3 ms·
Oh dear, this is turning into one of those "You say Tomahto, I say tomato" kind of discussion.... even though I did not intend it to be. Personally, I think t
by Surio 14y ago
Oh dear, this is turning into one of those "You say Tomahto, I say tomato" kind of discussion.... even though I did not intend it to be.
Personally, I think there is no point splitting hairs over whether they goofed up or whether it was intended... MS-Word as a product is intended for the "write it, and then print it" market (whether the actual printing happens or not is another thing altogether), and for that demographic, the typographic convention is Serif for body text and Sans (not a necessary condition, though) for heading [0]. And from that point of view, the design choice is mixed up. Right or Wrong, that was the only point I was trying to make.
[0] Again, I am aware that "is serif readable?" is a different can-of-worms altogether.
- PeterisP 14y agoThe parent poster seems to imply that Word nowadays is not intended for the "write it, and then print it" market anymore - while it was aimed for that a dozen years ago, currently MS is deliberately targeting it more towards creating non-printable documents. I.e., it's not the design choice that's wrong, but the assumptions about who Word is now intended for.
- Surio 14y agoNot sure you read my reply? (note the italics part below) >> MS-Word as a product is intended for the "write it, and then print it" market (whether the actual printing happens or not is another thing altogether), and for that demographic, the typographic convention is Serif for body text Same convention holds true for typesetting packages like Quark/InDesign/LaTeX, etc. The established convention for documents cranked out is what I mentioned earlier... So regardless of parent poster's/your opinions [0] on this topic, the choice is mixed up because body text ought to be Serif (and heading something else if needed). [0] it's not the design choice that's wrong, but the assumptions about who Word is now intended for
- PeterisP 14y agoI read your reply, but what I mean is exactly contradicting your statements: I'm saying that right now MS-Word is NOT a product intended (by its makers) for that market and the "same established convention" simply does not hold true anymore for MS Office. And the evidence for this position is this design choice made by Microsoft. I'm treating it not as a mistake, but as part of proof that they've consciously chosen screen-viewing instead of printing as their goal, and applied that convention for their apps. What evidence is there that the current MS Word is aimed at printing primarily, and because of that its "body text ought to be Serif" ? It has been aimed at printing a dozen years ago, sure, but why you're reasoning that it still is now?