Very often increasing the line height of a font can improve its legibility and appearance. In the example below, I have changed the line height of both Armata and Alegreya Sans from normal to 24px, increasing the line height of Armata and reducing the line height of Alegreya Sans:
As you can see, both fonts now have the same line height as well as x-height, but what about the letter spacing? Although I am not a fan of using condensed fonts for your main text, sometimes the letter spacing of some fonts can look a bit wide and their appearance can be improved by reducing that spacing. See Below:
By reducing both the above fonts by just one pixel it doesn't condense the fonts but reduces the space between the letters. Personally, I believe this improves the appearance of both fonts.
Next up Armata/Josefin Sans comparison.
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I understand that WordPress is removing Google's 'Open Sans'
font option.
Would you know what that means for WP users? Web designers and coders don't seem to like this. Do you know why this is an issue for some people? ~Jude
Secondly, I'm not sure whether this applies to just the WP default Twenty series of themes or all themes. Below is a screenshot of a WordPress plugin that mentions removing fonts from default WP themes. I find it strange that WordPress has a plugin to remove these fonts when they are still named in the latest updated themes stylesheets.
I installed the Twenty Fifteen theme on a test site and changed the 'Noto Serif', serif to 'Open Sans', sans serif, with no problem, unless it would not appear as Open Sans on someone else's browser. As websites built at WA use the WP platform, maybe Kyle or Carson could clarify exactly what it means to WA members.
I have since learned that the removal of Open Sans is from the Admin area of WordPress. See discussion below if you are interested:
https://wptavern.com/wordpress-4-6-to-drop-open-sans-in-the-admin-in-favor-of-system-fonts
It makes more sense now.
I'd like to remove - fonts.googleapis link altogether from my theme. I get a message when speed testing that the CSS needs to be optimized. It must have been included as default by the theme creator because I don't knowingly use google fonts on my site. ~Jude
