Using Japanese ClearType fonts in Google Documents

November 23, 2009 11:20 PM by Rick Noelle

I'm a big Google fan and I really like Google Docs. I like being able to easily access all of my documents whether I'm at home, at work, on the road, etc. One thing I use Google docs for frequently is keeping Japanese vocabulary lists. But I've always been a little disappointed that the font "Meiryo" is not available in the font drop-down list (not surprised, just disappointed). Meiryo is a nice Japanese ClearType font that Microsoft released with Windows Vista. It is standard in Windows 7 and available as a free download for Windows XP. See my blog post about using Meiryo when web browsing for more information. As it turns out, Google provides a way to customize the style sheet of a document and this method can be used to very easily change the default paragraph font to Meiryo. Here is how you go about it:

1. Click Edit > CSS

2. Add Meiryo (or the font of your choice) as the default paragraph font:

3. Highlight the text you would like to display as Meiryo and click "Normal Paragraph Text":

That is all you need to do. Once the default paragraph font is Meiryo, your document text will adopt it. You won't need to keep highlighting text and changing it to the normal paragraph font as once it is set, it stays that way until you change it to something else. You can also freely adjust the font size and the style will be maintained. Since Meiryo is a Microsoft Windows font, these instructions are specific to Windows but I'm sure they apply to Mac OS and Linux as well. You would just need to indicate the appropriate font in step two. Below are before and after shots of a sample document I created to show what a difference a nice Japanese font makes in Google Docs.

Before Customizing The Style Sheet:

After Customizing The Style Sheet:

I hope you've found this tip helpful. Thanks for reading.