Gurmukhi Fonts for free download. . .

A selection of free Gurmukhi fonts to download - 212 fonts in 19 main families (more than 6,890,000 font file downloads to date). These have the characters both in the UTF-8 range and also in the ASCII range. This means that you can use them with programs that haven't got UniCode capabilities as well as with those that have.

You can also look at the characters in individual fonts and styles, compare upto three at a time and download any or all of them from the font viewer page (click here).

If you are not sure of how to install a font, look at the font installation page.

If you have installed a complete family of fonts, such as 'Raaj', and you think you can't see them all, look at the end of this page.

Fonts

Font Summary Cat Name  Display  /body  Variants  Unicode Notes Links  Lat   Gur   Dev   Download   Viewer   Example   High-legibility - Machine   Gurvetica Body 48 Lat Gur     Designed specifically for readability. Includes Roman characters that match style and size for each font.     Gurvetica A Body 10 Gur Gur     As Gurvetica but ASCII range has Gurmukhi for those without Gurmukhi keyboard layouts.     Bulara Body 9 Gur Gur     High readability font with body and display variants - also has hollow and bordered variants for display uses.    Art   abstract   Dekho Display 5 Gur Gur     Very stylised display font, based on Art Deco, making it good for medium-sized font work as well as display work.     Dekho Naveen Display 5 Lat Gur     Even more stylised display font, based on Art Deco, making it good for medium-sized font work as well as display work. Latin ranged is kerned.     Magaz Display 5 Gur Gur     Very stylised display font, based around low number of horizontal lines, making it good for small font work as well as display work.     Rupe Body 22 Gur Gur     Based upon GHW Dukandar, this font is the stylised essence (ਰੂਪ) of practical, stripped-down Gurmukhi. Legible enough for body-font work and for display, includes bordered and hollow variants.     Uttar Display 9 Gur Gur     Stylised display font, providing part-way step to Tibetan-styled Gurmukhi.    imitation   Gurmukhi Old Letterpress Body 4 Gur Gur     This is before Gurmukhi settled down to the single Bani style in the late 20th century and has some interesting characters.     Punjabi Typewriter Body 3 Gur Gur     Monospaced, mechanical typewriter with its limitations imitated in this font.    Script/ Stylised Hand Writing   Raajaa Body 7 Gur Gur     Tailless variant of Raaj, suitable for body text where space is limited     Choti Body 12 Gur Gur     Short-tail-length handwritten script special body textSimilar to Raajaa but with short tails.   -   Raaj Body 7 Gur Gur     Medium-tail-length handwritten script special body text. Unicode Gurmukhi range uses paer characters that modify the tails where appropriate.     Lanma Display 2 Gur Gur     Long-tailed handwritten display script with full-length tailed paer characters for tailed characters. Suitable for certificates and other special documents.   -   Karmic Sanj Body 7 Gur Gur     Handwritten body/display font simulating someone with a felt-tipped pen trying to do a neat job.    Real Handwriting   GHW Adhiapak Body 14 Gur Gur     Handwritten text from a Punjabi Teacher, born and brought up in the Punjab, now resident in the UK. Combines standard character forms with speed, fluidity and humanity.     GHW Dukandar Body 5 Gur Gur     Practical, no-nonsense, fast handwriting, just like your grandmother back in the Punjab writes.     GHW Penti Akhari Body 10 Gur Gur     Late 16th, early 17th century handwritten Gurmukhi, just like you would find in important texts of the day. Includes 4 Larivar styles.    Transliteration   Iragan Body 8 Lat Gur Gur   Converts Devanagari to Gurmukhi so Gurmukhi readers can access Devanagari texts online.     Dave Body 20 Lat Dev     Converts Gurmukhi to Devanagari so Devanagari readers can access Gurmukhi texts online.    For more details about each font, read on. To download the fonts, click here.

Note, click on the character image on the right to see a sample of the font in different sizes and weights:

• Gurvetica - a highly legible font, designed to work extremely well both in display and body text. Attention has been paid to differentiating between vowels so that people with less than perfect vision can read smaller point sizes better - thus making newspapers, books and leaflets easier to read.
  
