Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

Bruce Perens

Wed, 07 May 2008 10:25:42 PDT

Science

User Beryllium Sphere® pointed out this literature study of claims that serif type is more legible than sans-serif. The conclusion seems to be that it's a matter of personal preference and that there is in general no agreed-upon scientific structure for defining legibility of text.
Although I learned to set type by hand in school (really useful occupational education there, along with the course on telephone plug switchboards), they didn't teach much theory. I worked in computer graphics for 19 years (12 at Pixar), but as a systems programmer, so I never got into typography deeper than reading The Mac is Not a Typewriter.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

steelbytes

Thu, 08 May 2008 21:05:37 PDT

I can't help but thinking that if a person spends a lot of time reading printed materials (eg reference books, scientific papers in hard copy, etc), then they may prefer serif fonts as typicall that is what is used for such materials. Whereas if you read emails all day which are typically san serif then you may prefer that. ie, preference maybe primarily related to what you read most, not what is 'clearest/prettiest/whatever'.

Of course the different font rendering technologies (mac vs win vs linux) have a lot to say about what is nice to read on screen ...

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

Alan	Wed, 07 May 2008 10:54:25 PDT

On paper 99% of the time I choose traditional serif font. (I do DTP for a living.)
On screen, small point size or low resolution, sans is better. But normal size (12 points, say) and with better screen resolution, serif is as good on screen. One practical point: 1, l, I are often indistinguishable in sans fonts.
Anyway, as far as the site goes, I like the serif font I see now (I'd prefer Georgia, but Times is okay.) If there is a new design, I want to have at least the choice to use that. If the login problem ever gets solved, the CSS style can be chosen as a user preference. Then people can choose whatever sizes, colours and fonts they like. There is no need to push a one-size-fits-all design.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

David Leppik

Wed, 07 May 2008 11:06:11 PDT

Agreed. I don't typically like serif fonts online, mainly because they usually don't render particularly well at screen resolutions. Far more important than serif/sans is whether or not the font was designed for screen viewing.
As a side topic, one of the font families that's been really well evaluated for readability is Clearview, which was designed to replace the current font used on US highway signs. It's sans serif, and among its remarkable design features is being legible when over-illuminated by headlight glare.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

bi-ker-shi

Wed, 07 May 2008 13:52:52 PDT

About Technocrat.net

I agree with these views, the issue for screen fonts is trying to pack as much as possible into the screen real estate and san serif fonts work better for screens. Still it's unlikely that the majority would want to move away from traditional "Ye Olde World Times!" and it's just not something I would get hung up over.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

kai	Wed, 07 May 2008 15:18:14 PDT

It would be nice to be able to use designer-specified fonts - and upcoming versions of CSS and browsers will be supporting css-downloadable fonts. Right here, right now, that's not a possibility.
I chose the Lucida Grande and then Lucida families of fonts, falling back then to Verdana and then a generic sans-serif font
```
body {
	font: 10pt/1.4 "Lucida Grande", Lucida, Verdana, sans-serif;
}
```
The Lucida Grande and Lucida font families have been designed from the ground up for on-screen legibility. They are pretty standard on the majority of devices browsing the web these days, and represent a pretty safe choice. Verdana, was also designed with on-screen readability in mind. It has been around for longer than the Lucida font families and is a good fallback position that's not Helvetica or Arial. Not that I have anything against good ol' Helvetica - it's a fantastic font that has stood the test of time - but it wasn't designed for small point sizes on low-resolution output devices.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

bi-ker-shi

Thu, 08 May 2008 01:35:03 PDT

About Technocrat.net

Ah, take me back to 1985, Scott McNealy and Sun Microsystems had just overtaken Silicon Graphics and Scott helped with the development of the Lucida family that became standard for Solaris. At that time Ventura publisher and Aldus Pagemaker had just come online and in IB we were all racing to make good use of DTP. I loved the Lucida family so much I paid for a copy of the Adobe Type Manager so I could have Lucida everywhere. Yes, those were the days.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

danic

Thu, 08 May 2008 16:46:42 PDT

I'd prefer Georgia
Can't you assign that in your browser? I just tried that, it does indeed look better with Georgia. BTW, Opera allows you to assign whatever font you have installed to several font families, so you can just change all (sans)serif fonts to whatever ttf you wish without using user css. AFAIK (I don't use that feature) you can also assign different font settings for individual sites.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

