Fonts look different, or characters show as “?” after editing
PDFBetter can't reuse the fonts embedded in a PDF, so edited and added text uses the closest of three standard families (sans, serif, mono). Characters no available font can draw come out as “?”. Pick the closest family and size, or cover and retype the whole line.
Updated 2 min read
On this page (3)
Why the font changes
Fonts inside a PDF are usually subsets that only contain the letters the document already used, so PDFBetter doesn't reuse them for new text. When you click a line with Edit text, the editor covers the old words and draws your new ones in the closest of three families: Sans (Helvetica), Serif (Times) or Mono (Courier), matching the size and color. On body text the difference is hard to spot; on logos, headings and brand typefaces it's visible. See Edit the existing text in a PDF for how editing works.
Step 1: Select the edited text
Click the line you changed so the style bar appears.
Step 2: Try another family
Under Font, switch between Sans, Serif and Mono, and adjust Font size until the line sits right.
Step 3: Retype the whole line if needed
If one changed word stands out, edit the full line so it's all in one font.
Characters show as “?”
- PDFBetter falls back to bundled Noto fonts for Greek, Cyrillic, Arabic, Hebrew, Devanagari, Bengali, Tamil and Thai, so most scripts work.
- Chinese, Japanese and Korean use font subsets with only the characters you typed, loaded from Google Fonts. Only those characters are sent, never your PDF. In browser tools (page numbers, headers and footers) they print as “?” if you're offline; reconnect and run the tool again.
- Emoji and some rare symbols aren't in any bundled font, so they also become “?”. Remove them or add them as an image.
It looks fine here but different in another viewer
The three standard fonts aren't embedded in the file. Each viewer draws them with its own matching system font (Arial or Liberation Sans for Helvetica, Times New Roman for Times, Courier New for Courier), so letter shapes and spacing can shift slightly between Acrobat, Preview and browsers. Check the downloaded file in the viewer your recipient will use if the exact look matters.
Does the old text disappear when I edit it?
It's covered on the page but stays in the file. If it must be gone, redact it.
Find & replace changed the font of every match.
Replacements use the same mechanism, so they're drawn in the closest standard font. Undo with ⌘ Z and edit the important lines by hand.
Tools in this article
Did this answer your question?
Related articles
- Can't select, search or edit text in a scanned PDFA scan has no real text, only a picture of it, so Edit text and search find nothing. Run OCR PDF to add a searchable text layer, or Edit scanned PDF to recognize the text and then correct it in the editor.
- Edit the existing text in a PDFSwitch the editor from Fill out to Edit PDF (or press E), click a line of the document's text and type. The new text is drawn over a cover patch in the closest standard font; the old characters stay in the file unless you redact them.
- Redact a PDF permanentlyChoose Redact (in the Cover group), drag over everything to remove, then click Apply redactions and confirm. Text, images and drawings under each mark are removed from the file, not just covered, and the affected pages become images.
- Contact support and include the details we needUse the contact form (also under Help → Contact support in the app) or email [email protected]. Include your account email, what you were doing, the exact error message, your browser and the time it happened. A person reads every message and replies within two business days.