Re: Dual-use font

Subject: Re: Dual-use font
From: David Neeley <dbneeley -at- gmail -dot- com>
To: "TECHWR-L" <techwr-l -at- lists -dot- techwr-l -dot- com>
Date: Tue, 8 Nov 2005 19:17:42 -0600


Sean,

I don't believe that "...just go with al sans-serif fonts..." is
particularly helpful or necessary. Like so many "hard and fast rules"
there are exceptions on both sides of the question proving that the
"rule" is neither so hard nor so fast.

There are quite a few serif fonts that are quite nice onscreen, such
as many of the slab serif (Egyptian) font designs.

There are also sans serif fonts that look relatively poor onscreen.
One key, I believe, is to select fonts with relatively uniform stroke
widths--avoiding hairline strokes, for instance--as well as those with
moderately large x-heights for maximum readability at low resolution.
Not the *largest* x-heights, mind, for then the contrast between font
body and ascenders and descenders isn't sufficient and the text
becomes difficult and tiring to read.

For example, Bitstream Vera Serif is an Egyptian font that is very
readable onscreen as well as in print, while Avant Garde is a sans
that is very tiresome for extended text, especially onscreen.

David



On 11/8/05, Sean Hower <hokumhome -at- freehomepage -dot- com> wrote:

> I don't know if there is any standard, but I would just go with al sans-serif fonts. This will take into account the needs of online viewers without making life more difficult for those that print the doc. So, in short, design for the online user as far as font choices go.

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References:
re: Dual-use font: From: Sean Hower

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