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Subject:RE: Usability: Serif and Sans-Serif font faces From:"David Locke" <dlocke -at- ll -dot- net> To:"TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- raycomm -dot- com> Date:Fri, 14 May 2004 23:12:01 -0500
I have built sans serif manuals that were very wonderful.
The issue breaks down into U.S. readers prefer serif and European readers
prefer sans serif. The minds, the eyes, the brains, the fingers are all the
same. What is different is experience. Since the typography is nearly
mutually exclusive, you can imagine that Europeans grow up reading san
serifs and Americans grow up reading serifs. Whatever you are used to will
be easier to read.
However, I know that I can make my san-serif body type as readable as my
serif body type. What is disappointing these days is the lack of a real grid
in MS Word. You have to use Quark or PageMaker these days. Back when I was
doing typography, I did it in Word and the grid was a real grid. A designer
asked me how I did it. I thought the designer was nuts until I found out
that Word doesn't cut it anymore. Yeah, I'm talking Word for DOS 5.0. Great,
except.... Before that designer was born (in Art School).
The things you have to pay attention to with san-serif is the line height
(leading), the x-height of the font, and line length (specific for each font
at a given point size). With those tools san-serif fonts can be readable.
But, if you just want to use the defaults, almost always wrong, or random
fonts where x-heights are unknown, then I'd say it won't be readable.
There is a middle ground where you get semi-serifs. Optima and Unvers (HP
LaserJet font) are semi-serifs. If you need text smaller than 8 points and
it must be readable, try either of these fonts.
Consider that Times Romans is probably the most read font in the U.S. But,
it's read in the newspapers where the line lengths much shorter than the
typographic maximum. Most manuals that drive me crazy have lines that are
too long. Saving paper and going without graphics design results in
unreadable manuals regardless of font.
Reading is learned in a culturally biased environment. No, the French don't
read slower than anyone else.
As far as the books the monks copied, they were art. The serifs in them
probably echoed what could be put on the walls of cathedrals by the stone
cutters.
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