Methods and system for dynamic font subsetting. One or more directives are inserted into electronic content to identify one or more glyph sub-sets needed to display the multiple characters in one or more desired languages for electronic content. A directive identifies a glyph sub-set including set of glyphs identified in the electronic content and an encoding scheme used to encode the set of glyphs. The glyph sub-set identifies only those glyphs needed to display the electronic content. When electronic content with the one or more directives is processed the one or more directives are identified. If the electronic device does not have the glyph sub-sets needed to display the electronic content, requests are sent to an intermediate network device to obtain glyph sub-sets. These method and system may allow an electronic device with limited resources, such as a wireless telephone, personal digital assistant, network appliance, set-top box, etc., to display electronic content from a computer network such as the Internet or an intranet, with virtually any font, even if the fonts from the electronic content do not exist on the electronic device. Electronic content written in languages such as Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese, etc. can be displayed on an electronic device with limited resources using a small number of glyphs from the multiple thousands of possible glyphs that represent characters in such languages.