fonts

This page considers the 'font wars', highlighting questions about the readability of type for web pages and email.

It covers -

• introduction
• typography
• research
• new fonts for new media?
• email

     introduction

Disagreement about typography has been rumbling since Gutenberg and flares periodically with the introduction of new technologies such as the rotary press or the internet. Much of that disagreement has the fervour of religious conflict, given subjective judgements about aesthetics, the ambiguity of many of the empirical studies and the ignorance of many participants.

Eric Gill's 1931 An Essay on Typography claimed that "Legibility, in practice, amounts simply to what one is accustomed to". Zuzana Licko, co-author with Rudy VanderLans of Emigre: Graphic Design into the Digital Realm (New York: Wiley 1994), echoed that assertion in suggesting that

Typefaces are not intrinsically legible; rather, it is the reader's familiarity with faces that accounts for their legibility. Studies have shown that readers read best what they read most.

As a starting point it is useful to consider basic terminology, although that has blurred with the emergence of 'born digital' fonts.

In the epoch when printed text was produced using ink on metal letters type was a generic term for those letters.

A typeface - such as Times New Roman or Helvetica - was a particular family of type, distinguished by a unique design and often created by a master craftsman such as William Caslon or Frederick Goudy.

A font (sometimes known as fount) was initially a collection of characters of a specific size within a specific typeface, eg capitals, small capitals and lower case of 12pt Garamond. More recently it has come to have the same meaning as typeface.

     typography

The Print profile on this site features detailed pointers to the history of typography, including works such as Anthony Cahalan's brief paper Design & Consumption: The Proliferation of Typefaces (PDF), Robert Bringhurst's The Elements of Typographical Style (Vancouver: Hartley & Marx 1996), Counterpunch: Making Type in the Sixteenth Century, Designing Typefaces Now (London: Hyphen Press 1996) by Fred Smeijers, TypeRight and Stop Stealing Sheep (& Find Out How Type Works) (Mountain View: Adobe 1993) by Erik Spiekermann & EM Ginger.

Illuminating Letters: Typography & Literary Interpretation (Amherst: Uni of Massachusetts Press 2001) edited by Paul Gutjahr & Megan Benton considers how typography affects meaning, in essays ranging from the Bible to comics.

     research

There is extensive although uneven research about the 'readability' of online and offline fonts.

That is of interest in choosing fonts for content that is meant to be read online and for content delivered online for reading offline (with many users, for example, skimming online journals on their monitor before printing them for detailed reading).

We have pointed to particular studies - such as A Comparison of Popular Online Fonts: Which is Best and When? (an account of research by Bernard, Mills, Peterson & Storrer), Determining the Best Online Font for Older Adults (an account by Bernard, Mills & Liao) and Legibility & Comprehension of Onscreen Type: Comparing the Legibility and Comprehension of Type Size, Font Selection and Rendering Technology of Onscreen Type (PDF) by Scott Chandler - in our Design Guide.

     new fonts for new media?

One response to substantive/perceived online readability problems has been the development of new fonts specifically designed for use on the web or in special devices such as e-book readers, automatic teller machines and standalone information kiosks.

Our Electronic Publishing guide notes Microsoft's promotion of ClearType, proprietary font display technology claimed to significantly increase screen readability as part of Reader software for PCs and handheld devices.

ClearType has been criticised as too rubbery, providing insufficient protection against unauthorised copying/redistribution - perhaps the major impediment to the growth of the electronic book market.

The Read Regular project has suggested that a new font would address the needs of dyslexics (claimed to comprise up to 10% of the UK workforce), with distinctly different shapes for each letter, long descenders and ascenders (the 'stems' on letters such as 'b' and 'p'), generous line spacing and clearer openings in letters such as 'e' and 'c' to decrease letter-reversal errors.