Alan	Thu, 08 May 2008 17:42:19 PDT

Can't you assign that in your browser?
Yes. I also use Opera mostly. One feature I use frequently is "User mode" (as opposed to the normal "Author mode"), which ignores CSS styles. That gives me most pages in my default font, which is Georgia, 12 points. But some pages become unintelligble as their layout is dependent on CSS (columns, etc).
I haven't gone into the details of overrides otherwise, but it looks like its something I should do.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

danic

Fri, 09 May 2008 02:38:00 PDT

This page has some details on the font settings; it refers to older Opera versions, but the settings haven't changed in Opera 9. Scroll down to "Setting the default fonts". This should eliminate the need for user mode.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

kai	Wed, 07 May 2008 15:12:23 PDT

I've posted at the previous thread some of the reasons why I deliberately chose a sans-serif font for the Technocrat makeover.
I too, have a long history in the visual arena, having worked doing finished art, graphic design and typography and in prepress as well. I'm not claiming to be an expert on online typography, although I do have much more than a passing interest in the field.
It was a conscious decision I made to pick a sans-serif font to maximise on-screen readability. With the current low resolution of screens, I firmly believe that the clean and clear letterforms of a sans-serif font are easier to read than a serif font. In print, where you've got 300+ dpi, it's a different story, and for reading large blocks of text, a serif font is more pleasing to the eyes.
One other reason I chose a sans-serif font was because the blocks of text we're reading here on screen are generally not multiple paragraphs (Guy Fawkes' submissions excluded).
Font choice is very limited when working with web typography - there are some lovely fonts out there that I would enjoy using, but I can't guarantee that you will have them on your machine, thereby destroying the carefully tweaked look and feel of the site.
We all come here for the content, and the more mature nature of the site, so on one hand the design isn't as relevant as something like the css Zen Gargen but on the other hand, a clean and modern site design does add to the perception of the site as being a "real" place for your news, not a second-rate personal blog. Attractive design can also help in attracting new readers - if it looks good, they're more likely to stay and read the content.
I firmly believe that the content in this site should be displayed as a sans-serif font - I don't believe in site-by-site overrides. I am aware that others feel very strongly about this and want to keep using a serif font and I must admit, I don't know what can be done to keep everyone happy.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

Alan	Wed, 07 May 2008 17:30:57 PDT

I firmly believe that the content in this site should be displayed as a sans-serif font - I don't believe in site-by-site overrides. I am aware that others feel very strongly about this and want to keep using a serif font and I must admit, I don't know what can be done to keep everyone happy.
You can keep me happy by allowing a choice. Many forums allow the user to choose a skin /theme. Otherwise I will have to work out a hack to do it myself.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

kai	Wed, 07 May 2008 17:39:55 PDT

I'd love to allow the end user a choice for sans serif or serif fonts... Unfortunately, I'm at the mercy of those who actually know how to code, so we're going to have to petition Bruce, or someone else to go through the source for new technocrat and add that functionality.
In the meantime, I'm going to continue to develop my stylesheet using sans-serif fonts, as that's what looks better to me, but giving the user the choice seems to be the best solution to what is turning out to be a rather passionate issue.
As I've said before, I'm generally against giving users too much choice - I'm definitely not interested in coming up with multiple colour themes, or anything like that - I don't think a site such as technocrat needs any skinning capabilities, but font choice is sounding like it will keep a lot of people happier.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

Spider

Wed, 07 May 2008 17:06:25 PDT

My uncle owned a printing shop many years ago. Earlier the place published a small regional news paper, and as a very young lad I was fascinated by having my name printed out on hot molten metal ready for type setting.

I personally use serif and sans-serif a lot. Serif for report writing, sans-serif for labelling graphs (seems "cleaner cut" for use with graphs).

Personal letter writing I use french script to make it look "hand written".

There are so many fonts now only a button click away, it is hard to know which looks best.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

kai	Wed, 07 May 2008 17:46:15 PDT

There are so many fonts now only a button click away, it is hard to know which looks best.
Ah, but there aren't when designing for the web... yet.
Safari and other browsers will soon support downloadable fonts... All over again - this was a "feature" that was half-heartedly implemented years ago, didn't work well and was rarely used.
Embedding fonts into a web page opens up a whole can of worms with regard to software licensing. The vast majority of the fonts that are free enough to embed in a web page aren't worth embedding. The high-quality, hand-crafted commercial fonts from foundries like Linotype and Adobe in general aren't allowed to be embedded, unless you come up with large amounts of cash for the licensing to do so.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

Spider

Wed, 07 May 2008 20:28:37 PDT

Never knew that. Makes you wonder why make them available on the web if you can't use them.

