Windows organizes fonts by family; a family is a set of fonts having common stroke width and serif characteristics. Windows categorizes families with five family names. A sixth name ("Dontcare") allows an application to use the default font. The following table describes the font-family names.
| Font-family name | Description |
| Decorative | Specifies a novelty font. An example is Old English. |
| Dontcare | Specifies a generic family name. This name is used when information about a font does not exist or does not matter. |
| Modern | Specifies a monospace font with or without serifs. Monospace fonts are usually modern; examples include Pica, Elite, and Courier New®. |
| Roman | Specifies a proportional font with serifs. An example is Times New Roman. |
| Script | Specifies a font that is designed to look like handwriting; examples include Script and Cursive. |
| Swiss | Specifies a proportional font without serifs. An example is Arial. |
These family names correspond to constants found in the WINGDI.H file: FF_DECORATIVE, FF_DONTCARE, FF_MODERN, FF_ROMAN, FF_SCRIPT, and FF_SWISS. An application uses these constants when it creates a font, selects a font, or retrieves information about a font.
Fonts within a family are distinguished by size (10 point, 24 point, and so on) and style (regular, italic, and so on).