Tips For Choosing A Headstone Font

Choosing a headstone for a family member who has recently passed requires you to make clear decisions on the size, shape, and even the color of the stone. You'll also not only need to think about the wording and/or images that you'll use to honor the life of this important person, but also the font that you'll choose for the words to be engraved in. Your headstone supplier can show you a variety of fonts that you can use, as well as images of different headstones that have used each of the fonts that you might be thinking about. Here are some tips for choosing a suitable headstone font.

Keep It Simple

Headstone companies can engrave a variety of fancy fonts into headstones, and while this idea may work well for some customers, it's not always suitable. A big challenge of some of the more unique fonts — especially if they're cursive — is that they can be difficult to read. You don't want one letter slightly looking like another on your loved one's headstone, nor do you want visitors to the cemetery having trouble picking out the headstone because they can't decipher the wording on it with ease. This may especially be the case with older people. You generally can't go wrong with a simple, legible font.

Find A Shallow One

Some fonts cut deeper into the headstone than others. Your headstone provider can talk to you about which fonts are deeper and which are shallower. There can be advantages to deeper fonts — for example, there can be more of a contrast between the font and the surface of the headstone, which can often make these fonts easier to read. One drawback, however, is that if the headstone is in a shaded area, the deepness of the fonts can attract moss because they don't get enough full sun to dry them. Over time, this can mean that the fond gets mossy and becomes difficult to read or requires regularly cleaning.

Capitals Work Well

Regardless of the specific font that you choose for the headstone, you should generally plan to have each word written in capital letters. While it may seem conventional to only capitalize the first letter of any proper nouns or important words, this idea may not give you the desired appearance. You'll normally find that headstones are lettered all in capitals; if you visit a cemetery to assess different monuments, you may even find that those with lower-case letters look a little awkward.

Contact a company, like Maurice Moore Memorials, for more help.