  It comes in a variety of widths as well as weights and keeps to the traditional Gurmukhi monolinear ideal thus allowing for greater legibility in stretched or condensed headlines (just choose the font width that is closest so as to reduce any residual stretching distortion to a minumum).
  
  This font is designed to be of production quality and is provided in two versions - one with the Gurmukhi characters in the ASCII range (Gurvetica A) in the same way as the other fonts on this site - click on the image on the right for an example) and one with ASCII characters in the ASCII range (Gurvetica) click on the image below it on the right). Note that the latter also comes in a variety of widths.
  
  The ASCII characters:
  • are also monolinear, matching the Gurmukhi characters;
  • have the same baseline as the Gurmukhi characters;
  • have the same height so that the top is in line with the bar of the Gurmukhi characters;
  • have the same weights as the Gurmukhi characters so that they keep the same colour as you change weight; and,
  • have the same widths as the Gurmukhi characters so that they keep in proportion when you change between Gurvetica font widths.
  All of these things allow you to type Roman text in with your Gurmukhi, UTF-8, text and allow you to change weight and width without having to mess around, re-aligning fonts or changing other parameters to get the text to match;
  
  
• Raaj - a handwritten style with tails, primarily designed as a display font (for use in titles and so on) - especially the script versions.
  
  This has some additional key mappings so that the diacritical marks that appear below the characters do not get in the way of the tails - if you want a paer form of a character, the tail is automatically removed because of the way that the font has been designed;
  
  
• Raajaa - the same handwritten style (with the same extended key mappings) but without the tails, primarily designed for use in body text.
  
  Using the same key mappings means that you can change the font from Raaj to Raajaa without having to re-work any special sequences you have set;
  
  
• Choti - A very similar, handwritten style to Raaj and Raajaa above but with short tails (hence the name 'Choti'), primarily designed for use in body text, providing tails in a manageable size.
  
  This font also has some of the more peculiar key mappings that the ASCII-based fonts have - such as the u-umlaut mapping to a short dulaunkard that is shifted to the left so that a paer character can be placed in the space. Note that all of these peculiarities are dealt with in Unicode automatically - you just type as you would spell it out and it is all taken care of;
  
  
• Lanma - the same handwritten style as Raaj and Raajaa above (with the same extended key mappings) but with longer, more decorative tails, primarily designed for use as a display font for use as, say, certificate or book titles or fancy images.
  
  Using the same key mappings means that you can change the font from Raaj to Lanma without having to re-work any special sequences you have set;
  
  
• Karmic Sanj - A clean, informal, font, designed to be a Gurmukhi mirror for the ComicSansMS font that you see just about everywhere. It is available in seven weights: thin, light, book, medium, bold, heavy and black.;
  
  
• Magaz - A clean, stylised, legible, font, designed to work down to really small sizes if required but keeping a consitent size and clean appearence as large as you like;
  
  
• Bulara - A clean, legible, font, designed to work as a display font.
  
  Comes in various bold styles as well as true, hollow styles which, unlike many other hollow or outline fonts, has endcaps.
  
  This means that you don't end up with little black lines across the outline bar at the top of the characters, each time a character starts - it is clean, right through to the end of the word;
  
  Bulara Thin Border is a single font that has a proper border so that the font is transparent as you can see with the drop-shadow example on the right.
  
  The difference between this and just taking a normal font and growing the alpha border on an image editor is that here, you get square corners as opposed to round ones.
  
  It also available as two separate fonts so that you can treat the border and the body differently.
  
  To make use of this, copy the same text into the same place on your image editor and just change the font - it still uses the end-caps;
  
  
• Rupe - Primarily designed as a display font, although it has the legibility of a body text font as well, this highly stylised font takes the efficiency of GHW Dukandar - eliminating any part of a character that does not help to differentiate it from other characters (such as between ਮ and ਸ) but with the overriding requirement that it is still legible with as little effort as possible - and formalises it into a clean, consistent font.
  
