> [T]he overwhelming thrust of the available evidence is
that there is no difference in the legibility of serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces either when reading from paper or when reading from screens. Typographers and software designers should feel able to make full use of both serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces, even if legibility is a key criterion in their choice.
Interesting! Does it touch on why people initially became so opinionated about serif/sans readability? And what’s a meaningful characteristic if not serifs?
Thank you, as much as a 160 page book about fonts is probably thrilling, I probably won’t get around to it for a while so was going to ask for the tl;dr
I have only scanned the contents of Part 1 (reading from paper) and read chapter 6 quickly, because that is the only chapter that considers the issue of the layout of the printed material.
My interest in this question is mainly in presenting short paragraphs of text in paper worksheets and handouts for teaching. Teacher training courses tend to echo the 'sans for dyslexics' notion but in addition suggest the use of headings with space before and after and the use of bullet points to break up material, the use of right-ragged (for LTR languages) so that inter-word spacing remains constant, and the use of line spacing chosen so that the space between the lines is a bit longer than the spacing between the words. The choice of typeface is seen as being a bit less important (as long as it is consistent within the handout) given that secondary school children will be familiar with a range of type faces.
Now I'm trying to find some kind of reference for this view about presentation of the page. If anyone has any ideas that would be ace.
I didn't read the OP but one pet peeve of mine is the uppercase I vs. lowercase L in sans-serif. Especially in contexts like randomly-generated passwords which you have to manually copy for whatever reason. Does the article address this in any way? Or is the context limited to "real" language where that's not as much of an issue?
I recently discovered Practical Typography [1] and Typography for Lawyers [2] by Matthew Butterick which have changed the way I've approached presenting information. I would highly recommend each for anyone who uses text to communicate. Butterick is a Tufte for text.
Surprisingly, some languages are better read in more specific fonts.
Maybe it's just a matter of familiarity, but I think it's more than that.
Reading hs.fi in their font of choice in Finnish is just fine, but auto-translated to English (in the same font) feels oh so wrong!
P.S.
Reading hacker news in English in HN font of choice is just fine, while the same sentence translated to Finnish (still in HN font) is mostly OK, but a little worse.
My very uneducated opinion is that doubled consonants and vowels are very common in Finnish, and those are better read with more aggressive kerning, something that HN sanf serif doesn't do.
Example:
- lattia on laavaa tallilla
- floor is lava in a garage
My personal experience, if I have to sum it up, would be, “Sans Serif is cleaner and easier for normal reads, such as shorter text, menus, and overall interfaces. Serif for longer reads where I need deeper focus.”
A long time ago I was in a motorcycle accident, and spent a month in the ICU, intubated, unable to talk. My wife made a spelling board for me to communicate by pointing at the letters. It took me forever to explain that it had to be sans serif, because it was big plain letters. And now this is telling me it didn't matter!? :-)
Personally I only care when distinguishing individual letters matters. So things like paths, URIs, passwords, math, & email addresses should be in a font with as few 'confusable' letters as possible. E.g. variables a & α in an equation should look different, I, 1, & l should look different, 0, o, and O should look different, etc. These are almost always easily distinguishable in serif typefaces, and often indistinguishable in sans-serif typefaces, so I tend to prefer using serif typefaces as a default fallback. But it's easy enough to find a sans-serif typeface that's also easy to read all the individual letters in, and sans-serif fonts tend to be a bit easier to read at small text sizes, so I use one of those (a customized Iosevka) for most things on my laptop.
Honestly what seems to matter more than anything, at least to me, is the size of the text, not so much the font face itself.
I keep all my text on my computer cartoonishly large, just because I find it 10x easier to read if I do. Who am I trying to impress? Computer fonts are dynamic for a reason, I don't care if it looks like it's made for a blind person.
The long conclusion seems to be that all the conventional wisdom on the subject is not borne out by the empirical evidence. So why spend so much time explaining all the the conventional wisdom? I don't need you to tell me about 100 people's opinions just to tell me they're all wrong.
One thing goes through my mind on this; why the hell is this so hard for people to just pick individually? We could have built the web and apps differently to just more-or-less work the same as most ebook readers. PICK WHAT YOU LIKE.
This sounds like a nonsense comparison, no? Surely we can agree that different typefaces have different legibility? And yes, some are serif and some are sans-serif. Also context matters.
Grouping "serif" and grouping "sans-serif" and comparing the groups' legibility is just a stupid undertaking to begin with.
64 comments
> [T]he overwhelming thrust of the available evidence is that there is no difference in the legibility of serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces either when reading from paper or when reading from screens. Typographers and software designers should feel able to make full use of both serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces, even if legibility is a key criterion in their choice.
I realize it’s lazy to just ask, but… 160 pages…
I can only hope that they split between the two.
I have only scanned the contents of Part 1 (reading from paper) and read chapter 6 quickly, because that is the only chapter that considers the issue of the layout of the printed material.
My interest in this question is mainly in presenting short paragraphs of text in paper worksheets and handouts for teaching. Teacher training courses tend to echo the 'sans for dyslexics' notion but in addition suggest the use of headings with space before and after and the use of bullet points to break up material, the use of right-ragged (for LTR languages) so that inter-word spacing remains constant, and the use of line spacing chosen so that the space between the lines is a bit longer than the spacing between the words. The choice of typeface is seen as being a bit less important (as long as it is consistent within the handout) given that secondary school children will be familiar with a range of type faces.
Now I'm trying to find some kind of reference for this view about presentation of the page. If anyone has any ideas that would be ace.
The British Dyslexia Association provide this pdf
https://www.thedyslexia-spldtrust.org.uk/media/downloads/69-...
[1] https://practicaltypography.com
[2] https://typographyforlawyers.com.
https://dn790009.ca.archive.org/0/items/signpaintersguid00ga...
Maybe it's just a matter of familiarity, but I think it's more than that.
Reading hs.fi in their font of choice in Finnish is just fine, but auto-translated to English (in the same font) feels oh so wrong!
P.S.
Reading hacker news in English in HN font of choice is just fine, while the same sentence translated to Finnish (still in HN font) is mostly OK, but a little worse.
My very uneducated opinion is that doubled consonants and vowels are very common in Finnish, and those are better read with more aggressive kerning, something that HN sanf serif doesn't do.
Example: - lattia on laavaa tallilla - floor is lava in a garage
I keep all my text on my computer cartoonishly large, just because I find it 10x easier to read if I do. Who am I trying to impress? Computer fonts are dynamic for a reason, I don't care if it looks like it's made for a blind person.
The long conclusion seems to be that all the conventional wisdom on the subject is not borne out by the empirical evidence. So why spend so much time explaining all the the conventional wisdom? I don't need you to tell me about 100 people's opinions just to tell me they're all wrong.
Grouping "serif" and grouping "sans-serif" and comparing the groups' legibility is just a stupid undertaking to begin with.