
The Serif Readability Myth - lists
http://asserttrue.blogspot.com/2013/01/the-serif-readability-myth.html
======
efsavage
Just because you can't prove it doesn't mean it's not true.

I use a serif font on my Kindle. I recently bought a book that was somehow
locked to only use sans-serif. I got a few pages in, and had to stop, it was
terrible. I wrote the author, who apologized and claimed he was trying to fix
it.

There are going to be some sans-serif fonts that are more readable than some
serifs, but in my 25 years as an amateur fontophile, that is a rare exception.

The author rightly asserts that legibility is a very difficult metric to
evaluate, and there are a large number of other factors in play here like
conditioning, but I think the market is evidence enough that serif fonts are
still the choice of book designers and typesetters long after the initial
technical reasons for doing so have become obsolete.

~~~
Silhouette
_Just because you can't prove it doesn't mean it's not true._

No, but the body of evidence suggesting that there is little if any difference
might. The best starting point I know if you want to explore it is Alex
Poole's site[1], which cites a large number of sources and some critical
commentary similar to the blog post introducing this HN discussion but with
much more material.

[1] [http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-
or-s...](http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-
serif-typefaces/)

 _... I think the market is evidence enough that ..._

The "market" used to think the world was flat and if you didn't drown you were
a witch. Common perception is a lousy substitute for properly conducted
experiments, particularly in any usability-related field, where it's been
found time and again that self-reported preferences don't necessarily
correlate with measured performance.

~~~
tokipin
hey if you don't drown you're definitely a witch

------
tikhonj
I actually did a project on something similar in high school. I wrote a little
program that would show people two passages in a random order, timing how long
it took them to read the passages, alternating between one of four random
typefaces. The four faces had two sans-serif faces and two serif faces, but I
was interested in a different quality: whether monospace was easier to read.

Unfortunately, I ran into serious methodological issues which rendered the
data completely inconclusive, but it was a fun experiment nonetheless.

The main thing I learned was how awesome computers are at saving me effort: I
got all my data in one go while others had to conduct their experiments
manually, one-by-one. Even counting how long it took me to hack together the
program--and even in high school, using Java Swing, it did not take long--I
still won out time-wise. More importantly, I traded boring data gathering for
fun programming.

------
j_baker
I thought the "conventional wisdom" was that serif fonts were best for print,
while sans-serif fonts were best for computer screens. Honestly, I've never
heard anyone claim that serif fonts were all-around more readable.

~~~
ramy_d

        One of the most-cited "authorities" on serif legibility is Cyril Burt, whose 1955 article [2] in The British Journal of Statistical Psychology (a journal he was the editor of) seemed to end the debate on whether serif typefaces are more readable than non-serif typefaces.
    

I think this article is referring specifically to print given the dates of the
research.

------
ishansharma
Personally, I've always found Sans Serif more readable. Maybe just that I've
been trained by reading typographic blogs to like it.

I would love to see what others think over this. Which font do you prefer?

~~~
ScottBurson
I wasn't finding the sans-serif font in which most of the article is displayed
to be particularly hard to read, but when I got to the short blockquote in a
serif font, I found it noticeably easier to read. The effect is persistent for
me. Have a look -- do you not have the same reaction?

~~~
ishansharma
Same thing here. I think the line height is a bit off on the blog.

But when used with proper spacing, I like Sans Serif anywhere. Even HN is
using Sans Serif and its quite usable.

------
anvandare
IN A SIMILAR VEIN, TEXT WRITTEN IN ALL-CAPS ISN'T ANY LESS LEGIBLE THAN TEXT
WRITTEN IN lowercase; however, I'm sure you found the beginning of this
sentence much more irritating to read than its ending.

It's about comfortableness, normality, custom. Serif evokes a relaxed,
readable mood. Sans-serif is for quick points of information and eye-catchers.
Capitals are for critical information. (And for us coders: mono-space is for
code.)

There's nothing innate to the form to justify this is so, it's just how we've
been taught/grown to interpret their presence in text. If the form doesn't fit
the usual function, we feel a little uneasy (even if we don't realize it). I'm
sure people who haven't been taught the distinction won't have this
uneasiness... A bit related: <https://xkcd.com/1015/>

------
mnicole
I believe it will always comes down to context. Some people love pixel fonts
(like Silkscreen), but they generally don't have a place in larger sizes or on
paper. Likewise, browsers handling serifs' mix of thick and thin line weights
can lead to unwanted results. When all of the lines are the same weight, you
run into less problems with individual letters. That said, they can have a
complete lack of personality. I rather prefer a hybrid typeface like the one
Portland's TriMet uses -
<http://portlandafoot.org/documents/IdTrimetCasestudy.pdf> (on the headers of
the print pieces and the words "Trip Center" in the signage on page 3).

------
ohwp
Well I always learned it was true for ink on paper. Ink on paper flows. Thats
the reason they used serif fonts.

Related info: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ink_trap>

~~~
zokier
Even the both examples on the wikipedia article are sans-serif! Serifs have
very little to do with ink properties. Probably more to do with ancient romans
and their chisels if you want a technological explanation for serifs.