  The image on the right is produced using Rupe Heavy. The font layer is used as an alpha mask which is filled with an orange gradient and then expanded and filled on different layers with white and black; and then a drop shadow is added to make it stand out from the image (which you will see when you click on the text image on the right). The image itself is from the ਵਿਸਾਖੀ celebrations in Derby (UK) on Sunday 19^th April 2009.
  
  In addition to the normal fonts - ranging from Ultra Thin through to Black, in 10 weights, Rupe also has four weights of border and eight weights of outline font;
  
  
• Dekho - Primarily designed as a display font, although it largely has the legibility of a body text font as well, Dekho (meaning 'look' in Hindi and Punjabi) is designed around Art Deco, forming a very clean and consistent font whist taking advantage of a gratuitous play on words.
  
  Note that 'W' and 'Ny' (ਵ and ਞ) use a topographically similar character form to the forms in Penti Akhari and in Old Letterpress.
  
  Here, the 'elbow' is exaggerated, along with the descending curve of the character's 'upper arm' to make it very Art Deco.
  
  The image on the right is produced using the Dekho font in an Art Deco context - click on it to see the full-sized image (600x800).
  
  For Unicode users, you can get a normal-sized ੴ by typing a 1 (੧) then a ਓ followed by a tippie (as in ਕੰ over the ਕ which you can get by typing a capital 'X' on the standard Unicode type layout). If, instead, you type ਉ followed by a tippie, you get one that extends far enough for around 6 characters and if you use a ਊ followed by a tippie, you get one long enough for around 12 characters, like so...
  
  All of the image work is done with the free software 'The GIMP';
  
  
• Dekho Naveen - Designed specifically as a display font, Dekho Naveen (or 'New Deco') is designed to be an extended version of the 'Dekho' font above.
  
  Different to the font above, Dekho Naveen also has latin figures in the ASCII range so, if you are going to access the Gurmukhi letters in this font, you are going to have to use Unicode.
  
  Again, all of the image work is done with the free software 'The GIMP';
  
  
• Uttar - Designed specifically as a display font, Uttar (or 'Northern') is is based upon the 'Dekho Naveen' font above.
  
  Although based upon Dekho Naveen, Uttar has three different widths and the three different weights provided are formed by increasing the width of the horizontal lines if the have a curve in them or if it is the bar.
  
  Also, the bar is not continuous as in the case with Tibetan fonts and this font represents a 'soft step' towards that style.
  
  All of the image work is done with the free software 'The GIMP';
  
  
• Gurmukhi Handwritten - Adhiapak - This is a real-life Gurmukhi handwritten font.
  
  It is still highly legible as it keeps largely to the Gurbani style of character production - the sort of style that your teacher would use.
  
  However, on the other hand, it turns your machine-produced-looking text into something that a real person would have written, capturing the energy and flow of the writing.
  
  It appears in 9 different weights from Thin to Black, a Script version and . . .
  
  also two weights of a marker version, complete with tips fonts (click on the two images on the right to see larger versions in a new window).
  
  The tips font produces a series of dots as you would if you were using a felt-tipped pen to write with. This is where the pen has been placed on the medium and the ink has had time to soak in or, where the pen has been lifted from the medium and it has left a small 'pool' of the ink.
  
  To use one of these fonts in a word processor or presentation program, type out what you want to and then duplicate that layer/object or whatever your program calls it. Keep it in the same place but change the font to the tips version of that font and the tips will show up.
  
  With the lighter colours of highlighter pens, they leave a pool of opaque ink that is lighter than where the pen has been moved when writing.
  
  Use your imagination and your skills with your image editor - think of how light is: reflected from the surface of the ink; and transmitted through it; when it is thick (as in one of the tips parts) and when it is thin (as in the rest of the writing.
  
  
• Gurmukhi Handwritten - Dukandar - Real people don't write their shopping list in Times New Roman or use a word processor, they use their own handwriting.
  
