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Meta: if you’re finding the monospace hard to cope with, browsers’ reader modes will get rid of it. If you like tweaking sites’ CSS instead, kill the `body { fo

Meta: if you’re finding the monospace hard to cope with, browsers’ reader modes will get rid of it. If you like tweaking sites’ CSS instead, kill the `body { font-family: monospace }` rule. I found this to vastly improve the article’s readability. Seriously, site makers and theme designers, please stop using monospace everywhere as part of your aesthetic, as monospace fonts are really bad for extended prose.

hnlmorg 5y ago
Counter: I quite like the monospace type-face and find it easier to read than most other sites. You cannot please all the people all the time when it comes to readability.
- Razengan 5y ago
  > You cannot please all the people all the time when it comes to readability. That’s why customizable Reader Modes are so good and should be supported everywhere *coughHNcough*
  - hnlmorg 5y ago
    Indeed. I only responded because I take issue with people who say things like > "Seriously, site makers and theme designers, please stop using $PREFERENCE everywhere as part of your aesthetic, as $PREFERENCE are really bad for extended prose." ...as if it's a universal truth when in fact people have different reading capabilities. For example I'm dyslexic and I find it much easier to read monospace text than most dynamic width type faces because letters jumble up less for me. I'm not suggesting I'm the norm but it's certainly not as clear cut as many (like the GP) make out.
    - chrismorgan 5y ago
      It doesn’t need to be universal, merely very significant: and it is. For the average person, monospaces significantly hamper reading and comprehension of extended prose. As for dyslexics, I can’t really comment; the main study people cite is The Effect of Font Type on Screen Readability by People with Dyslexia (Rello and Baeza-Yates, 2016) <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2897736 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2897736>, but I don’t care to draw any conclusions from it because its range of fonts is surprisingly and stuntingly limited: in monospaces, it uses only the slab serif Courier (and a previous study it cites also only uses a slab serif for monospaces), whereas most monospaces used these days are sans-serif (I myself am an oddity, preferring and using Triplicate, one of very few true serif monospaces in existence); and I don’t like their choice of serifs either: CMU is known to be too thin because it’s not used as intended <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27129620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27129620>, and Garamond is also known for excessive stroke weight variation (the thins being too thin, harming readability), though in both cases it’s not as great a problem on paper as on screen. But all up, I don’t think it’s fair to generalise from their data on the serif or the monospace properties, and that guts much of the paper. I have a dyslexic sister but have never had occasion to query the (perceived) relative efficacy of monospace, and it’s a decade or more since I asked her about things like serif versus sans and I’ve forgotten what she said. I should ask her again.
- marcellus23 5y ago
  True, but readability is something that can be measured through experimentation, and for most people monospaced fonts are worse.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- dragonwriter 5y ago
  > You cannot please all the people all the time when it comes to readability. Someone should invent a technology where servers deliver semantic content and user agents control styling. Then you could, in fact, please all the people (except controlling designers.)
  - selfhoster11 5y ago
    I think that's what we already have, but nobody uses it like that.
LocalH 5y ago
I love monospace fonts, but Courier is so pedestrian. There are much better monospace fonts out there
- 0xdeadb00f 5y ago
  I hate Courier ... font-family: Melno, Consolas, monospace; Usually works well enough. Covers windows and macos I believe.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  What `monospace` resolves to varies by platform and user configuration: you can change what it resolves them to. As for browsers’ defaults, the transition away from Courier New on Windows (an objectively bad font, far too thin because they digitised it badly) is nearing completion; I think Firefox is the last one lagging behind (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=713680 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=713680 is stalled for mediocre reasons). On macOS, all browsers have moved on to Menlo or better. My current recommendation is `font-family: Consolas, monospace` because Courier New is that bad, and once Firefox resolves that I’ll be recommending just leaving it at `monospace` (though there’s a pain point over the monospace font-size thing, with browsers tending to default to 13px instead of 16px and it’s all unnecessarily messy and I want browser makers to revert all of that because it’s a bad fit for the web now and causes far more trouble than it potentially solves).
jcrawfordor 5y ago
a secret fun fact is that changing the extension to .pdf will get you a version in an even more user-hostile format.
- chrismorgan 5y ago
  Eh, I dunno, the monospace somehow feels more legitimate that way.
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  True, but it can't be beaten for archiving (aka when I might want to keep some content for future reference when the blog is no longer up). It's is the only format that I trust to survive over the next 20 years without shifting its rendering.

hnlmorg 5y ago

Counter: I quite like the monospace type-face and find it easier to read than most other sites. You cannot please all the people all the time when it comes to readability.

