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To sum up almost 160 pages: > [T]he overwhelming thrust of the available evidence is that there is no difference in the legibility of serif typefaces and sans

To sum up almost 160 pages: > [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.

aetherspawn 7mo ago
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
- rerdavies 7mo ago
  There is no compelling evidence that san-serif fonts are less readable than serif fonts under any circumstance, despite the oft-repeated lore that typographers consider serif fonts to be more readable than sans-serif fonts.
pinkmuffinere 7mo ago
Interesting! Does it touch on why people initially became so opinionated about serif/sans readability? And what’s a meaningful characteristic if not serifs? I realize it’s lazy to just ask, but… 160 pages…
- thaumasiotes 7mo ago
  > Does it touch on why people initially became so opinionated about serif/sans readability? That's the default state of all questions. It doesn't need to be explained. Why do you think people had opinions on whether Pluto should be called a "planet"?
  - necovek 7mo ago
    On both cases it is based on some evidence even if they are completely different (one is a question of definition, another of measurement and observation): for Pluto, it is a round lump of rock going around the Sun on it's own separate orbit; for serif vs non-serif, argument is that serifs help with line tracking for eyes depending on the line spacing and line length. For a meta-study finding a different result, it'd be great to qualify how was the previous research wrong so we learn something from it. I've marked as something to pick up as I am very curious.
    - saghm 7mo ago
      > For Pluto, it is a round lump of rock going around the Sun on it's own separate orbit That was never the reason anyone got upset at it being "demoted", or else they'd be equally upset about all of the other ones that were never planets in the first place (which in fact are in fact the main argument for why it got reclassified). People just don't like change, especially for things that seem like "facts".
      - necovek 7mo ago
        That's exactly my point: the previous response assumed the argument was made in "I don't like change matter", when a better interpretation is "I am OK with Pluto being a planet if all the other similar objects matching the same definition are planets or them all not being planets", or, in this context, "I'd really like to know why was previous opinion also based on research wrong". I'd also note Pluto was discovered only in 1930, and people already accepted a change of "one extra planet" not 100 years ago, and I do not think people have changed that much since.
        saghm 7mo ago
        > I'd also note Pluto was discovered only in 1930, and people already accepted a change of "one extra planet" not 100 years ago, and I do not think people have changed that much since. Fair enough. I think people are more tolerant of new discoveries than being told than something being "taken away" though. > That's exactly my point: the previous response assumed the argument was made in "I don't like change matter", when a better interpretation is "I am OK with Pluto being a planet if all the other similar objects matching the same definition are planets or them all not being planets", or, in this context, "I'd really like to know why was previous opinion also based on research wrong". At least in my experience, nobody I've ever heard genuinely complain about Pluto not being considered a planet anymore has expressed the sentiment you're saying though. There have been multiple adults in my life over the years who have what I can only describe as an emotional attachment to the idea of Pluto as a planet based seemingly on nothing other than nostalgia and the fact that it's what they were taught when they were in school. I'm not saying that the view you're citing here doesn't exist, but from what I can tell almost everyone who approached the change from that mindset either ended up convinced that the change was reasonable or stopped caring years ago.
- Karliss 7mo ago
  Most of those 160 pages, is repetitive mish mash of various historical research (many of questionable quality) on typeface readability loosely grouped by certain themes retold in a way that makes it even less clear about their results, quality and whether testing conditions are useful for making any good conclusions. Little value in reading it all unless you follow references and read what the quoted research actually did and said. The chapters have different thematic, but content and conclusions are very samey -> a bunch of questionable research and research which was inconclusive or didn't observe significant overall advantage of serif vs sans serif. As for where it came from to me it very much feels like the defense of serif typefaces is largely typographers defending existence of their craft and people talking past each other with overgeneralized claims. There is definitely value in the art and craft of typography and I respect that. It would be too bland if everything used plain sans serif fonts that barely differ from each other, and you can definitely