fontfamily arguments? on this topic.
If you don't find any documentation for the font, as a last resort (or a first resort once you know what you are doing) you can open the .sty file that actually loads the font and see for yourself what the internal font family name is (or you could search inside it with grep). Here are two examples:
From helvet.sty: at the end of the package is the line:
\renewcommand{\sfdefault}{phv}
This sets the default sans font (\sfdefault) to the phv family, so phv is the internal name of the font.
From PTSansCaption.sty, you will find the following line:
\renewcommand{\sfdefault}{PTSansCaption-TLF}
Here, the internal name is closer to its file name: PTSansCaption-TLF.
Both of these examples have shown the code for changing the default sans serif font. If the font package changes the roman or mono font you would look for the following commands respectively
\renewcommand{\rmdefault}{...}
\renewcommand{\ttdefault}{...}
To select a font, you use the following commands:
\fontfamily{<familyname>}\selectfont
It's often useful to wrap this in a macro:
\newcommand*{\myfont}{\fontfamily{<familyname>}\selectfont}
You can always restrict the scope of font changing commands by enclosing the text in braces:
{\fontfamily{<familyname>}\selectfont ...}
or if using a command
{\myfont ...}
or, to make the scope of the command more visible in your file if you don't have a brace-matching editor
\begingroup
\myfont ...
\endgroup
If this is something you will be doing a lot, it would make more sense to turn it into a proper environment:
\newenvironment{myfont}{\fontfamily{<familyname>}\selectfont}{\par}
Then you use it like any other environment:
\begin{myfont}
Some text in the new font.
\end{myfont}
You can also define a command corresponding to the standard font changing commands such as \textrm or \textsf, but using your particular font:
\DeclareTextFontCommand{\textmyfont}{\myfont}
Use this like the standard commands:
Text in the default font. \textmyfont{Text in the new font.} Again text in the default font.
An advantage of this command over the simpler version described above is automatic italic correction, cf. Why use \DeclareTextFontCommand vs. just \newcommand?.
(except ccr Compute Concrete).
\calligra command that applies only to the current block, however for some packages (like tug.dk/FontCatalogue/tgchorus) set the default font for the entire document. Must one reset this (using \renewcommand) right after the \usepackage command and then use the \myfont macro you describe?
Commented
Oct 24, 2015 at 13:40
\newcommand*{\myfont}{\fontfamily{<familyname>}\selectfont} or \newenvironment{myfont}{\fontfamily{<familyname>}\selectfont}{\par} and then in the text begin/end, the text does not get justified and it exceeds the set width of the text. Is it possible to fix this?
The appearance of XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX has simplified font selection greatly for LaTeX users, since any font installed on your system can be used with these engines using the fontspec package to load the font.
Both XeLaTeX and LuaLaTeX assume by default UTF-8 input, so you should not load the inputenc package when using them, and you should save your source files as UTF-8.
A basic document will therefore look like the following:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\setmainfont{<any font on your system>}
\begin{document}
...
\end{document}
Selecting fonts globally
For a whole document, you can set the roman font, the sans serif font and the monospace font with the following commands:
\setmainfont[<font features>]{<name of font>} % sets the roman font
\setsansfont[<font features>]{<name of font>} % sets the sans font
\setmonofont[<font features>]{<name of font>} % sets the monospace font
Selecting fonts locally
If you want to use a font for a small section of your document it's best to define a new font family.
\newfontfamily\myfont[<font features>]{<name of font>}
This sets up a switch called \myfont which changes the font to that font.
(It is also possible to select a font directly using the \fontspec command, but this is generally to be avoided, since the \newfontfamily method is much more efficient.) This switch behaves exactly like \rmfamily or sffamily (except that it is called \myfont and switches to the font assigned to it).
Font Features
Since fontspec package provides access to OpenType fonts, it is able to provide access to many of the special features that come with these fonts. These features can be selected using the optional argument of any font selection command. See the fontspec documentation for more details. I'll outline a couple of commonly used features here.
[Ligatures=TeX] This feature allows you to use regular TeX ligatures (which are not turned on by default in fontspec. Especially if you are used to e.g. typing LaTeX style quotation marks or -- and --- instead of typing the actual characters directly, you should always turn on this option.[Numbers=OldStyle] This feature turns on lower case numbers[Scale=MatchLowercase] This feature is used to scale e.g. the sans or mono font to match (in this example) the lower case characters of the roman font. Another option is MatchUppercase; alternatively a numeric scaling value can be given.See the fontspec documentation for a full description of the wealth of features that can be specified.
