Monospace/Fixed Width Programmer's Fonts

About This Page
Becoming frustrated with source code not aligning in my favorite source editor I decided to hunt for the best font. In particular, I began to hunt down the available fixed-width or monospaced fonts.

What are monospaced fonts you ask? From Xerox:

Monospace fonts (Such as Courier or LetterGothic), or "fixed pitch" fonts, contain characters that all have the same character width, producing text that can be used to create forms, tabular material or documents that require exact text line lengths. An example of a fixed pitch font is Courier 12 pitch, which is a 10 point font that will print at exactly 12 characters per inch.

Why use monospaced fonts? Primarily because the text will align more readily. Especially is areas like the comment block header. Updated versions of this document will be located at

Good Programming Font Criteria
  • Crisp clear characters.
  • Extended characterset.
  • Good use of whitespace.
  • 'l', '1' and 'i' are easily distinguished
  • '0', 'o' and 'O' are easily distinguished
  • forward quotes from back quotes are easily distinguished -prefer mirrored appearance
  • Clear punctuation characters, especially braces, parenthesis and brackets
Fonts Reviewed (Best Listed First) (View All) (Name, Sizes -Fontinfo, Type, Description, Download Info)

  1. Bitstream Vera Sans Mono (View Sample)
    • 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 36, 48, 72
    • TrueType
    • Plenty of space between lines, dotted zeros, clean.
    • http://www.gnome.org/fonts/
  2. ti92pluspc (View Sample)
  3. Crystal (View Sample)
  4. Monaco (View Sample)
  5. Anonymous (View Sample)
  6. Andale Mono (View Sample)
  7. Raize (View Sample)
  8. ProFontWindows (View Sample)
  9. Sheldon (View Sample)
  10. BSU Kermit (View Sample)
  11. Lucida Sans Typewriter Regular (View Sample)
  12. Courier New (View Sample)
  13. Courier (View Sample)
    • 10, 12, 15
    • TrueType
    • Clean but spread out, no zero treatment.
    • Installed with Windows
  14. Lucida Console (View Sample)
  15. ProggyTiny (View Sample)
  16. ProggyClean (View Sample)
  17. Fixedsys (View Sample)
  18. Topaz-8 (View Sample)
    • 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 36, 48, 72
    • TrueType
    • Amiga Topaz-8. Little space between lines, slashed zeros, fat/squat text
    • Amiga_Topaz-8.zip
  19. Free Monospaced (View Sample)
  20. MS Mincho (View Sample)
    • 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 16, 18, 20, 22, 24, 26, 28, 36, 48, 72
    • TrueType
    • No Zero treatment, clear text
    • Installed with Windows or Office. Try Google.
  21. Hyperfont (View Sample)
  22. Squareshooter Mono (View Sample)

Not Yet Reviewed

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