------
pfortuny
Edit: First: serifs were invented by monks? You should look for example here:
<https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_square_capitals>

It is called 'roman' for something which has nothing to do with monks or the
middle ages.

Sorry: the fact that it has not been proved true does not mean it is not.
Caretul. (He says so in the very last sentence...)

------
mddw
It would be interesting to know the most used font on old gen Kindles (which
have only three choices : serif, serif condensed and sans-serif.)

~~~
nswanberg
A survey of preference may not say much, but it would be something. It would
be more helpful to have data on Kindle page views per minute by text display
choice, controlled for other factors like book, typeface size, etc.

My biggest problem with my Kindle is that I can't even get that sort of data
for myself. I'd love to know when I read, how long, which topics, and so on.

~~~
ComputerGuru
I'm almost certain with the latest it ware update this data is available
_somehwhere_. Kindle now estimates time left in a book as a function of your
past reading speed.

------
duopixel
One may be dismayed to find out that _most_ things in design haven't been
proved conclusively (in a scientific way). There are many reasons for this,
but I think it all boils down to the difficulty of measuring how the human
mind reacts when interacting with something.

What we have nailed down is the _effects_ of those interactions:
clickthroughs, purchases, and such. So, when you try to perform an experiment
about legibility you usually apply a comprehension test and measure the speed
at which the text was read.

In science you should isolate as many variables as possible, but I think in
the case of typography there's just too many factors at play: the content, the
medium and the reader introduce too much noise into the experiments.

I think that in the future brain imaging will advance enough to study how much
people are able to concentrate with different typefaces. A researcher might
give you an essay written in Comic Sans and see your mind wander more often
than other subjects reading the same essay in Times.

~~~
pekk
If most things in design haven't been proved conclusively, that would just
mean that design as a field doesn't take research seriously and doesn't insist
on a strong empirical basis.

You don't need to wait for unspecified advances in neuroimaging. The basic
research can be done 50 years ago. You measure the mind with behavior, end of
story. That part is as easy as A/B testing. Just do it. If you go to
neuroimaging, you should first know why it is relevant and worth spending the
$$$.

And your feeling that the factors you suppose to be important are too many
shouldn't ever stop us from looking into it. When we really get down to brass
tacks on a subject, it's common to find that a lot of the factors we suppose
to be important contribute negligibly to the final outcome. You just don't
know which these are until you look.

------
ricardobeat
Legibility and readability are intertwined, but still separate criteria.

Sans-serifs have better legibility, that's why they are used for all kinds of
signage. Serifs are better for long-form text, they give visual cohesion to
lines, making it easier to follow the breaks. That's what the 'myth' is about,
not that serif is _always_ better than sans.

~~~
fhars
Except that that is exactly the thesis that the article has rather
convincingly demonstrated to be completely unproven. It may still be true, but
we don't now. And I am not sure that Bodoni will beat Gill on the "visual
cohesion to lines" metric, Bodoni is quite static and vertcal, while Gill is
rather flowing.

~~~
ricardobeat
Quoted:

> reading speed or reading comprehension, which have no bearing on glyph
> recognition per se

This post is focusing on _legibility_ \- how efficiently can we recognize the
shape of letters and words. The studies on reading speed and comprehension,
which he dismisses without any backing whatsoever, are the ones that surface
the difference between serif vs sans.

His arguments are 1) "legibility is poorly defined" 2) "reading has no
relation to legibility" (?) 3) "it's complicated" 4) "paper X turned out to be
bogus" (because the author cheated in an unrelated study). That doesn't add
any information to me, just controversy.

He also ignores the fact that sans-serif type is currently way better for
reading on monitors due to their low resolution. Serifs look great on a >250
dpi display. How many books have you seen lately printed in sans that are not
for kids?

------
eggoa
Well, if it's a myth, it's been a useful one as long as it's reduced the use
all those ugly, ugly sans-serif fonts.

~~~
greatquux
But I think it's the serif fonts that are ugly you insensitive clod!

------
Thrall
My opinion: People don't read individual glyphs, they read words. The amount
of variety between different glyphs and other factors such as kerning which
help the letters combine to make an elegant whole word. A classic example of
how not to do this is blackletter; all the glyphs are so similar that at a
glance, the text looks like variable length blocks of repeated characters. It
is also very hard to read.

