The comments are going to be diabolical with everyone’s font opinions and I am so here for it 🍿 Thanks for understanding while I took a little break, I’m back with monthly uploads!
I thought the serifs on a font were supposed to improve one's comprehension of the material, wherever I got this information from.. it didn't mention reading speed. I know handwriting helps our comprehension & recall, especially cursive handwriting for some reason. Off topic, but want to mention anyway: My handwriting is absolutely terrible but I feel like, even if it's illegible when I read it later.. just the fact I was made more conscious of the notes I made (due to writing by hand) that's helped my comprehension & recall.. to a degree... depending on the time passed before I've looked over those notes again.. 😅 ..I mean it seems to help 'seal it in my mind' at the moment I'm taking the notes anyway & I've my own crude version of shorthand (I'm sorry about the terrible grammar).
You admit font size has the most effect but then don't calibrate for the size difference between fonts. Of course you like cosmic better, it's 3.5 characters longer than TNR at the beginning.
I love how this video is about something you never really think about. Somehow you can make such an ordinary thing as fonts sound so interesting, great video!
One factor you didn't say anything about is text length: For shorter texts (say, no more than a hanfull of pages) sans serif fonts may be more comprehensible, but take a 600 page novel completely typeset in a sans serif font, and compare it to the same novel typeset in any serif font. In my experience (i work as a professional typesetter and layout programmer) sans serif fonts are more exhausting over longer texts than sans serif fonts. Although, i cannot name any studies that prove this observation scientificly.
I'm a chemistry teacher. The MOST important aspect of a font for me is having I and l look VERY different. Identifying Cl (chlorine) rather than CI (carbon and iodine) is very difficult for beginning students without a clear font.
Former physics teacher and I absolutely agree. In Times New Roman you know exactly what every letter is. Now that I'm retired and my eyesight has gone to crap, size totally matters. Also, for readability, spacing matters as well. I use a Kindle and can set the font, the size, and the spacing. It has made all the difference for me.
It's the same for programming. A very clear distinction between O and 0 is also very important. On the other hand, programming fonts are not very good for general writing because they are monospace. Each letter should take up an equal amount of width for the spacing to look identical with every font.
One thing related to your point I have not yet seen in this comment section is having a standard. She began the video with how she was writting a research paper. It is very useful for those to use, as with well-defined terms and grammar, a standard font style + font size. It is not only I and l, O and 0, but the mathematical operators, indexes and such. It is essential to mutual understanding, which is in turn itself essential in scientific community.
@@Kenionatus If I had a dollar for every time I've cried over coding in R only to find out that I mistook a 0 for a o or a - for a ~ I could pay off my student loans!
Don't care about serif vs sans-serif. The only thing is for sure: fonts where uppercase "i" and lowercase "L" look the same should be banned by the Geneva human rights convention.
Interesting. That's probably also the main reason I dislike it; it's too thin (i.e. hard to read). Professors like to demand papers in it because it's smaller than other fonts and they wouldn't want students to get around their obnoxious minimum page requirements! Quantity > quality according to the professors I guess, eh?
yeah, that's too... due thinness is use less ink, but when you try print it, Times New Roman always be thicker due ink bleed. I think I remember original Times New Roman font is thinner than what we use in Digital version. also fun fact, when I was in Internship program in design & print agency, I learn that many printer seller use Times New Roman as benchmark of sharpness, how sharp their text are in smaller point when using Times New Roman. but somehow, Times New Roman is look thick compared to other stylish thin serif font, and thinner than thick serif font.
They’re not equal, though, if you look closely you can see that the lowercase “L” is slightly taller than the uppercase “i”: Il (“iL”). But yeah, they’re so close there might as well be no difference. Still, I don’t see that being a problem except in some specific contexts...
I was confused about this comment for a moment but then i remember that androids can change their fonts and the font that im using is 'SamsungOne' and the I and l is different as l (lowercase of L) has a slight tail(?) so it's not hard for me to read it. Though i remember choosing this font specifically because it gives me the same neat feeling as the font on iphone.
@@GRBtutorials my second name is Ilich, I know there's a slight difference, but don't expect others to notice and write it right. Of course, that's not the only reason.