mess up typography making text hard to read when done badly. But I also believe that there is plenty of things based on traditions and "everyone knows x because that's how we have always done it". As for sans serif for screens the obvious reason and also thing that comes up multiple times is low resolution text. At certain resolution there are simply not enough pixels for serifs. The author of paper suggest that with modern high resolution screens this argument doesn't stand. My personal opinion is that it's not a big issue at sufficiently high text size. But even on somewhat modern 2560x1440 screen I can find plenty of UI elements that have only 7-8 pixels high labels. Not everyone is using retina displays and not everything is long format text. Screen resolutions have increased, but so have information density compared to early computer screens, although there is recent trend of simplifying UI to the point of dumbing it down and adding excessive padding all over the place. There are other screens beside computers and mobile phones, many of them not very high resolution even by standards of early computer screens. It doesn't make sense to put high resolution screen and Linux computer in every little thing. Problem is made worse by lack of antialised text sometimes due to screen, sometimes MCU memory and compute limitations. You are probably not going to have modern font rendering stack on something like black and white washing machine screen, gas station pump or thermostat The research multiple times mentioned stuff like low resolution, but it hardly ever quoted hard numbers in a meaningful way. How many pixels a typeface needs to be comfortably represent serif? How many arcseconds? Surely there must be research related to that one. This might be part of problem for some comparative research - can't compare readability of serif/sans serif if there is no serif typeface at those resolution. Stuff like point 10 or point 12 without additional details is meaningless. Some personal anecdote -> text antialising has huge effect. Made a sample text of serif and sans serif font and zoomed out to the point where lower case letters are ~6px high. I wouldn't expect there to be enough resolution for serif but you can perceive surprising amount of detail in letter shapes. Zoomed in on screenshot it's a blurry mess, but at normal zoom level the serif letters are fine. It's readable but wouldn't consider either of 2 comfortable. When scaled up to 8px both pieces were still harder to read than same height text in UI labels. Why is that? Why is one identical height sans serif text much more readable than other? Are UI labels better pixel aligned? Is it due to subpixel antialising? That's on a 90deg rotated screen, is subpixel antialising even working properly there? Just for fun switch OS UI font to serif. Due to font sizing inconsistency it ended up being 1 pixel shorter (7px) than same size default UI font. Can those even be considered serifs when they are hardly a pixel each? It felt weird, nowhere near as bad I expected, but still weird.
- harshreality 7mo ago
  Past studies suggested slight differences: - serif was claimed to lead to better horizontal tracking... so better for long prose readability - sans serif was claimed to lead to better spot-recognition of characters... so better for spot-character/word recognition and legibility Those effects were never very strong, and varied depending on the exact fonts in use (and for digital, font rendering characteristics). There's also probably an effect based on what you're used to. If most of the books you read are serif (which they would be for older people, since almost all printed books were serif), and your exposure to sans serif was largely via the internet, and you don't like most of what's written on the internet, that might sway you toward serif. Conversely, if you mostly read modern internet text, you might have the opposite bias.
  - MarkusQ 7mo ago
    I can confirm the later effect; prior to the internet, my primary exposure to sans serif fonts were government documents and forms, and advertisements, neither of which inculcated an association with any virtues.
    - rerdavies 7mo ago
      Perhaps you should compare government documents and forms from different governments. UK government forms are extraordinarily beautiful, and welcoming, and are easy to fill out. US government forms, on the other hand, seem almost calculated to be unfriendly, and are incredibly difficult to fill out even when you use supporting instructions. It almost seems like they have been deliberately designed so that they cannot be filled out without the assistance of a lawyer. Canadian forms seem pretty neutral, and practical, but are nowhere near as pleasant to fill out as UK forms are.
IAmBroom 7mo ago
If this were Reddit I'd buy you an award. Consider yourself gold-starred.
- treetalker 7mo ago
  Wow, my first HN award! Thank you, kind stranger! :-)
  - croisillon 7mo ago
    we have a HN Peace Award in reserve too, should the orange man land on the orange website
saghm 7mo ago
Now my largest question is "which type of font does the book use, and how did they decide on it?" I can only hope that they split between the two.

