Type – or fonts (or is that founts?) can be surprisingly contentious. I know that some, such as DK see red when they see comic sans used. I have to say, when I see it used for formal documents, I’m inclined to agree – it really is only meant for short snippets of text in an informal context. The name gives it away.
But, to use serif or sans serif, that is the question. Personally, I tend towards a sans serif font for the body text in printed letters. I quite like gill sans. However, gill sans doesn’t look so good on a screen, which is why I use Verdana here and Times New Roman for the headings. Times New Roman works well on the printed page, too, although I stick to Arial for my letters.
Some, though, do take their fonts seriously. Yup, not only is there a Comic Sans appreciation society, but there is another one that wants to ban it. I’m not sure I can take it that seriously, but I do wish Mrs L wouldn’t use it to label postal packages…
To be traditional, it is ‘founts’, of course. I have no problem with novelty fonts (I include Comic Sans in that), provided they are not overused: emphasis only, and maximum two fonts per page. In fact, they can be handy in giving early warning of an immature idiot. In the old days, the same function was taken by the use of circles or little hearts over the letters i and j. If you received a job application in Comic Sans, where would it go? Exactly. I like a clean look, so Arial or Verdana are OK for me on screen. Tahoma is good too. TNR or Verdana for printed letters.
I seem to recall long ago that research was done on the ‘readability’ of various type styles, which concluded that for an extended reading task (such as a novel), serif fonts were significantly easier and quicker to read. I certainly find this true for myself. I suspect the serifs provide a lot of extra visual cues which mean that the eye can pass over the text with more certainty, and therefore needs to dwell less on each section of text.
When I set up my blog originally, I went for TNR as a gesture of traditionalism, but having been promted by this post to do a re-think, it is now resplendent in Verdana. So thank you for that.
there’s some research reported in this week’s Economist that says that if something is difficult to read it’s more likely to be remembered.
Personally if something is difficult to read it doesn’t get read, but they are talking about education as opposed to general letters and writing.
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Dr Oppenheimer recruited 28 volunteers aged between 18 and 40 and asked them to learn, from written descriptions, about three “species” of extraterrestrial alien, each of which had seven features. This task was meant to be similar to learning about animal species in a biology lesson. It used aliens in place of actual species to be certain that the participants could not draw on prior knowledge.
Half of the volunteers were presented with the information in difficult-to-read fonts (12-point Comic Sans MS 75% greyscale and 12-point Bodoni MT 75% greyscale). The other half saw it in 16-point Arial pure-black font, which tests have shown is one of the easiest to read.
Participants were given 90 seconds to memorise the information in the lists. They were then distracted with unrelated tasks for a quarter of an hour or so, before being asked questions about the aliens, such as “What is the diet of the Pangerish?” and “What colour eyes does the Norgletti have?” The upshot was that those reading the Arial font got the answers right 72.8% of the time, on average. Those forced to read the more difficult fonts answered correctly 86.5% of the time.
The question was, would this result translate from the controlled circumstances of the laboratory to the unruly environment of the classroom? It did. When the researchers asked teachers to use the technique in high-school lessons on chemistry, physics, English and history, they got similar results. The lesson, then, is to make text books harder to read, not easier.
That may be true for informational reading. For reading for pleasure, I’m not sure it would work – not for me, at least.
Your main font for your posts seems fine to me, but to be honest, mixing and matching it with Times for the headings is quite ugly. One or t’other is usually recommended.
I prefer Helvetica (or Helvetica Neue) for my letters. It’s slightly nicer to look at than Arial and more professional. Other than that, Gill Sans I suppose.
Comic sans is – I believe – the only default supplied non ‘handwritten’ or non italic type font that uses a typical simple letter ‘a’ of the sort children are taught to write (like a ‘q’ without a tail). All other upright supplied fonts use the formal typeset form of ‘a’ with a tail extending across the top.
This makes Comic sans the only available informal font, and the obvious choice for any material used in school or for children.
There is a desperate need for an alternative font to Comic sans, but with a simple ‘a’ shape, to be supplied with the operating system. Nat West bank have found one and use it to good effect but it’s not supplied with Windows!
As Richard pointed out, the general rule is no more than two fonts per page – something that the café I once visited on Douglas seafront hadn’t realised. They had a different font for every menu item…
I have gone with a simple sans serif for the body text and a serif font for the headings. This is pretty simple and standard design. I like it. You don’t. That doesn’t make either wrong, merely that we have differing taste.
Chris W – Now that you mention it, yes comic sans does rather remind me of primary school. I wasn’t aware of the Nat West example.