If you are setting separate roman, mono, and sans fonts or creating new font families, you often want to have the same font features specified for all. You can do this by using the \defaultfontfeatures command:
\defaultfontfeatures{Ligatures=TeX} % makes this a feature for all selected fonts
If you are using system fonts, you can use the name of the font as it appears in any GUI application on your system. (On a Mac, these are usually the fonts in /Library/Fonts; on Windows they are usually in \Windows\Fonts; on Linux the usual place is /usr/local/share/fonts. For example:
\setmainfont{Linux Libertine O}
\newfontfamily\myfont{Linux Libertine O}
There's really no sense in listing font names here, but I'll add some examples of what the names can look like:
These names are not the filenames of the fonts. If you have some sort of font manager GUI like Font Book on the Mac, the names are displayed there. On Windows you can find the names in the Fonts preview section of the control panel.
Notice that spaces that normally appear in the name of the font must also be present when you choose the font using fontspec.
If you want to list the fonts which support a certain language (since fonts usually support only part of the Unicode character), you can use the fc-list command. For example, to find fonts which support Chinese, first find the language code of Chinese, i.e., zh, then we use the following command
fc-list :lang=zh
to show the list of fonts supporting Chinese. Output will be something like:
/usr/share/fonts/custom/STLITI.TTF: STLiti,华文隶书:style=Regular
/usr/share/fonts/custom/SourceHanSerifSC-Regular.otf: Source Han Serif SC,思源宋体:style=Regular
/usr/share/fonts/wqy-microhei/wqy-microhei.ttc: WenQuanYi Micro Hei Mono,文泉驛等寬微米黑,文泉驿等宽微米黑:style=Regular
/usr/share/fonts/custom/simhei.ttf: SimHei,黑体:style=Regular,Normal,obyčejné,Standard,Κανονικά,Normaali,Normál,Normale,Standaard,Normalny,Обычный,Normálne,Navadno,Arrunta
/usr/share/fonts/custom/SIMLI.TTF: LiSu,隶书:style=Regular
/usr/share/fonts/custom/STXINWEI.TTF: STXinwei,华文新魏:style=Regular
/usr/share/fonts/wqy-zenhei/wqy-zenhei.ttc: WenQuanYi Zen Hei Sharp,文泉驛點陣正黑,文泉驿点阵正黑:style=Regular
/usr/share/fonts/custom/simfang.ttf: FangSong,仿宋:style=Regular,Normal,obyčejné,Standard,Κανονικά,Normaali,Normál,Normale,Standaard,Normalny,Обычный,Normálne,Navadno,Arrunta
/usr/share/fonts/wqy-microhei/wqy-microhei.ttc: WenQuanYi Micro Hei,文泉驛微米黑,文泉驿微米黑:style=Regular
/usr/share/fonts/custom/FZYTK.TTF: FZYaoTi,方正姚体:style=Regular
The font name is after the font location, for example, STLiti.
You can always restrict the scope of font changing commands by enclosing the text in braces:
{\myfont ...}
or, to make the scope of the command more visible in your file if you don't have a brace-matching editor
\begingroup
\myfont ...
\endgroup
If this is something you will be doing a lot, it would make more sense to turn it into a proper environment:
\newenvironment{myfont}{\myfont}{\par}
Then you use it like any other environment:
\begin{myfont}
Some text in the new font.
\end{myfont}
You can also define a command corresponding to the standard font changing commands such as \textrm or \textsf, but using your particular font:
\DeclareTextFontCommand{\textmyfont}{\myfont}
Use this like the standard commands:
Text in the default font. \textmyfont{Text in the new font.} Again text in the default font.
An advantage of this command over the simpler version described above is automatic italic correction, cf. Why use \DeclareTextFontCommand vs. just \newcommand?.
{\Linux Libertine O ...}?
\myfont is the literally the macro that is created when you use \newfontfamily\myfont{Name of Font}. It is not the name of the font, but whatever name you choose to use as the macro to switch to that font. As for finding the names of fonts, on a Mac it is the name displayed in Font Book (or in the Font menu of any Mac application.) Similarly on other OSes, it is the name that is used in GUI applications, not the font filename.
Commented
Jun 23, 2017 at 14:02
\par in the environment, because it's only at the ends of paragraphs that TeX applies the changes.
