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Subject:Re: Font Question, Multi use document From:"Bergen, Jane" <janeb -at- ANSWERSOFT -dot- COM> Date:Tue, 28 Jul 1998 08:32:30 -0500
Damien, your observations are probably correct, but with some cautions:
* Sans serif in a long line and on a full page (margin to margin on a
letter-sized page) is really harder to read. Your paragraphs may not
have represented a real-life example. On the other hand, if your manuals
really ARE printed on small pages with wide margins (resulting in
shorter lines) the sans serif may work.
* Sans serif is often perceived as "technical" or "clean" --- and people
will initially respond that they *like* it.....but that doesn't
necessarily mean that they'd be happy reading page after page with it,
nor that it would be as readable as serif text.
* Sans serif, perhaps because of the perception mentioned above, is
often preferred by technical people (engineers). It still has nothing to
do with readability.
Most of all, though, I think you should go with what you are comfortable
with. If your audience prefers sans serif and if you've determined that
readability is not compromised too much, then use it. We've had so much
debate both in this list and within the technical writing industry, yet
we're still at a stand-off. No resolution is on the horizon.
Just an FYI: at my company, we combine the two styles very effectively.
My text is 10 pt Palatino but filenames, function names, titles of
dialogs, menu names, etc. are in 9 pt bold Arial. Everyone here really,
really likes this look and so do our customers.
Jane
Jane Bergen, Technical Writer
AnswerSoft, Inc.
Richardson, TX (972)997-8355
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Damien Braniff [mailto:Damien_Braniff -at- PAC -dot- CO -dot- UK]
>
> We too are looking at our current documents and how they can
> be improved -
> layout, fonts, etc. Some time ago I did a little in-house
> experiment and
> printed out a paragraph of text in a variety of fonts and
> circulated it for
> opinion. Contrary to research that serif fonts are easier to
> read the most
> popular fonts were sans serif like arial (what we currently
> use). It was