aetherspawn 7mo ago

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

rerdavies 7mo ago
There is no compelling evidence that san-serif fonts are less readable than serif fonts under any circumstance, despite the oft-repeated lore that typographers consider serif fonts to be more readable than sans-serif fonts.

pinkmuffinere 7mo ago

Interesting! Does it touch on why people initially became so opinionated about serif/sans readability? And what’s a meaningful characteristic if not serifs? I realize it’s lazy to just ask, but… 160 pages…

thaumasiotes 7mo ago
> Does it touch on why people initially became so opinionated about serif/sans readability? That's the default state of all questions. It doesn't need to be explained. Why do you think people had opinions on whether Pluto should be called a "planet"?
- necovek 7mo ago
  On both cases it is based on some evidence even if they are completely different (one is a question of definition, another of measurement and observation): for Pluto, it is a round lump of rock going around the Sun on it's own separate orbit; for serif vs non-serif, argument is that serifs help with line tracking for eyes depending on the line spacing and line length. For a meta-study finding a different result, it'd be great to qualify how was the previous research wrong so we learn something from it. I've marked as something to pick up as I am very curious.
  - saghm 7mo ago
    > For Pluto, it is a round lump of rock going around the Sun on it's own separate orbit That was never the reason anyone got upset at it being "demoted", or else they'd be equally upset about all of the other ones that were never planets in the first place (which in fact are in fact the main argument for why it got reclassified). People just don't like change, especially for things that seem like "facts".
    - necovek 7mo ago
      That's exactly my point: the previous response assumed the argument was made in "I don't like change matter", when a better interpretation is "I am OK with Pluto being a planet if all the other similar objects matching the same definition are planets or them all not being planets", or, in this context, "I'd really like to know why was previous opinion also based on research wrong". I'd also note Pluto was discovered only in 1930, and people already accepted a change of "one extra planet" not 100 years ago, and I do not think people have changed that much since.
      - saghm 7mo ago
        > I'd also note Pluto was discovered only in 1930, and people already accepted a change of "one extra planet" not 100 years ago, and I do not think people have changed that much since. Fair enough. I think people are more tolerant of new discoveries than being told than something being "taken away" though. > That's exactly my point: the previous response assumed the argument was made in "I don't like change matter", when a better interpretation is "I am OK with Pluto being a planet if all the other similar objects matching the same definition are planets or them all not being planets", or, in this context, "I'd really like to know why was previous opinion also based on research wrong". At least in my experience, nobody I've ever heard genuinely complain about Pluto not being considered a planet anymore has expressed the sentiment you're saying though. There have been multiple adults in my life over the years who have what I can only describe as an emotional attachment to the idea of Pluto as a planet based seemingly on nothing other than nostalgia and the fact that it's what they were taught when they were in school. I'm not saying that the view you're citing here doesn't exist, but from what I can tell almost everyone who approached the change from that mindset either ended up convinced that the change was reasonable or stopped caring years ago.
Karliss 7mo ago
Most of those 160 pages, is repetitive mish mash of various historical research (many of questionable quality) on typeface readability loosely grouped by certain themes retold in a way that makes it even less clear about their results, quality and whether testing conditions are useful for making any good conclusions. Little value in reading it all unless you follow references and read what the quoted research actually did and said. The chapters have different thematic, but content and conclusions are very samey -> a bunch of questionable research and research which was inconclusive or didn't observe significant overall advantage of serif vs sans serif. As for where it came from to me it very much feels like the defense of serif typefaces is largely typographers defending existence of their craft and people talking past each other with overgeneralized claims. There is definitely value in the art and craft of typography and I respect that. It would be too bland if everything used plain sans serif fonts that barely differ from each other, and you can definitely mess up typography making text hard to read when done badly. But I also believe that there is plenty of things based on traditions and "everyone knows