  In the same way that English handwritten 'z's and 's's don't look like printed ones, GHW Dukander is a handwritten font that takes the essence of the writing and uses only that.
  
  In short, this is the writing form that real people who write Gurmukhi all of the time for their personal notes to their shopping lists to would use.
  
  GHW Dukandar is also available as a Marker pen version in two weights.
  
  This gives the impression of a 'chisel point' marker pen held at 45 degrees and scales well to any size.
  
  The image on the right (click on it for a full-sized version to open up in a new window) takes the GHW Dukandar Marker Bold font and is processed to make it look as though ਅੰਗ੍ਰੇਜ਼ੀ has been written on a piece of balsa wood with a rather wet, green marker pen, showing what you can do with these fonts if you want to use them to create special images as well as masses of body text.
  
  In addition to the Bold Marker font, there is also a Bold Marker Tips font which gives just the tips (ie, where the pen didn't move at the begining and end and sometimes part way through forming any of the characters). If, on an image editor, you copy the text, keeping the positon the same, you an change the font to the tips version which you can make a darker colour. Some image editors might give you different line spacings but just about all of the work is done for you with this font;
  
  
• Gurmukhi Handwritten - Penti Akhari - Like Dukander and Adhiapak above, Penti Akhari is real handwriting.
  
  This is what Gurmukhi looked like at the end of the 16th century and at the beginning of the 17th. GHW Penti Akhari is what you would have seen as neat handwriting in important works such as scriptures and so on, where legibility is important - note that normally, no spaces are used and with this in mind, this font includes 4 Larivar styles where instead of having to eliminate spaces by hand, the font simply doesn't write a space (ie, the cursor doesn't move). Word breaks are still there and whilst it will just join up the words without any spaces, your word processor will still break for a new line at a word boundary. If you want to have letters right up to the end of the line for the sake of art over legibility - ie, part-way through a word - you are going to have to insert line breaks manually. This is still easier than removing all spaces or than typing the original text without any spaces at word boundaries.
  
  Interestingly, the normal open oorda (ਓ - the standalone version of ਕੋ) is drawn as ੳ - you don't need to convert any ਓs to ੳs to get the shape, it is already in the font.
  
  In the interest of compatibility with reading modern Gurmukhi, I have also included adhak (ਕੱਕ) and the dotted forms - ਸ਼, ਖ਼, ਗ਼, ਜ਼ and ਫ਼.
  
  The image on the right shows a comparison of late 16th- early 17th-Century Gurmukhi with: modern Gurmukhi on the left; and, as an interesting pointer, where some similarities lie with Devanagari (albeit modern Devanagari).
  
  On the second line, you can see how ਙ has lost its extra curve at the top (it was like the Devanagari character इ, the equivalent in Gurmukhi of ਇ) to become the modern version.
  
  On the next line, ਝ has generated a loop to become the modern version and you can see that ਡ has had the bottom line extended to the left.
  
  Furthere down, you can see that the two lines of ਕੈ now meet in the same place at the top of the letter and that originally, ਕੰ was a circle.
  
  Likewise, the horda (ਕੌ) originally had a circle with the tail as well.
  
  Comparing it with Devanagari, ਛ is extremely similar to the equivalent letter छ.
  
  With the letters, you can see that the sihari (ਕਿ), is drawn so that the tip reaches across to the vertical line in the letter it belongs to, as in कि - this is done in Devanagari because groups of consonants can be made and the sihari demonstrates where the right hand side of the conjunct is (for, example, in the word 'stick' - 'स्टिक').
  
  Finally, the aunkard is written in the same way as in Devanagari when writing devanagari by hand, with the right hand side looping around from the end of the letter it belongs to, as in टु, thus making it quick to write, as opposed to in Gurmukhi, where it lies clearly and evenly under it - ਟੁ. This is just as quick to write in Gurmukhis because, although you have taken your pen off the paper, you don't have to reposition it as accurately because it is not in contact with the parent letter.
  
  The numbers also have some differences which are similar to Devanagari as you can see on the right.
  