Commented
Aug 21, 2018 at 15:31
In ConTeXt MkIV it is easy to use a font for a small section. For larger parts of text I would recommend to use the Simplefonts module or to write typescripts, because larger parts probably contain font switches that change the style.
First you have to install the font, if
not already done. On Unix you can use the directory $HOME/.fonts
for a per user or e.g. /usr/local/share/fonts for a system wide
installation. You have to point the environment variable OSFONTDIR to the
directory where the fonts can be found:
export OSFONTDIR="/usr/local/share/fonts;$HOME/.fonts"
Then run
mtxrun --script fonts --reload
to regenerate the font database. Now you can query the database. This gives you a list of all available fonts:
mtxrun --script fonts --list --all
Here are the first ten lines of this list:
ams wncysc10 wncysc10.afm
amsbold wncyb10 wncyb10.afm
amsmedium wncysc10 wncysc10.afm
antpoltbold antpoltbold antpolt-bold.otf
antpoltbolditalic antpoltbolditalic antpolt-bolditalic.otf
antpoltcondbold antpoltcondbold antpoltcond-bold.otf
antpoltcondbolditalic antpoltcondbolditalic antpoltcond-bolditalic.otf
antpoltconditalic antpoltconditalic antpoltcond-italic.otf
antpoltcondregular antpoltcondregular antpoltcond-regular.otf
antpoltexpdbold antpoltexpdbold antpoltexpd-bold.otf
You get three columns the second being the normalised (all lower-case, no special characters, no spaces) name and the third being the file name (in lower-case).
You can run the list through grep or use the built-in mechanism to search
for particular fonts:
mtxrun --script fonts --list --pattern=deli* --all
gives
delicious deliciousbold Delicious-Bold.otf
deliciousbold deliciousbold Delicious-Bold.otf
deliciousbolditalic deliciousbolditalic Delicious-BoldItalic.otf
deliciousheavy deliciousheavy Delicious-Heavy.otf
deliciousitalic deliciousitalic Delicious-Italic.otf
deliciousmedium deliciousitalic Delicious-Italic.otf
deliciousnormal deliciousroman Delicious-Roman.otf
deliciousregular deliciousheavy Delicious-Heavy.otf
deliciousroman deliciousroman Delicious-Roman.otf
delicioussmallcaps delicioussmallcaps Delicious-SmallCaps.otf
Since we deal just with one font without bold or italic font switches (however, the
selected font can of course be bold or italic) we can simply use \definefont:
\definefont [delicious] [name:deliciousroman]
This defines a macro \delicious which switches to the given font. The
name: prefix is used to refer to the normalised name in the font list
(second column). One can also use the file: prefix and use the file name
(third column) without the path.
You can use braces, \start \stop, \begingroup \endgroup or any other
grouping mechanism.
Here is a complete example which uses the font Delicious-Roman (an OpenType
font).
\definefont [delicious] [name:deliciousroman]
\starttext
\start
\delicious
\input knuth
\stop
\input knuth
\stoptext
The output:
The right box indicates that indeed the requested font is being used. Further information can be found one the ConTeXt wiki - Fonts in LuaTeX and the Chapter on fonts.
OSFONTDIR or reloading the font database? For clarification of this very problem please contact the mailing list
simplefonts was superseded by \definefontfamily. There is also a new manual on Fonts in MKIV.
Commented
Sep 23, 2016 at 9:20
As far as delimiting small sections, you can use text property declarations. Fore example, to change the font to teletype and then back to default, follow this example:
\ttfamily http://www.ctan.org\normalfont
Or, use braces to restrict the scope of the change:
{\ttfamily http://www.ctan.org}
You could also create an environment with a declaration, for example when writing multiple lines of code:
\begin{ttfamily}
statement 1;
statement 2;
...
statement n;
\end{ttfamily}
This is an answer with a small working code:
\documentclass{article}
\usepackage{fontspec}
\newfontfamily\myFont{Courier_New.ttf}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\begin{document}
Default \TeX\ font. {\myFont A unicode font.} Again default \TeX\ font.
\end{document}
Here, I have used the Courier new font. To check the available fonts, go to the directory: /usr/share/fonts/. Issueing the following command from here will give you a list of fonts available: find . -type f -name "*.ttf. You any of the font files here in place of Courier_New.ttf in line number 3.
Following is the output:
fontspec you shouldn't be using \usepackage[T1]{fontenc}. Don't load that package at all. And this answer doesn't really cover anything that the existing answers don't already cover.
Commented
Feb 13, 2022 at 19:41