Headstone fonts and lettering

What fonts are commonly used on headstones?

Monument makers sort them into four kinds, as Summers Memorials puts it: serif, sans serif, Gothic (also called Blackletter or Old English), and script. Within those, Modified Roman comes up most often. Fox-Becker Granite calls Modified Roman and Condensed Roman “some of the more popular lettering styles used on cemetery stones,” and Marwaa Memorials calls Modified Roman “close to an industry default.”

Each company offers its own list. One online seller, Memorials.com, lists Runestone, Modified Roman, Times New Roman, Vermarco, Helvetica, Govt Text, CQC Script and Albertus on an upright headstone. A monument font is not always the same as the computer font of the same name: fonts on a computer “do not always match the traditional masonry font of the same name,” a Cambridge mason, Ivett & Reed, warns.

The five lettering styles in the studio, on one stone

Here are the same names and dates on the same grey upright, once in each style. The studio uses these faces to show the look; your monument company cuts the closest style from its own set.

What is the best font for a gravestone?

The best font is the one people can read from where they stand. Signature Headstones says you are “typically reading from 3 to 6 feet away,” so look at a proof from that far back.

• Names and dates: a clear serif or block style. McCall Monument recommends “bold, clean lines for primary text like names and dates.”
• Script: save it for a name or a short line. Funeral.com calls script “the most vulnerable to readability issues,” and Signature Headstones says to avoid script in all capitals.
• Capitals or not: capitals suit a few words, like a name. For a longer line, upper and lower case reads more easily and takes less room (Fonts.com).
• Fine strokes: “thinner lines or elaborate flourishes might fade or chip faster over time” (McCall Monument).

The style is only part of it. Marwaa Memorials says contrast between the lettering and the granite “has a bigger impact on legibility than font choice alone.”

How big are the letters on a headstone?

There is no national standard in the United States. Veterans’ stones are set by characters, not inches: on a VA upright, an added line “is limited to 15 characters (including spaces) up to four lines,” and on a flat marker 27 characters on up to two lines (VA Form 40-1330). Arlington National Cemetery fits about 13 characters on the name line of its uprights and 15 on the others.

Where sizes are written down, they look like this:

Sources: Walnut Hills Cemetery, 2026 guidelines, City of Regina bylaw, Art in Stone, Signature Headstones, Montgomery Ward, 1925.

The studio’s warnings follow that common guidance. It warns when the family name would cut smaller than 1 inch tall, the size Signature Headstones gives for names and the Regina veterans’ rule sets. It warns for any other line under 5/8 inch, a little above the 15 mm (about 0.6 inch) that Art in Stone gives as its minimum for body text. Those are floors, not targets. Most of the sizes above are larger, so ask your monument company what it cuts on your stone.

How letters are cut: V-cut, sandblast and raised

Most lettering today is sandblasted: a rubber stencil goes on the stone, the letters are cut out of it, and grit blown at high pressure cuts only the stone the stencil leaves bare (the Vermont Granite Museum, in the Times Argus). Within that, Milano Monuments describes several methods:

• Laser etched. A laser marks flat, light grey letters on the polished face. It and skin-tracing cost the least, and a laser can do tiny letters and fine detail.
• Skin-traced (frosted). A shallow sandblast through a stencil. It looks like laser etching, but the letters are slightly deeper and brighter.
• V-sunk (V-cut). Sandblasted deep, until the bottom of each letter comes to a V. The sides catch light and shadow.
• Square-sunk. Milano says it is often used for family names or larger letters on uprights.
• Raised. The letter is left polished and the stone around it is blasted away. Raised letters on a flat lawn marker are more easily damaged by mowers, so Milano recommends them only on uprights.
• Round-raised. Rounded raised letters, the hardest and most costly method.

Hand-cut lettering is still possible, at “a significant additional cost due to the labour involved” (Ivett & Reed). In the studio, letters on grey granite are drawn as a V-cut filled dark, and letters on black and red granite as frosted pale letters, so you can see how each reads.

Frosted, painted and gold letters

Cut letters need contrast to be read. On polished stone, that can come from a frosted panel behind the letters (Tecstone Granite calls it “the contrasting panel behind sandblasted lettering”), from paint in the letters, or from gold.

Paint fill. A special paint, often called Lithichrome or lithochrome, darkens the letters. It does not last forever. The VA stopped using it on marble uprights in 2009 because it “faded in the elements,” and cuts its letters deeper instead (VA). At Arlington the blackening fades “in a very non-uniform way.” A Seattle monument company, Quiring Monuments, says white paint sometimes flakes out after a few years. As that company puts it, nothing added to the stone lasts as long as the carving itself.

Gold. Gold-leaf letters “cost substantially more than normal, sandblast-sunk letters” (Fox-Becker Granite).

Glare. A polished face can glare in direct sun, which makes letters harder to read at some times of day; a smooth unpolished or rock-pitched surface cuts the glare (Rock of Ages).

Some cemeteries forbid paint in the letters altogether, so check the rules first.

How much does it cost for lettering on a gravestone?

Often the names and dates are included in the price of the stone, as the headstone cost guide explains. When letters are charged, it is usually per letter. One online seller, Memorials.com, includes the first 15 letters on an upright and charges $4.95 for each one after that, not counting spaces (checked October 20, 2026).

The method changes the price more than the font does (Marwaa Memorials). Laser etched and skin-traced letters cost the least, round-raised the most (Milano Monuments). Gold leaf costs more, and so does a hand-drawn match for an existing style (Fox-Becker Granite).

How can I add a name to an existing gravestone?

Ask a monument company. A date or a name is usually cut where the stone stands, with portable sandblast equipment brought to the cemetery: “the need to add at least the date of death to an already erected monument led to the design of cemetery sandblast units” (Times Argus). On a private stone the family arranges it; at Arlington, families are responsible for “any additional inscriptions.”

Ask the company to match the lettering already on the stone. Fox-Becker Granite says letters can be hand-drawn for an exact match, at an extra charge. On a VA headstone or marker, a spouse can be added if the veteran died on or after October 1, 2019: on the back of an upright, or at the bottom of a flat marker (VA Form 40-1330).

Where can I find free gravestone fonts?

Font sites offer free downloads, but a downloaded font does not decide what is cut. The monument company cuts its own letters, and “typefaces designed for printing are rarely satisfactory when carved into stone” (Wikipedia, quoting the Heritage Crafts Association). To see how your words look in different styles, try the five on this page for free, then ask your monument company for its closest match on the proof.

Cemetery rules on lettering

Some cemeteries also have rules for the lettering. Two examples:

• Walnut Hills Cemetery in Brookline, Massachusetts lets lettering and ornament cover no more than 33% of a side, caps the letter sizes, allows no paint in the letters and no etched pictures of the person, and asks for an inscription proof.
• Calvary Cemetery in Dayton, Ohio wants a drawing of the stone, with any epitaph or inscription, before it is made, and lettering only on the side facing the graves you own.

The VA has its own: a VA stone carries the legal name, branch of service and years, and extra words must use “only characters of the Latin alphabet and/or numbers” (VA).

Whatever the rules, check the proof letter by letter. At Arlington, “most of the problems with private markers are errors in fact (incorrect dates, misspelled names).”