Something I've felt in my gut but have never cared enough to investigate...
So I don't know much about typefaces, and this is probably a silly question, but once you read this:
- Legibility itself is still poorly defined, even today, and is not well distinguished from readability. It turns out a surprising number of otherwise convincing "legibility studies" have been based on reading speed or reading comprehension, which have no bearing on glyph recognition per se.
- Isn't the question of legibility somewhat moot?
I was going to say yes, but then I realized it depends.
At the heart of it, on a base level, symbolic language is just that, - symbolic. Meaning is conveyed via symbols, and the purpose of the written word is to convey this meaning. As long as meaning is conveyed, the written word is doing its job so to speak. There have been plenty of studies where letters were completely removed from words where the meaning of the phrase containing them didn't suffer.
But in reality, letters and words convey more than literal meaning. Any designer can tell you that the form of the characters themselves convey a range of emotions and stances. Serious, playful, businesslike, nostalgic, etc. Maybe legibility falls more into the design and emotive camp for letters than the literal conveying of meaning camp?
That makes sense. As long as we're viewing this as an aesthetic and not a quantitative difference then I can understand what we're talking about.
Speaking of readability -- My ability to read a text smoothly is affected by spaces. I have a hard time reading fully justified margins. Spaces between words differ from line to line in order to provide even right margins. Extra spaces give me a pause. Anyone else have a preference?
As long as the spacing between words is consistent i'm good. If it is inconsistent in order to create even justified columns, then it is a little annoying. It can look alright on something like a brochure, where your text is mimicking graphical elements, but it is pretty awful for articles.
I've always found futura book very enjoyable to read.
I've goofed around with serif fonts here, and it never makes easier to read. However, ink and screen are not the same.
IMO nytimes isn't any less readable in helvetica, but it does seem to lose some gravitas:
The fonts that have always seemed the easiest and least resistant to my eye are most often sans. There are certain serifs that are easier to read than certain sans, but on the balance I find sans more amenable I think. Print is where I like to see serifs though.
- Burt's statements about the supposed superiority of serif fonts turned out to be nothing more than idle conjecture dressed up to sound scientific.
I never believed the readability claims of pro-serif folk. It struck me long ago that “comic” was the most readable font in the world and I create all my course material in that font. My students mock me.
What would be a valid test of font readability? Data gained from dyslexic studies might be applicable only to dyslexics. It might be that for 90% of the population, Times New Roman (or some such serif font) is as easy to read as Ariel (or some such sans-serif font). Could we measure how much brain activity it takes or how many calories are burned? Could one font lead to more fatigue?
- Word shape is no longer a viable model of word recognition. The bulk of scientific evidence says that we recognize a word’s component letters, then use that visual information to recognize a word.
I suppose readability could be judged by some combination of speed and comprehension. To me,
courier new is God's font.Edit: on my pc, the indent font renders as courier new. Now I'm viewing on Chrome OS, and it is rendering as Lucida Sans. :( I use Chrome browser on both.
According to the article
- Reading speed is now known to be mainly a function of cognition speed, which varies considerably from individual to individual and is not related in any straightforward way (and possibly in no way) to typeface design. Reading comprehension is even further removed from type design.
Bell Gothic was created by Chauncey Griffin at Morgenthaler for AT&T in 1938. The entire point was maximum readibility, minimum space. When Matt Carter was given the task by AT&T again in 1975, Bell Centennial remained sans-serif.
Futura is what they put on the fucking moon:
Professionally, I use Bank Gothic and Bell Gothic for my stationary and have since before Battlestar Galactica polluted f'ing everything with Bank Gothic. For writing I use Futura and OCR-A, which would pretty much have blown the shit out of the "Serif Readibility myth" 40+ years before this paper was written if MICR-E13B hadn't already done it five years previously.