If you are having difficulty selecting a font, try the Periodic Table of Typefaces. This is an excellence resource that can help the expert or novice typographer in selecting a typeface for a given project.
For the novice there are a few more consideration that are necessary:
First, let us clarify the difference between the words, font and typeface. Typeface refers to a “family” or a group of letters that have the same style, for instance: Arial, Helvetica, Times, or Garamond. Font refers to the more specific description within a typeface such as Bold, Italics, Roman, or Oblique.
Next, consider how your audience will read composition. If it is running text or paragraphs on a printed page, try not to get fancy, be considerate of the reader, oldstyle typefaces such as Times, Garamond, and Caslon will be you best choice. They are the easiest to read for running text. When someone is reading running text, the mind sees each word as one image, that is why one can read through a paragraph quickly. It is the shape of the word that your mind sees, not the individual letters. This shape is primarily defined by the ascenders (e.g. the line of the lowercase “d”) and descenders (e.g. the line of a lowercase “p”). When you use “all caps” you have destroyed the one word image, and the mind must slow down and decipher each letter. The moral of the story: never use all caps in a paragraph.
The vast majority of typefaces are designed for titles. This is because titles have few words in them, so fancy letters can be read because your mind can slowly evaluate the information in each individual letter, and differentiate them by their characteristics. This is also why it is acceptable to use all-caps in a title, since your mind can take a moment to decipher the information letter by letter.