There is one aspect that was totally missed as an argument in this video: Times covers almost any character there is. When you are writing academic texts, Latin characters get constantly interrupted with Greek characters, the whole thing needs to be in harmony with mathematical expressions and there are also many author names with strange diacritical marks. Times has you covered. There is almost nothing that cannot be typeset in Times. Sans serif fonts on the other hand … well, that is an adventures journey along all those empty spaces in the character table that aren’t occupied. You may think of Times as boring typeface, but it is nevertheless the most advanced typeface in terms of available characters.
Exactly. And the video also didn't distinguish between print and screen. As a designer I was taught that Times New Roman is easier to read in print because the serifs help to lead the eye to the next letter. Additionally Times New Roman in its full glory uses different spacing between letters to make them easier to read. So an 'i' next to an 'm' is different from an 'i' next to an 'o'. On screens these advantages go away so it becomes easier to read with sans serif fonts like Arial. Without differentiating between print and screen, much of the information in this video feels out of context. Not that I don't agree we should be using a larger font size no matter what font you're using. I try to stick to at least 14pt.
@@0hermitworm I increase font size and make the paragraphs into narrow columns for personal reading (to increase speed). Yay, ePubs! So convenient. I dread opening up PDF documents.
Yes, this video was actually disappointingly uninformative. It seems like they were stretching the video out with excessive examples just to hit the 10 minute mark.
@@Jivvi Two missing factors in this video: 1) the choice of font will depend on the nature of the text; i.e., is it a brief newspaper story in short columns, or a long novel? 2) speed is not the only criterion of readability; there are also clarity and affect (aesthetics) to consider. This in turn refers back to point 1), which is the most important criterion when considering anything - what's it for?
I write a lot of technical papers, and distinction between I, l, and 1 is important, also the distinction between O and 0. Serif fonts like TNR are better for the distinction.
For l, l and 1, Comic Sans is more readable than Times New Roman. Type designers should put the top and bottom bars on their sans serfi's capital i's to improve readability. The bars are part of the letter, not serifs. Verdana is one sans serif font where it is easy to tell a capital i from l
@khandwa style … I… I had never noticed that… thank you so, so much. Now I can finally tell the difference on sans serif fonts. Despite the research and despite this though, I stand by this: ALL HAIL TIMES NEW ROMAN
@@scottslotterbeck3796 One of my colleagues never gets the correct spelling of... there they're their Usually he write "thier" in every case. Drives me bonkers!
So much this didn’t cover and one major aspect is space. Designed for newspapers Times New Roman takes up less space than other fonts - and less sheets of paper when printing out dissertations - or don’t people do that any more!
Agreed. I’m a technical editor-I read exactly the same text every day in TNR on paper and in Arial in interactive courseware. When you get blocks of text, TNR is much easier to follow-the serifs create a linear connection at the base of the word that helps keep the eye from flickering up and down between lines. Arial is cleaner visually, but much harder to eyeball for things like alignment, and a headache if you’ve got 300 words on a page, every page. This video ignores the fact that ALL fonts are tools designed to do specific jobs-some catch attention, but are lousy for volumes of text; some align better when printing manually; some are easier to replicate clearly on lower resolution screens; some are designed for the printed page and high word counts. Which one you as a reader “like” is irrelevant.
When a font takes up less space, then you might be able to use a bigger size of it and still get the same number of pages. And a bigger font size helps readability the most as was said in the video. Of course aesthetics are usually weighted over readability as can be inferred by the almost universal preference of block set over left aligned.
The problem I have with Ariel is the capital ‘I’ (shown here because I don’t know how to change the fonts on my phone😝😊). This is very difficult for folk with learning disabilities and those at the beginning stages of learning English. For that alone I don’t think we should use it.
I often change fonts when I'm writing, just for variation. Of course I reformat the whole piece in a legit font once I'm done, but changing fonts can subtly change my mood and style and give me fresh eyes.
I also write in my preferred font and then change it to the font required right before I submit, but I never thought to change fonts as I was writing. That's a fun idea
i've definitely heard the fact before that changing the size, color, and font of a text makes it easier to spot mistakes you'd been glossing over because the stimulus is novel.
@@EH23831 it's a font. It's supposed to be boring. The things the letters spell are the ones that should not be boring. If you work with marketing, sure, use not boring fonts. For a book? A scientific paper? Newspaper? Use a boring font.
