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Subject:Re: Fonts for Online documents From:"Parks, Beverly L." <parksb -at- HUACHUCA-EMH7 -dot- ARMY -dot- MIL> Date:Thu, 20 Jun 1996 07:44:00 MST
Tim Altom[SMTP:taltom -at- IQUEST -dot- NET] wrote--
>> Hold on there, pardner. This is more myth than meat, methinks. Serifs
were carved on monuments, not for legibility, but to prevent the stone
from
cracking at the end of the letter. <<
Yup. Tim's right. At least this is what I've learned also. There was a
television show on PBS several years ago about writing (language symbols)
and alphabets. Serifs carved in stone were not only discussed on the
show, but demonstrated, too. It was quite interesting.
As Tim said later in his post, the *perception* of either serif or sans
serif fonts being easier to read is, dare I say, *entirely* cultural.
I wonder if this also applies to the lowercase vs. UPPERCASE debate? I
would argue for lowercase being easier to read because of the word-forms
argument. Robin Williams has *excellent* examples of this in her book
"The PC is Not A Typewriter".
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