You can inexpensively and effortlessly dress up your heritage scrapbook journaling or your family history book with computer fonts - but the choices are sometimes intimidating. A word processing program such as Microsoft Word might come with 50 fonts; then there are font CD-ROMs and free font Web sites. How do you pick lettering that enlivens your heritage pages without distracting from the photos? Just follow our tips:

Fonts come in two kinds: A serif font has short lines resembling pen strokes at the ends of the letters, and a sans serif font doesn't. (Sans is French for “without.”) Serif fonts are considered easier to read because those little lines “connect” the letters, while sans serif fonts look more streamlined and modern.