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As a cautionary note, a few of the claims in this document don’t stand up well in light of more recent research. If you’re interested in the technical aspects o

As a cautionary note, a few of the claims in this document don’t stand up well in light of more recent research. If you’re interested in the technical aspects of typography and how humans really read text, you might like to try these more up-to-date starting points: Alex Poole’s “Which Are More Legible: Serif or Sans Serif Typefaces?”: http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/ http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-s... Kevin Larson’s “The Science of Word Recognition”: http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/wordrecognition.aspx http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/wordrecognition.... In particular, if you’re about to comment on how serifs or sans-serifs are better for X, or to explain how we read by following the serifs along a line or by recognising word shapes, I strongly encourage you to study the above first. There are unfortunately a lot of urban legends in typography that simply aren’t supported by the evidence. Some of them came about because of studies that have since been shown to be flawed in methodology or even based on outright falsified data. We help no-one by perpetuating the myths.

Surio 13y ago
Very interesting, and many thanks. One of the main takeaway from this should be (at least, it was for me): It is of course possible that serifs or the lack of them have an effect on legibility, but it is very likely that they are so peripheral to the reading process that this effect is not even worth measuring (Lund, 1999)
lnanek2 13y ago
While there is a footnote or two saying sans is better generally in the article, reading the full text actually argues quite a bit for each side. For example, legibility problems cited with sans are: " The sources of similarity between the characters of modern sans-serif fonts are: 1. The standardized or modular appearance of the letters (“P,” “R”). 2. The effect of mirror images between the upper and lower part of the character (“E,” “B,” “D”). 3. The use of equal radius for different letters (“G,” “O,” “C”) (Craig, 1980; Cheetham and Grimbly, 1964). "

Surio 13y ago

Very interesting, and many thanks. One of the main takeaway from this should be (at least, it was for me): It is of course possible that serifs or the lack of them have an effect on legibility, but it is very likely that they are so peripheral to the reading process that this effect is not even worth measuring (Lund, 1999)

lnanek2 13y ago

While there is a footnote or two saying sans is better generally in the article, reading the full text actually argues quite a bit for each side. For example, legibility problems cited with sans are: " The sources of similarity between the characters of modern sans-serif fonts are: 1. The standardized or modular appearance of the letters (“P,” “R”). 2. The effect of mirror images between the upper and lower part of the character (“E,” “B,” “D”). 3. The use of equal radius for different letters (“G,” “O,” “C”) (Craig, 1980; Cheetham and Grimbly, 1964). "