x because that's how we have always done it". As for sans serif for screens the obvious reason and also thing that comes up multiple times is low resolution text. At certain resolution there are simply not enough pixels for serifs. The author of paper suggest that with modern high resolution screens this argument doesn't stand. My personal opinion is that it's not a big issue at sufficiently high text size. But even on somewhat modern 2560x1440 screen I can find plenty of UI elements that have only 7-8 pixels high labels. Not everyone is using retina displays and not everything is long format text. Screen resolutions have increased, but so have information density compared to early computer screens, although there is recent trend of simplifying UI to the point of dumbing it down and adding excessive padding all over the place. There are other screens beside computers and mobile phones, many of them not very high resolution even by standards of early computer screens. It doesn't make sense to put high resolution screen and Linux computer in every little thing. Problem is made worse by lack of antialised text sometimes due to screen, sometimes MCU memory and compute limitations. You are probably not going to have modern font rendering stack on something like black and white washing machine screen, gas station pump or thermostat The research multiple times mentioned stuff like low resolution, but it hardly ever quoted hard numbers in a meaningful way. How many pixels a typeface needs to be comfortably represent serif? How many arcseconds? Surely there must be research related to that one. This might be part of problem for some comparative research - can't compare readability of serif/sans serif if there is no serif typeface at those resolution. Stuff like point 10 or point 12 without additional details is meaningless. Some personal anecdote -> text antialising has huge effect. Made a sample text of serif and sans serif font and zoomed out to the point where lower case letters are ~6px high. I wouldn't expect there to be enough resolution for serif but you can perceive surprising amount of detail in letter shapes. Zoomed in on screenshot it's a blurry mess, but at normal zoom level the serif letters are fine. It's readable but wouldn't consider either of 2 comfortable. When scaled up to 8px both pieces were still harder to read than same height text in UI labels. Why is that? Why is one identical height sans serif text much more readable than other? Are UI labels better pixel aligned? Is it due to subpixel antialising? That's on a 90deg rotated screen, is subpixel antialising even working properly there? Just for fun switch OS UI font to serif. Due to font sizing inconsistency it ended up being 1 pixel shorter (7px) than same size default UI font. Can those even be considered serifs when they are hardly a pixel each? It felt weird, nowhere near as bad I expected, but still weird.
harshreality 7mo ago
Past studies suggested slight differences: - serif was claimed to lead to better horizontal tracking... so better for long prose readability - sans serif was claimed to lead to better spot-recognition of characters... so better for spot-character/word recognition and legibility Those effects were never very strong, and varied depending on the exact fonts in use (and for digital, font rendering characteristics). There's also probably an effect based on what you're used to. If most of the books you read are serif (which they would be for older people, since almost all printed books were serif), and your exposure to sans serif was largely via the internet, and you don't like most of what's written on the internet, that might sway you toward serif. Conversely, if you mostly read modern internet text, you might have the opposite bias.
- MarkusQ 7mo ago
  I can confirm the later effect; prior to the internet, my primary exposure to sans serif fonts were government documents and forms, and advertisements, neither of which inculcated an association with any virtues.
  - rerdavies 7mo ago
    Perhaps you should compare government documents and forms from different governments. UK government forms are extraordinarily beautiful, and welcoming, and are easy to fill out. US government forms, on the other hand, seem almost calculated to be unfriendly, and are incredibly difficult to fill out even when you use supporting instructions. It almost seems like they have been deliberately designed so that they cannot be filled out without the assistance of a lawyer. Canadian forms seem pretty neutral, and practical, but are nowhere near as pleasant to fill out as UK forms are.

IAmBroom 7mo ago

If this were Reddit I'd buy you an award. Consider yourself gold-starred.

treetalker 7mo ago
Wow, my first HN award! Thank you, kind stranger! :-)
- croisillon 7mo ago
  we have a HN Peace Award in reserve too, should the orange man land on the orange website

saghm 7mo ago

Now my largest question is "which type of font does the book use, and how did they decide on it?" I can only hope that they split between the two.