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

kai	Wed, 07 May 2008 20:40:24 PDT

It's a strange situation, that's for sure
To be fair, there are some type designers that have very liberal licensing attached to their fonts, and create high-quality fonts that look good, have the proper kerning and hinting tables and generally work well. These people are in the minority.
There are also a heap of type designers who produce knock-offs of popular type designs, and sell them cheaply or give them away. These fonts generally lack kerning and hinting, and other features that are nice to have, such as ligatures. They generally have pretty liberal licensing terms too, but there's no point in using a crap font just because you're free to do so.
The vast majority of high quality fonts are from commercial font foundries, such as Linotype and Adobe, and have very restrictive licensing. What a lot of people don't realise is that if you want to use a particular font, you generally have to license it for the number of workstations it will be used on, to create or view content, just like commercial software. You may also have the option to pay more for worldwide usage, or to distribute it in a non-usable form (like embedded in a PDF)
For many years, fonts were traded around with jobs in the graphic design and prepress industries - a designer would often come to a new company and bring their "personal" font library with them. A designer would send their work in to have the prepress work done (turn it from an electronic document into film or a printing plate) and send the fonts. Prepress houses would collect their clients' fonts for reuse. This is all copyright infringement. Now, to buy a 20-seat license for the entire Adobe OpenType collection, you're looking at over $10k here in Australia - and I don't believe the licensing allows you to embed them in a web page for all the world to view. Now, this is kind of strange, as you're free to generate a graphic using the font, and have that on your web page, or use it for your company logo, for all the world to see... It's a huge grey area at the moment, and the legal people haven't caught up with the technology yet...

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

Alan	Thu, 08 May 2008 18:03:34 PDT

... This is all copyright infringement.
Not necessarily, despite the dire warnings some font vendors make. It depends on what country you're in. In some countries, fonts can't be copyrighted. (That used to be the case in the US, this may have changed recently.) In some places they can be patented. Most font names (but not the fonts themselves) can be trademarked. (Thus the many clones of Palatino, using different names: Palladio, Book Antiqua, Zapf Calligraphic, Paladin, etc.)
But back on the main issue; I don't want some obsessive designer forcing his fonts to be downloaded and installed in my PC just to look at his web page. (Many years ago there was a Netscape plugin that did this, and it worked, but it never caught on.)
There are some gigantic Unicode fonts around now, and including these, either deliberately or accidentally, in a page would lead to 20 MB download every time you read the page.
However, Flash and PDF both can embed fonts efficiently, without affecting the OS, and in a way most font vendors accept (though it is possible to extract fonts from PDFs, it's pretty silly as there are easier ways to get the originals).

Serif vs. Sans-Serif Arguments

Alan	Thu, 08 May 2008 06:19:17 PDT

Never knew that. Makes you wonder why make them available on the web if you can't use them.
In practice, you can assume that (almost) everyone has the Microsoft core fonts:
Andale Mono (formerly Monotype.com)
Arial
Arial Black
Comic Sans MS
Courier New
Georgia
Impact
Times New Roman
Trebuchet MS
Verdana
Webdings
Adobe Minion Web
These were released for free distribution originally, and are availabe for all platforms from Microsoft directly, or Corefonts at Sourceforge.
MS stopped distributing to some platforms (like Linux) a while ago, but their free licensing for earlier releases was irrevocable.
These fonts, while not masterpieces, are all of the highest quality technically and well suited to screen display.

How about NOT OVERRIDING MY CHOICE!

wowbagger

Thu, 08 May 2008 08:54:07 PDT

How about "Respect the choice I made in my browser and DON'T SECOND GUESS ME!" ?
I set my browser's default font — perhaps I had a reason for doing so, like, perhaps, I want a particular font used by default?
This is one of the things I really dislike about the modern trend in web design: "I am the web designer, and I know what is good for you. Now, you just sit there and enjoy the screen size I have chosen for you, the font and font size I have chosen, the music I have chosen, and be a good little consumer, because I am ever-so-much-smarter than you are."
OK, maybe you override the font for headings and such, but how about respecting my choice for the body font and body font size? Perhaps I set it one way on my desktop with the dual 1920x1200 panels and another way on my N800 for a reason?