@@fredneecher1746 if you write to a small group of people, use the font you like. The font will not change much. If you are going to write to a big group of people, then use a boring font, unless you are writing a marketing stuff (a billboard, the name on the cereal box, etc).
And Times New Roman is commonly available, so you're not locking into specific platforms or versions. Ah, for the days when our choices were Courier, Elite, or Prestige....
No, it´s about having to read and assess dozens of theses, papers and stuff, and if ppl send in *.doc with their favourite personal, super-weird exotic font that you don´t have, your PC will set it to a default font and totally screw up the formatting. Therefore, you request everything to be sent in Times New, because that is installed on every PC, so you know you see exactly what the student saw when she/he sent it. Edit: If it is about a finished product that you want to present, either in print or PDF, that´s a different story ( e.g., we had no formatting rules for our doctoral thesis, except that the first 2 pages had to be very specifically accurate in what is on them, but there where no restrictions towards fonts, whatsoever), but for a text that several people have to work on, so it is sent back and forth between different machines, maybe even machines running different systems, it is absolutely crucial to agree on something that 100% works on every machine. Weird things happen if a formatted text is sent to a machine that can´t process the formatting. Btw, if you submit a paper, most publishers require the manuscript to be sent in TNR, 12pt, because that is something everyone can deliver, all the reviewers can read it, and the publisher can parse it through an automated system to format the final proof in the journal´s own style. So you get used to it.
I think that's a bit of a cop-out to ignore facts and research, and more importantly, one of those facts is that readability is a choice you make for others. So font selection should by definition NOT be about YOUR opinion, not if you want to be read. Also, missing in the video are "in-font" size and kerning, both massively influential. I much prefer e.g. Garamond to TNR, both serifs but Garamond letters are much bigger and wider, and, I expect, more readable. These non-Microsoft days I find myself drawn to Noto Serif, of similar advantage and in my recollection, also spaced wider. Just sayin': there is a TON of research that can be done and pointing at 'preference' and 'opinion' this quickly is just dumb. But the bottom line is that while I hate comic sans, I'll use it if my audience calls for it.
In the assessment of niche fonts, did anyone factor in familiarity as a factor? Intuitively, a familiar font will be more conducive to quick and correct recognition than an unfamiliar font, however well designed, will.
That's what I was thinking to. Some fonts might just be easier to read simply because we're forced to use them in everything. It's like a positive feedback loop and self-fulfilling prophecy
@@monkiram except the video mentioned that type ;) of research and the familiarity/preference does not seem to make a difference. Really weird fonts would likely tip the scales I suspect.
I’m so used to typing in Times New Roman for school work that typing in anything else feels kind of distracting. Reading text in Times New Roman puts me in a more “academic” mindset compared to the sans serif fonts I usually see looking at the internet. I don’t think it’s inherent to the features of the font, it’s just what I’m used to, but I do also find it aesthetically pleasing.
You are correct. Times New Roman feels formal. It is for serious writing. ...at least that how my brain has been trained to perceive it. The other fonts are for casual or marketing purposes.
@@bennri Or that the author has no concept of how the typeface can affect the messaging of your text. HELP written in Brush Script can appear less serious than HELP written in Bodoni Bold Italic.
Hi there BrainCraft! I work with fonts frequently as a composer, author, and graphic designer (in that order). While this is a great video, I feel that there's a huge missing piece to the argument: medium. Sans serif fonts are spectacular on computer screens, because the lighting is artificial and usually equal in all respects. Serif fonts are better for printing on paper because that's a different kind of lighting. Traditional book reading is helped by serif fonts, because they don't strain the eyes and one can grasp large chunks of sentences and even paragraphs as one tears through a book. On the other hand, sans serif fonts in a standard paper book have a kind of cheap, forgettable quality to them. I have several books in sans serif font, and they are definitely harder on the eye to read for many hours. Printed on white paper with a lot of glare, they become positively painful in a way that serif fonts are not.
Yes exactly. Before watching the video I was assuming this would be the main argument. That the reason we should stop using Times is because everything is switching from print to electronic blah blah.
I agree, I thouched this point in my answer, too, becaause I prefer different fonts for different mediums, even when they are digital (reading an eBook versus using a spreadsheet....)