  Interestingly, the 16th century 9 (੯) is very much like the modern Gurmukhi 9, except that the horizontal line is missing.
  
  
  
  
• Gurmukhi Old Letterpress - A font that is designed to represent a mechanically produced typeface from the mid-20th century, before things became standardised with the Bani-fonts design that is so ubiquitous today.
  
  There are some interesting characters in this font:
  • ਝ is closer to the 17th Century version with its 'c'-like bend at the bottom having evolved into a corner for this font, before it inally turns into a look in the modern version at the top;
  • ਡ has the same, easily-recognisable loop at the bottom but the hole in it is circular;
  • This has been carried on to ਢ and ਦ which have their loops in the same style but perhaps more noticably, the central body of these two characters is also circular - I suspect that in the pre-computerised, metal-cutting environment, when producing the initial metalworkings for these so that the lead type can be manufactured from them, circles are easier to manufacture than irregular shapes, especially when looking at the size of these things when producing small characters for typesetting books; and,
  • ਵ (and also ਞ) have the same bottom section as the 17th century font.
  The two that is most likely to cause confusion to someone just glancing over a piece of text are going to be ਢ and ਦ which look a bit like a modern ਟ if you ignore the loops (although interestingly the ਟ in this font is more like the Devanagari equivalent ट).
  
  Click on the image on the right to see an example of work that can be done with this font. Note that towards the bottom of the image, you can see the paer characters.
  
  
• Punjabi Typewriter - A monospaced, font, designed to represent the output of a typewriter. At 10 points, this gives 80 characters across on A4 paper with a reasonable border.
  
  
• Iragan - A Gurmukhi font that occupies the UniCode space that Devanagari normally uses. This means that if you have some properly encoded text in Devanagari, you can change the font to Iragan and people who do understand Hindi and can read Gurmukhi but can't read Devanagari, can read that text.
  
  Like Gurvetica, the Roman (ASCII/ANSI) part of the font has Roman characters in it that match that font style.
  
  
• Dave - A Devanagari font that occupies the UTF-8 space that Gurmukhi normally uses. This means that if you have some properly encoded text in Gurmukhi, you can change the font to Dave and people who do understand Punjabi and can read Devanagari but can't read Gurmukhi, can read that text.
  
  Like Gurvetica, the Roman (ASCII/ANSI) part of the font has Roman characters in it that match that font style.

The Magaz font is in five weights: thin, light, normal, bold and black. They are fully hinted and because of colour-balancing, the bold font will work at very small pixel sizes (clear at 9 px em size) like so . . . 

Each Raaj and Raajaa font is in seven styles: thin, light, normal, bold, black, script-thin and script. You can see an example of their use here...

Mappings

The key mappings for each of them is the same - you use the UTF-8 mapping for your system but the ASCII part of the mapping is the same as the Windows98SE mapping above on this page.

There are some additonal mappings in that:

• Exclamation mark is mapped to noon - ਨੂੰ - so that you have it all in one character;
• Shift-Backtick (usually the top-left key on the keyboard) is a paer wawwaa;
• Underscore is mapped to a short line so that you can extend the space between letters if you want to (say you need some extra space between an adhak and a sihari for instance);
• Minus gives an aunkard that is shifted to the left in the Raaj family of fonts - this is still mapped in the Raajaa family but not shifted thus giving you the ability to change between families without having to retype anything;
• Equals gives a dulaenkarday that has the same properties as the aunkard as described above;
• Plus give a tippee that is shifted to the left so that if you need it over a single letter (such as above a ਨ or a ਤ), you can make it centralised rather than over to the right;
• Less than and greater than give you two different versions of ੴ;
• On the handwritten fonts, 'Noon' - ਨੂੰ - is picked up in the usual manner to produce the    character;
• On the handwritten fonts, the word 'Singh' - ਸਿੰਘ - is special when written by hand, it is written a lot and, like noon, has its own form  ; and,
• On the hollow Bulara fonts, the round brackets [(] and [)] give the end caps for the words (note that these aren't needed on the hollow Rupe fonts because the Rupe characters don't write over each other).