Addressing the Stylistic Dilemma: Should Font Family Names Be Enclosed in Quotes in CSS?

The debate surrounding the necessity of enclosing font family names in quotes has lingered in the CSS community. This question stemmed from a longstanding "best practice" that has been challenged by modern browsers. Let's delve into the technicalities and logic behind this convention.

Technical Basis

According to the CSS 2.1 specification, font family names can be specified with or without quotes. When unquoted, the name should be a sequence of identifiers. However, identifiers cannot contain spaces or certain punctuation characters. To include these characters, they must be escaped or the name should be quoted.

The rule of thumb recommends quoting font family names that contain whitespace, digits, or punctuation other than hyphens. This recommendation avoids potential errors in escaping.

Practical Implications

In practice, removing quotes from font family names containing spaces does not appear to cause issues in major browsers like Safari and Firefox. This suggests that the "best practice" of using quotes may not be essential for modern browsers. However, there are a few exceptions:

• Keyword Confusion: Font family names that are the same as CSS keywords (e.g., 'serif', 'monospace') must be quoted to prevent confusion.
• Identifiers Requiring Escaping: Punctuation such as / or ! within an identifier may require quoting or escaping.

Recommendation

While modern browsers may not require quotes for font family names containing spaces, quoting names that contain other special characters or match CSS keywords is still a prudent practice. It ensures consistency, clarity, and avoids potential pitfalls.