And would a Kindle Paperwhite (which uses e-ink, and retains the image until refresh) work like paper or screen? It's a screen, but it seems to me to be more like reading on paper (so it won't keep one up if read late at night).
As an academic, I'd like to add a few more reasons why TNR is so prevalent: 1) It is basically universal. There are special signs for basically every langauge, so your citation of e.g. Dvořák wouldn't suddenly have the ř and á in a different font than the rest of the word. It will also work on any computer with any writing software, so it is universally accessible, no matter the tongue your computer operates in. 2) It is narrow, so it saves space. My PhD thesis was 330 pages in Calibri and 293 in TNR. Just by switching the font I saved on printing a few hunded pages. The same goes for students. Maybe you safe a page or two on your seminar paper, but it will add up. 3) Because it is so prevalent, it became the standard. I can usually judge just by the lenght of the paper if it is the required word count, if it is in TNR. 4) I also read it fast, because I am used to read it, so it is familiar. It is not my favourite font, but it is a font I know well, so I read it fast. And since I have a lot of papers to grade, every second counts.
1) This is completely incorrect. The font that works on your computer is related to whether you have it installed. The font is installed by the software you use or by yourself. This in turn is used by the graphics font rendering software. If you're writing a document in HTML, then you can inject whatever hell type of font you want, by downloading it straight into the computer as the page get's rendered. It is incorrect to say that a font will work for everyone, because text is not written in English, it's written in UTF8 or some other common binary encoding, which is then converted locally by your computer into some supported font. If the font isn't found, then the computer substitutes another, assuming your software is capable of doing assuming such things, which is usually the case. 2) It's really not that narrow and your computer has virutally infinite amount of horizontal and virtical scroll space, so saying it's narrow is not saying much, and only means that you may need to actually increase the size of the text in order to read it. The ability to print less pages is a neat party trick, but really this is a defect of your old habits and nothing else. 3) I'm not entirely sure you understand how to use computers, again not judging, but a computer will give you the word count in seconds... let's take a simple example, your text here contains... 211 words... depending on how you define _word_ obviously, and this was as simply as openning up a terminal and copy pasting your text into a python string, and then doing _text.split(" ")_ which is to say, less then 30 seconds. 4) Assuming you had a computer, you would read it even faster, because you would be able to increase the size, and increase the readability. Assuming you didn't print to paper, you would be able to control f search for previous things you've read to cross-refarence. Assuming you didn't print it to paper, you wouldn't even need to read it, and could just control f search for what you need. I would recommend using LaTeX instead of Words, or even better, to just switch to a plain text format like Org mode or Markdown, because then you don't endup needlessly depending on fonts and document rendering, and especially how it gets rendered to paper.
@@SimonWoodburyForget Clearly you're not understanding the medium... @berlinezka is talking about printed documents in TNR. Not ones that are on the computer. So it DOES matter what the width of the font is to save printed paper and it DOES make it easier to know if it's got the required number of words, etc... Also, while you CAN get another font downloaded for web use, you CAN'T with a document in most cases. The user has to have the font already installed. So using a common one like TNR, Arial, Calibri, etc means it's less likely the user won't be trying to view the document in a font that you don't prefer. And having every web page have its own font is kinda crazy in terms of additional bandwidth. Especially for those areas that are still fairly internet limited.
@@SimonWoodburyForget Per 1: Not all fonts are designed to support multiple languages. Furthermore, requiring additional downloads is itself a barrier to accessibility which requires persistent access to a given font type (ie. it's good only so long as that download source is). For style guides this is not ideal. The more work you put in front of a user to maintain compliance the more likely that at some point in the process a mistake is made or you exceed the current knowledge base of said user. To put that more simply, requiring, say, students to download an additional font for homework is just a pain in the ass that some may struggle to perform; with the bias against those with more limited access to tech now or while growing up. Ie. any economically disadvantaged demographic. Protip: don't do that. This applies less in professional circles (where tech familiarity is essential) but you're still left with the "pain in the ass" dynamic for submitting manuscripts in an irregular font if THAT'S what you specify. In general if you're going to specify a font for a style guide pick one that is universal across dominant word processors. Simply being installable doesn't meet the criterion. Use what you want for your own purposes and writing but if you're going to specify a common font for the sake of standardization then TNR is a perfectly fine choice (per Coronel-Beltrán & Álvarez-Borrego 2009, Arditi & Cho 2005, Bernard et al. 2003. The theme in this research is that [general use] font types have limited repeatable impacts, if any.)