Razengan 5y ago
> You cannot please all the people all the time when it comes to readability. That’s why customizable Reader Modes are so good and should be supported everywhere *coughHNcough*
- hnlmorg 5y ago
  Indeed. I only responded because I take issue with people who say things like > "Seriously, site makers and theme designers, please stop using $PREFERENCE everywhere as part of your aesthetic, as $PREFERENCE are really bad for extended prose." ...as if it's a universal truth when in fact people have different reading capabilities. For example I'm dyslexic and I find it much easier to read monospace text than most dynamic width type faces because letters jumble up less for me. I'm not suggesting I'm the norm but it's certainly not as clear cut as many (like the GP) make out.
  - chrismorgan 5y ago
    It doesn’t need to be universal, merely very significant: and it is. For the average person, monospaces significantly hamper reading and comprehension of extended prose. As for dyslexics, I can’t really comment; the main study people cite is The Effect of Font Type on Screen Readability by People with Dyslexia (Rello and Baeza-Yates, 2016) <https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2897736 https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/2897736>, but I don’t care to draw any conclusions from it because its range of fonts is surprisingly and stuntingly limited: in monospaces, it uses only the slab serif Courier (and a previous study it cites also only uses a slab serif for monospaces), whereas most monospaces used these days are sans-serif (I myself am an oddity, preferring and using Triplicate, one of very few true serif monospaces in existence); and I don’t like their choice of serifs either: CMU is known to be too thin because it’s not used as intended <https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27129620 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27129620>, and Garamond is also known for excessive stroke weight variation (the thins being too thin, harming readability), though in both cases it’s not as great a problem on paper as on screen. But all up, I don’t think it’s fair to generalise from their data on the serif or the monospace properties, and that guts much of the paper. I have a dyslexic sister but have never had occasion to query the (perceived) relative efficacy of monospace, and it’s a decade or more since I asked her about things like serif versus sans and I’ve forgotten what she said. I should ask her again.
marcellus23 5y ago
True, but readability is something that can be measured through experimentation, and for most people monospaced fonts are worse.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
dragonwriter 5y ago
> You cannot please all the people all the time when it comes to readability. Someone should invent a technology where servers deliver semantic content and user agents control styling. Then you could, in fact, please all the people (except controlling designers.)
- selfhoster11 5y ago
  I think that's what we already have, but nobody uses it like that.

LocalH 5y ago

I love monospace fonts, but Courier is so pedestrian. There are much better monospace fonts out there

0xdeadb00f 5y ago
I hate Courier ... font-family: Melno, Consolas, monospace; Usually works well enough. Covers windows and macos I believe.
chrismorgan 5y ago
What `monospace` resolves to varies by platform and user configuration: you can change what it resolves them to. As for browsers’ defaults, the transition away from Courier New on Windows (an objectively bad font, far too thin because they digitised it badly) is nearing completion; I think Firefox is the last one lagging behind (https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=713680 https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/show_bug.cgi?id=713680 is stalled for mediocre reasons). On macOS, all browsers have moved on to Menlo or better. My current recommendation is `font-family: Consolas, monospace` because Courier New is that bad, and once Firefox resolves that I’ll be recommending just leaving it at `monospace` (though there’s a pain point over the monospace font-size thing, with browsers tending to default to 13px instead of 16px and it’s all unnecessarily messy and I want browser makers to revert all of that because it’s a bad fit for the web now and causes far more trouble than it potentially solves).

jcrawfordor 5y ago

a secret fun fact is that changing the extension to .pdf will get you a version in an even more user-hostile format.

chrismorgan 5y ago
Eh, I dunno, the monospace somehow feels more legitimate that way.
selfhoster11 5y ago
True, but it can't be beaten for archiving (aka when I might want to keep some content for future reference when the blog is no longer up). It's is the only format that I trust to survive over the next 20 years without shifting its rendering.