In my experience, many computer fonts also fall into this trap. By trying to
establish a consistent theme or feel to the glyphs, they iron out all the
letters' individual quirks that make them easy to distinguish and recognise,
thus readability suffers.

I think in terms of readability, the sans/serif issue is largely irrelevant
(as the article might suggest).

------
Terretta
Final <P>:

> _"So before you go around claiming that serif typefaces are easier to
> read... It's one of many myths you (and I) have accepted as true, that
> isn't."_

It isn't true? Prove it. Until then, you don't know whether the myth is true,
and it is not necessarily a false belief.

~~~
grannyg00se
Huh? Prove that a _myth_ isn't true?

Shouldn't the burden of proof be the other way around? Otherwise it follows
that goblins and fairies aren't necessarily false beliefs.

You could imagine anything and claim it is not necessarily a false belief
until someone proves that it is. Worse, you could imagine something with
properties such that it is impossible to prove that it doesn't exist. At this
point we'd all have to go around accepting your imaginary world of "not
necessarily false" beliefs because we can't prove them to be false. What a
terribly unstable situation that would be. Imagine, millions of people
believing in one not necessarily false set of beliefs, and millions of other
people believing in a different set of not necessarily false beliefs, and both
groups claiming that the other must be wrong, each without method of proving
the other to be false. What a dangerous way to reason about things.

~~~
pfortuny
No, what he means is that the author should have said: "It is a myth without
proof" but not "a myth which is not true", which is what the last sentence
says.

Myths can be true, like, you know, the existence of Nineveh (yes, it was a
"Myth" and then it was proved true).

------
techdog
It's hard to believe that serif fonts are not more readable than sans-serif.
It would seem such an easy thing to test. Apparently not so.

------
darkstalker
I prefer sans-serif too. The only downside is the difficulty to distinguish
"I" (capital i) from "l" (lowercase L) on most sans fonts.

------
martinced
I've been involved in publishing too (LaTeX, QuarkXPress) and...

It is a fact that for short texts (eg titles) Sans-Serif is actually much
easier to read. Studies have been conducted: this is precisely the reason city
names and exit names on the highways are using sans-serif. Security (and
lifes) are at work here: not just reading speed. The last thing you want is
people reading Serif on the highways, being distracted by all the fancy
curves, and realizing too late it's their exit and suddenly switching lanes in
a hurry and hence potentially causing accidents.

But for long strectches of text, like inside books? I don't know. My take on
it is that basically the reading speed is the same but that Serif looks nicer
from a typographical standpoint. There's hardly anything that beats the beauty
of the ligature of a Serif font between a 'f' and an 'i' (i.e. when the dot of
the 'i' is connected to the 'f').

I do prefer: sans-serif for everything except serif for printed medium, where
the resolution is at least 600 dpi (no, retina ain't close enough yet).

So, yes, for printed books I still prefer Serif.

As a side note: this effectively means I cannot yet get a PDF which I find
pleasant to read both on screen and printed.

And of course I configure my browser to use sans-serif fonts instead of serif
fonts wherever possible.

P.S: as to my coding / shell font(s)... Pixel perfect fonts of course. Like
the Proggy family or the Terminus family. I _hate_ being distracted by the
blurriness of anti-aliasing / sub-pixel anti-aliasing (RGB decimation). But
I've got a _very_ good eyesight.

~~~
rmrfrmrf
A few details here:

It's not sans-serif vs. serif that makes short texts more legible: it's the
x-height of the letterforms that tend to make sans-serifs more legible.
Automotive signage typefaces are usually designed with larger-than-normal
x-heights, which has the effect of increasing the legibility of a typeface
from a distance without increasing the font size (which is why, for example,
Arial looks HUGE in Word at 12 pt whereas Times New Roman looks perfectly
acceptable).

There could certainly be a serif typeface used for shorter texts. A good
example would be TheSerif from the FF Thesis collection.

Another issue with serif fonts on screens that you touched on: most
traditional serif fonts were simply not designed to be viewed on a screen.
However, a good counterexample would be Georgia, a serif font designed by
Matthew Carter that was made specifically for the screen and used by a large
number of websites.

One last thing: a reason why serifs are often thought to be more legible in
large bodies of text is due to designers being careless about leading. With
sans-serif fonts, you generally need to let the leading out a bit in
comparison to serif fonts. On the author's site, for example, having the font
so big and the leading so small tended to make me lose my position while
reading (remember that without serifs to 'anchor' your eye, you're basically
limiting your recognizable shapes to lines and circles).