You overlooked the entire core of the discussion: the medium upon which the font is going to be read-screen or print. I would hazard a guess that the reason your research paper was asked to be reformatted to TNR is because it was likely to be printed out at some point.
This! I'm 7+ minutes in and this very important distinction hasn't yet been mentioned even once. Unfortunately that doesn't speak well for the rest of the "research" of the video, nor its value. Disappointing.
Exactly. Medium matters a lot and the perfect example is Arial: perfectly readable in almost any screen size and resolution, but almost unreadable in paper.
I like Times New Roman because you can easily tell the difference between "I"(capital i) and "l"(lower case L). The serifs help distinguish these two when you need precision for data entry.
Comic Sans also distinguishes the two. It's a sans serif font. It's not the lack of serifs that's the problem, it's whoever the heck decided that capital i doesn't need anything to distinguish it from lowercase L, and somehow made that concept popular.
@@JanMaynz Verdana is another sans serif fonts where the capital i has top and bottom bars. Both Comic Sans and Verdana are very readable. Whenever I open a reading app, I increase white space and choose a sans serif font.
@@JanMaynz Technically, the bars on the I are serifs, so I guess someone decided that a "pure" sans-serif font shouldn't have them. But it creates too much confusion, so an otherwise sans-serif font like Comic Sans, that has the bars on the "I" but no other serifs, makes sense. Get rid of the deliberate pseudo-handwritten irregularities and it would be a very nice font.
Interesting. 15+ years ago, I read an article saying that: - On paper, fonts with serif are easier and faster to read. - On a monitor, fonts without serif are easier and faster to read. That being said, I did not read the original research, so I do not know how accurate that is.
I could imagine, that the serifs are getting in conflict with the pixelation of the screen, so they tend to get fuzzy edges, whereas on papaer, they kind of guide the eye and make it easier to follow a line in a longer paragraph. Btw, I kind of like Calibri, Tahoma and Verdana. They are decent allround-go-to fonts imho, and they don´t look half bad.
The theory has always been that serifs make it easier for the eye to track between characters, although there's not a lot of evidence to fully support that. But Paavo is right about monitor resolution -- if you're using a device whose screen is at a high enough DPI, like nearly any recent Mac or nearly any smartphone, it's sharp enough that serifs "work," although you still want the text size to be big enough to be comfortable.
This is exactly the "guideline" that I also heard about a number of years ago. Likewise, I don't know the authority on it, but it seemed like a reasonable distinction. However, after watching this video, I'm inclined to start using Comic Sans whenever I can get away with it.
Remember the early 1990’s when MS Word first came out and every flyer looked like a ransom letter because people used a different font for every line? 🤣🤣
Verdana is excellent for screen content and extremely legible at smaller sizes in my experience. There was a period of a few years in the mid-2000's where I used it everywhere...
Arial is a bastardization of Helvetica, one of the most elegant and subtle fonts ever designed. By contrast, Arial is a clumsy knockoff. Very sad that anyone would think of Arial as an avatar of sans-serif typography.
@@jamesheartney9546 Arial is an avatar of sans-serif typography because it's accessible, which makes it practical, unlike Helvetica, whose owning company continues to aggrandize and hoard its font like linecaster printing presses are still a hot commodity.
My guess is that she has not modified the Normal style in Word. Besides font options, the tool can clean up Word's wonky default line and paragrah spacing settings, too.
I last version of Word that I liked/could use was Word 5 which came out with Win 95. Since then I cannot touch a document without totally ruining it. People would ask me to edit a doc, so I'd print it and edit it on paper for them. Or cut and paste a section and edit it in Notepad then send that back. When they complained I'd say I was hired to be a programmer, which I do an excellent job of. Editing your docs is not programming.
2:14 Sounds like an idea for the next Pixar movie. What if letters had feelings? What if fonts had feelings? When will we hear the story of the letter I, so mistreated by the Pixar lamp?