Many 'dyslexia-friendly' sites currently use the sans-serif Arial typeface but this has been criticised for similar reversable shapes (eg b and d, p and q). Microsoft has promoted Verdana as screen-friendly but that font has been criticised for tight line spacing and short ascenders, with some designers accordingly preferring Trebuchet MS. Some offline publishers have trialled the Comic Sans typeface, often dismissed as "too whimsical" for professional use.

In practice there is little agreement about appropriate solutions or compromises (or even about the application of 'dyslexia' as a diagnostic label). Caution is therefore desirable when assessing some of the more enthusiastic claims about particular fonts or styles. 'Comparing Comprehension Speeds and Accuracy of Online Information in Students with and without Dyslexia', a paper by Sri Kurniawan & Gerard Conroy in Advances in Universal Web Design & Evaluation: Research, Trends & Opportunities (Hershey: IDEA Group 2007) edited by Kurniawan & Panayiotis Zaphiris, offers some cautions.

One pundit commented that in print "switching from serif to sans serif body type drops good comprehension from 67% to 12%". Ted Nicholas' Five Powerful Techniques that Produce Unstoppable Sales proclaimed that

In direct mail, headlines should be in Times-Roman font, serif, or sans serif typefaces. The body copy should always be Times Roman. Reason? On the written page, it's easy to read. Never use a sans serif typeface in body copy.

On websites, the sans serif typefaces such as Arial and Verdana seem to work best because they are more inviting to read in a sea of cyber-clutter

'Inviting' presumably reflects greater legibility on low-resolution monitors. Fred Showker more acutely commented that

These days the DTP and design writers in magazines are having a tough time coming up with things to write about. Typography is always an easy hit, so we're continually reading about this rule or that.

     email

An informal 2001 study by Ralph Wilson in his Doctor Ebiz newsletter suggests that the 'killer-app' in HTML email messages is the font choice. Wilson believed that most clients of his e-commerce services use use email programs that are HTML compatible. He surveyed which fonts and font sizes were the most readable.

Wilson's initial email contained the same text in 12 point Times New Roman and Arial, assuming that Times New Roman as a serif font would be preferred over the sans-serif Arial. He claims that 1,123 of 1,643 recipients preferred 12pt Arial to 12pt Times New Roman, contrary to conventional wisdom that readers choose serif over sans serif.

In a further test responses to Times New Roman were compared with those to the serif Georgia, an 'online' font created by Microsoft for greater legibility. 52% of respondents preferred Georgia, 33% chose Times New Roman and 15% supposedly couldn't tell the difference.

One reason, according to Wilson, is that those users did not have the Georgia font installed. As noted elsewhere on this site, that is grounds for caution in using HTML rather than plain text email, along with uncertainty about how different machines lay out a HTML message and recipient unhappiness with fatter email files.

Perhaps sensing that he was onto a good promo opportunity, Wilson then compared two sans serif fonts: 12pt Arial and 12pt Verdana (this page is 'optimised' for Verdana). 53% of his respondents preferred Arial, 43% preferred Arial and 4% couldn't tell. As font sizes became smaller (10pt and 9pt) users shifted to Verdana but some thought that they were simply too small to be read easily.

His conclusions, contraverted by some accessibility studies but consistent with others, are that his readers prefer sans serif fonts for body text, that there is an insufficient user base among his market to justify using Georgia and that 12pt Arial is the best option for his HTML messages.

The 2006 Perception of fonts: Perceived personality traits and uses by A. Dawn Shaikh, Barbara Chaparro & Doug Fox suggested that 'personality traits' (cuddliness, masculinity, playfulness) are attributed to fonts and are associated with appropriate uses. Accordingly

typeface can have an effect on the perception of the content. Typefaces should be chosen to reflect the message of the content and care should be taken to ensure that the typeface does not conflict with the intentions of the author.

Their follow-up The Effect of Typeface on the Perception of Email argued that there is a relationship between typeface selection and the reader's perception of email, with corporate users accordingly being advised to avoid 'joke' fonts for business messages.






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