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I've been involved in publishing too (LaTeX, QuarkXPress) and... It is a fact that for short texts (eg titles) Sans-Serif is actually much easier to read. Stu

I've been involved in publishing too (LaTeX, QuarkXPress) and... It is a fact that for short texts (eg titles) Sans-Serif is actually much easier to read. Studies have been conducted: this is precisely the reason city names and exit names on the highways are using sans-serif. Security (and lifes) are at work here: not just reading speed. The last thing you want is people reading Serif on the highways, being distracted by all the fancy curves, and realizing too late it's their exit and suddenly switching lanes in a hurry and hence potentially causing accidents. But for long strectches of text, like inside books? I don't know. My take on it is that basically the reading speed is the same but that Serif looks nicer from a typographical standpoint. There's hardly anything that beats the beauty of the ligature of a Serif font between a 'f' and an 'i' (i.e. when the dot of the 'i' is connected to the 'f'). I do prefer: sans-serif for everything except serif for printed medium, where the resolution is at least 600 dpi (no, retina ain't close enough yet). So, yes, for printed books I still prefer Serif. As a side note: this effectively means I cannot yet get a PDF which I find pleasant to read both on screen and printed. And of course I configure my browser to use sans-serif fonts instead of serif fonts wherever possible. P.S: as to my coding / shell font(s)... Pixel perfect fonts of course. Like the Proggy family or the Terminus family. I hate being distracted by the blurriness of anti-aliasing / sub-pixel anti-aliasing (RGB decimation). But I've got a very good eyesight.

Silhouette 14y ago
It is a fact that for short texts (eg titles) Sans-Serif is actually much easier to read. Studies have been conducted Please cite them. Good quality research on typography is unfortunately rather hard to find, and I've never encountered any study of that type.
rmrfrmrf 14y ago
A few details here: It's not sans-serif vs. serif that makes short texts more legible: it's the x-height of the letterforms that tend to make sans-serifs more legible. Automotive signage typefaces are usually designed with larger-than-normal x-heights, which has the effect of increasing the legibility of a typeface from a distance without increasing the font size (which is why, for example, Arial looks HUGE in Word at 12 pt whereas Times New Roman looks perfectly acceptable). There could certainly be a serif typeface used for shorter texts. A good example would be TheSerif from the FF Thesis collection. Another issue with serif fonts on screens that you touched on: most traditional serif fonts were simply not designed to be viewed on a screen. However, a good counterexample would be Georgia, a serif font designed by Matthew Carter that was made specifically for the screen and used by a large number of websites. One last thing: a reason why serifs are often thought to be more legible in large bodies of text is due to designers being careless about leading. With sans-serif fonts, you generally need to let the leading out a bit in comparison to serif fonts. On the author's site, for example, having the font so big and the leading so small tended to make me lose my position while reading (remember that without serifs to 'anchor' your eye, you're basically limiting your recognizable shapes to lines and circles).
8ig8 14y ago
Regarding highway typefaces, this article appeared on HN last year: http://ilovetypography.com/2012/04/19/the-design-of-a-signage-typeface/ http://ilovetypography.com/2012/04/19/the-design-of-a-signag... Excerpt from above link: > That’s when I came up with the idea of the Legibility Test Tool, an OSX application I built that offers real-time simulations of different viewing conditions (distance, fog, halation, and positive/negative contrast) during the design stage. HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3870237 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3870237

Silhouette 14y ago

It is a fact that for short texts (eg titles) Sans-Serif is actually much easier to read. Studies have been conducted Please cite them. Good quality research on typography is unfortunately rather hard to find, and I've never encountered any study of that type.

rmrfrmrf 14y ago

A few details here: It's not sans-serif vs. serif that makes short texts more legible: it's the x-height of the letterforms that tend to make sans-serifs more legible. Automotive signage typefaces are usually designed with larger-than-normal x-heights, which has the effect of increasing the legibility of a typeface from a distance without increasing the font size (which is why, for example, Arial looks HUGE in Word at 12 pt whereas Times New Roman looks perfectly acceptable). There could certainly be a serif typeface used for shorter texts. A good example would be TheSerif from the FF Thesis collection. Another issue with serif fonts on screens that you touched on: most traditional serif fonts were simply not designed to be viewed on a screen. However, a good counterexample would be Georgia, a serif font designed by Matthew Carter that was made specifically for the screen and used by a large number of websites. One last thing: a reason why serifs are often thought to be more legible in large bodies of text is due to designers being careless about leading. With sans-serif fonts, you generally need to let the leading out a bit in comparison to serif fonts. On the author's site, for example, having the font so big and the leading so small tended to make me lose my position while reading (remember that without serifs to 'anchor' your eye, you're basically limiting your recognizable shapes to lines and circles).

8ig8 14y ago

Regarding highway typefaces, this article appeared on HN last year: http://ilovetypography.com/2012/04/19/the-design-of-a-signage-typeface/ http://ilovetypography.com/2012/04/19/the-design-of-a-signag... Excerpt from above link: > That’s when I came up with the idea of the Legibility Test Tool, an OSX application I built that offers real-time simulations of different viewing conditions (distance, fog, halation, and positive/negative contrast) during the design stage. HN discussion: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3870237 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3870237