Being dyslexic, I got an e-reader which allows me to change the font, font size, and spacing. By bumping it up to be basically "double spaced", using a clean font, and increasing the font size, it has noticeably increased my speed and enjoyment of reading.
Can you only change the line spacing or the kerning (space between letters) too? I've heard wider kerning increases readability and, from what I've seen, I agree.
The problem with arial and sans serif fonts is that some letters and numbers look too similar to distinguish, so one has to just assume what they might be from the context. This can be a problem when the text is a code and not a word, e.g., 1Il (one, capital i, and lowercase L) look quite similar.
yep this is along with the fact that everyone has times new roman on their machine is the reason why i choose it sans-serif has that problem, and the serif fonts i like have given me trouble when displaying on other people's devices :( so it's tnr for me
The problem with serif fonts, however, is if you are visually impaired, the serifs can be even more (very small) information needing to be parsed and so make the font harder to read.
@@tommj4365 Funnily enough, Monotype literally had it made to be interchangeable with Helvetica but without the need for an expensive licence, so you're absolutely right. You may have already known that tho ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
I wonder how much of that is cause and how much is effect. As in, was it designed and chosen to appeal to some subconscious process that makes us think of it as authoritative, or do we think of it that way because it became ubiquitous in professional, prestigious and parliamentary publications?
@@hughcaldwell1034 My guess would be that it's more of how it's viewed in today's context. Most don't like Arial because of its differences to Helvetica. Meanwhile, Helvetica has become somewhat of a Silicon Valley designer font used for nearly everything to look like what we consider "modern". Because of this, Arial feels like the "cheapened" version (because it is, to an extent). I think Helvetica might shift into a role of traditional professionalism as more people get used to the returning ubiquity of Helvetica. I mean, Helvetica used to be the default font for instruction manuals and stuff, to my knowledge anyway. I think the main reason for TNR's relevance is that it's been renewed and conserved for so long. Watched a Linus Boman vid (that I can link if you want) that talked briefly about TNR's history and origins. Fascinating topic imo
Ilegible can be Illinois or any word you don't know that starts with "il" in capital letter if you use a Sans Serif font. Illustrative examples are: Illigal. Illusion. Illogical. Illumination, etc. My surename starts with Il and plenty of people have problems reading it for the first time if the font is Sans Serif
one of my all-time biggest complaints about sans serif fonts. especially as an ESL teacher trying to have children read in their second language when they have been taught to write a "big I" with horizontal lines top and bottom.
sorry gotta keep going...which is also why I tolerate comic sans - "big I" retains it's lines, and it is pretty soft and readable, especially for children. I used to be a comic sans hater until I realized this, and now I use it frequently in powerpoints for class.
The problem isn't sans serif, it's the font itself. Comic Sans is a sans serif font but still distinguishes the two. It's not the only one, either. I don't know what idiot decided to drop those extra lines from capital i, but they've given sans serif a very bad name as a result.
When I was a teacher, I used Comic Sans for titles because I _love_ it. I tend to like typefaces that look like handwriting and Comic Sans has just the right amount of imperfections. *Comic Sans is beautifully imperfect.* I'm a little bummed I can't use it in my videos without inviting internet hate. For body text, I use whatever the default is in MS Word because I make enough decisions. When I started teaching 15 years ago, that was Times New Roman. It's the only reason I ever used Times New Roman.
Comic Sans is human-like on the right side of Uncanny Valley. But it is already a bit chonky, so I don't like its bold variety. And italics, bold or not, look squooshed and blurred. But for a friendly, "can you help me find my dog?" flyer, and for large captions, it works. The ability to add visual emphasis is important when you are communicating exclusively in text.
@Matthew Morycinski Yes, I agree there's certainly a time and a place. Comic Sans is very casual, but not every _situation_ is casual. It certainly doesn't belong on official corporate documents. But you say she just used it around her personal desk? That seems perfectly fine to me. Her desk, her business. If you're cringing at it, that seems more like your problem than hers 🤷♂️
Lucky... "does not fulfill formal criterias" is the easiest box for me to tick whenever I want to grade someone down. Your work must have been really good!
