[WEB4LIB] Re: Fonts and zoom utilities (Re: Re: Web/ADA/uh oh...)

[Thomas Dowling]

>... *sans serif should be used on hardcopy/print* and *please*
>finally people dispense with the typewriter fonts like Roman,
>Times New Roman, and New Times Roman. You will serve
>your patrons and students in a kinder manner.

By way of clarification, Times (and its various flavors) is not a
typewriter font.  It is proportional, and typewriter fonts are monospaced,
excepting the output from some very fancy electric typewriters.  Courier
might fairly be called a typewriter font, but not Times, which got its
name from being commissioned as the body typeface of the London Times.

By most categorizations, there are three or four kinds of serif fonts, and
most typographers would identify at least three kinds of sans serif.  Each
of those categories might have dozens of typefaces in a commercial
catalog, so it is a serious oversimplification to say that either serif or
sans serif fonts are always more legible than the other.  Even within one
type face, if the face is available from more than one vendor, one
vendor's hinting may make it much more readable onscreen than another's.

[For reasons I won't go into, I have four version of Times on my PC, three
of which are almost illegible onscreen at small type sizes.  The fourth,
Monotype Times New Roman 2.00--the Windows Core Font--is specifically
hinted for legibility at low resolutions.  Yes, Arial 2.0--another font
hinted for onscreen display--is more legible at the same size, but I
wouldn't call it more readable than Georgia, a serif font designed from
the ground up for onscreen reading.  Meanwhile similar sans serif fonts
like Linotype Univers and Bitstream Swiss 721 are as illegible as the
worst of the Times, and Bitstream's version of Optima is still harder to
read.]

I have no quarrel with what you say about readability, especially for
people with dyslexia symptoms, and the typographer's use of serif fonts
for body text is more a matter of tradition than of readability research.
However, as is the case in so many fields, rules about typography, applied
with too broad a brush, can do more harm than good.

By the way, Microsoft has commissioned several fonts specifically for
onscreen readability.  IMHO, every workstation used to read a lot of
online material should have the collection at
<URL:http://www.microsoft.com/typography/fontpack/>.


Thomas Dowling
OhioLINK - Ohio Library and Information Network
tdowling at ohiolink.edu