# What Font Do You Use For Tombstones?



## skeletonowl

Hey guys. What font do you recomend for tombstones? I'm redoing mine and need some ideas. I want to make sure every stone has the same font so it doesn't look uneven even though real gravestones vary. I also plan to actually carve it in next year.

Post what you use! :jol:


----------



## beelce

I used about 8 different fonts because real stones are made by different people at different times...I'll try to look it up and give you the names


----------



## Lilly

I agree with beelce about different ones

some of mine don't have anything on them.
It all depends on what tickles your fancy at the time.


----------



## spideranne

Here are the one's I've used.

Anglican Text
Fiddums Family
Spirits
Dango


----------



## berzerkmonkey

If you're looking for realistic fonts, I'd recommend the following:

1600-1700's - Caslon Antique, Casablanca Antique, Chanticleer Roman NF
1800-1900's - Edwardian Script, Monotype Corsiva, Copperplate Gothic, Engraver's MT

Another good bet would be to look around at real tombstone photos and find a font you like. Then, go to a free font site and look around. Also, you could try a font identifier, like WhatTheFont, and try to figure out a close approximation of something you like.

If you're looking for creepy fonts though, just go to a free font site and search for horror fonts. You'll find tons of stuff.


----------



## RoxyBlue

Old English Text MT is nice as well and comes with Microsoft Word.


----------



## kevin242

One of my favorites to use a type called "Demon", and use Word art in MS Word to create the text effect...


----------



## Front Yard Fright

I've spent many hours on dafont.com downloading all kinds of fonts. Like the others have said, it's all about what you like. Go there and check out some of their stuff. They've got a huge selection!

Keep in mind though, the more detail in the font, the harder and more time it will take to carve each stone!
Happy Haunting!
:jol:.


----------



## fontgeek

Sorry to rain on your parade but...
If you want your stones to look realistic, avoid the script and exotic typefaces. Keep in mind that the lettering was carve into the stones by hand, so all those little curliques would take days or weeks to carve, and the cutters had to deal with the texture of the stone they had to cut into.
More realistic historical styles would be Trajan Bold for the upper class, and faces like Arial for the poorer classes. Lettering and exotic artwork were expensive, so they were generally kept to a minimum. The more lettering and artwork done, the more chances there were and are of ruining the entire stone.

If you are looking for total fantasy...
The field is wide open. Just keep in mind that if these are to be readable by people walking by at night, that the fancier they are, the harder they are to read, even with spotlights on them, and the harder they are to read, the longer people will take to read them, or, they just walk away without understanding what you tried to convey.

For "carving" the delicate stuff, you might look at a stencil burner from your local art supply store that deals with the airbrushing industry. This is like a soldering iron, but with a fine, bent nosed tip, so it makes it easy to get fine detail from most foams. Do some practice on scrap before you go at the final piece, and don't forget that you are probably going to have a layer or two of paint coating the stone after you have "carved" it


----------