Comic Sans has a lot of stigma attached to it! I like it too. It's often called juvenile - but does that mean everything that's round and curvy and fun is for children?! (that question could go in so many wrong directions lol)
@@braincraft I don't know why it gets that much hate. The same with the coriander hate that's popular right now or the bacon love a few years ago. I don't get it.
0:08 Time out. You didn't start with the fonts at the same size. Additionally the bottom one is bolded to begin with. You are leading the audience through the presentation.
The font to choose is the one that clearly differentiate the "l" from the capital i, and the zero from the capital 0, and in general, that has no ambiguity (that is also functional, specially in IT/OT)
Not sure which "OT" you mean... I do a fair amount of programming and command-line oriented work and I swear by monospace fonts, which weren't even addressed by any of the research referenced. My current favorite is a sans-serif by the name of "Hack", and contrary to what many may think it isn't the presence or lack of serifs that make it easy to tell 1Il7 and QO0 apart from each other.
I’m surprised Simon Garfield’s book, ‘Just My Type’, didn’t get a mention. He covers this, historic typeface development as well the bizarre, comical and fascinating stories behind some of their creators. One of the best reads on fonts and typefaces you’ll find. Personal preference for day-to-day communication by computer screen: Helvetica.
When it comes to technical writing, the choice of font matters. You need to be able to tell the difference between the 1-I-i-L-l. I use Tahoma for everything because you can tell the difference between these characters.
As a professor I eventually had to lay down rules about fonts, size, and spacing because inevitably there were jokers in the class who would do weird fonts in big sizes and triple spacing so they could turn in a "5-page paper" with half the words as everyone else. "We're all individuals" is a great idea but you're not that special with your font choice, and there's lots of people who just like to be annoying.
@@jgunnels6773 there’s still an easy way around that that many classmates of mine used. Write random stuff and then put it in white font. Counts towards the word count on the computer but it’s not visible unless you know to look for it.
@@May-qb3vx Fascinating. Yet another incredibly creative tool for those who want to work three times as hard as those who just follow the directions. I'm a teacher, and this sort of thing tickles me (and baffles me) to no end.
@@salmonproduction1990 hating on the most accessible version of something is super cringe. You think people with vision impairment shouldn't be able to read. It only follows that you think that short people should stand in the back of photographs so no one can see them.
@@MuriKakari I've no problem with Courier at all. It's tough to use, though, since people tend to assume you're trying to make your work look timeless, or classic, any time you employ it.
@@joshuapray Yep. Or back to when we printed things, it takes up a lot more space. I remember people having similar reactions to Courier New as Comic Sans.
Open Dyslexic changed my life. Best thing that happend to me. People need to understan that dyslexia is not just reading slow, it's headaches, tears, nausea, frustration
I’m dyslexic too. Unless a font is very difficult, it is unlikely to have a noticeable effect on my reading speed. My reading speed is mostly based on the speed at which the little narrator inside my head goes at, and that is a mostly fixed speed. The main thing that might change that is if my internal narrator is reading in a thick slow accent, like if the author wrote a character with a southern drawl I will read it at that speed. However, some fonts are more comfortable to read, and make scanning for information vaguely possible.
@@jenchan4817 I feel so identified with that experience, about the internal narrator. And yes, for me the most important thing is that the font is comfortable
@@estebanpadilla2607 Thanks for this. I'm not Dyslexic (I'm Dysgraphic instead...another form of damnation), but my understanding had been that the point of Dyslexic-friendly fonts was not higher reading speed but the dual goals of improved comprehension and decreased eye strain. As for myself, as I do a lot of programming-type tasks, I swear by monospaced fonts and currently prefer a sans-serif one by the incredibly appropriate name of "Hack".
Ja, and it's not really about speed? It's. More of an issue of reading the same line over and over and over again, reading something completely wrong or just in the wrong order, flipping letters, just not being able to decipher what in the world I'm looking at, plus everything you mentioned. Usually all the things listed above is why the reading goes slow. Hard to read at all when it doesn't even look like English (or German or whatever language you're familiar with and currently reading). It tends to also cause unnecessary arguments because I completely misread a text someone sent me.
I happily ignored college requirements to submit essays in Times New Roman, and used exclusively Computer Modern, simply because that was the default in LaTeX. In web design, I tend toward the Ubuntu font family.
I've found Computer Modern looks similar enough to TNR (though, of course, quite different in details!) that people might not even notice it - and in my field at least, there's enough LaTeX usage that we're all used to it anyway :D
Comic Sans is my favorite font.. I was so disheartened when I found out I was not suppose to use it, because others had such negative thoughts about it.. I find it much easier to read.. If a reading app gives me the option I will switch it to Comic Sans. Right now I have a clock / Date screen app that is set to Comic sans. Comic Sans Thug Life till I die!! 🤘🤘🤘
The hate for comic sans I'm sure is a result of some sort of peer presure to hate it. The haters were just the loudest and nobody opposed them and now nobody dares to say they like it and feel like they have to dislike it as well.
When I cannot be certain whether some characters are "ones" or "ells" or "eyes", I convert the text to Times New Roman to remove the ambiguity of "1lIlI1l."
Personally, this is the aspect of fonts that I would most like to focus on. I would like to see a new font that that removes them ambiguity of those and others such as how Europeans disambiguate O and 0 further by adding a slash through the zero and 1 and 7 with a slash in the seven. I would like to see a one be an upside down T and a capital I to be a rotated H.
I can't tell the "ells" from the "eyes" in your example, but then, I'm not sure what font it's in. I guess that's determined by my operating system, isn't it? Anyway, in TNR, the "eyes" are quite distinct, but the "ells" and ones differ only by their height, and the difference is tiny. Curiously, it's the much-maligned Comic Sans that clearly differentiates all three.
@@viddork The comment section does not allow TNR font my dude. So his example, you would need to copy and change to TNR in your own word document to see what he means.
0:58 Protip: next time, try modifying the default styles. That’s what I’ve already done when working in Word, it simplifies things quite a bit, as you can put different styles and if you want to modify one (say, you want to make the titles bigger), you just modify the style and the changes are automatically applied.
Unfortunately most people don't understand styles or how to use them. They just select and change font size or typeface. Using styles is 10^10 times more efficient (according to my own measurements), but people don't use it because they don't know what they're for.
What I don't understand is this: In Microsoft Word, I always set Times New Roman as my default font. However, my method of writing involves drag-and-drop; and, whenever I do that, the text "converts" to some other font!
@@davidlafleche1142 that's because the font and other style information is copied along with the text from where you dragged it. To avoid this, try copying rather than drag-drop, then choose one of the paste options like paste text or match destination formats.
I work on an IT helpdesk and it is very important that our L's, I's and one's along with our O's and 0's are very clear and unmistaken for each other. We deal with case, serial and part numbers consistently in our communications and there's nothing worse than mistaking a Zero for an O.
Hey! I did that job for 19 years in a healthcare settings. You have my sympathies. Also, don't get me started on getting people to spell things verbally... Even when I use a phonetic alphabet, they'll still insist on using the indistinguishable letter names. Gives Seth a Covid-19 save High Five!
There's a font named Hack that was specifically designed for easy discernment between O/0, I/1/l and so forth. It's not very attractive, but it works well for its purpose.
When I pulled helpdesk duty at my company (all IT people had to put in a week every year, unless that was your fulltime position) I wrote up my tickets using TELETYPE font. All caps and slashed zeroes.
Times Roman was the typeface used by most printers in the 1950-80's and academic journals standardized on that typeface in 12 point for submitted manuscripts.
@@lelsewherelelsewhere9435 I, as a dyslexic slow reader, need a very specific spacing, the Goldilocks space, not too big, not too small. I prefer Arial, even though the video doesn't like it. The number of times the Illinois will come up is so few that the clean lines of Arial are better. Times just has more features to each letter that just aren't that helpful.
from my research, and this goes years back, fonts w serifs is easier to see on a printed page and sans on a screen. i write in trebuchet and change it to TNR when i'm done and need to format it for printing
It is only subjective if one doesn't do anything sophisticated enough to require precision. For example, no programming tool I've ever seen defaults a sans font.
@@j.f.fisher5318 > no programming tool I've ever seen defaults a sans font. I guess you meant to say "defaults a serif font". But you are wrong. While most modern programmer's fonts are indeed without serifs, Courier, the monospaced font which many programmers are still very much used to, has serifs. Check its lower case 'n', for example.
I don’t think it is easy to read a word featuring a capital “I” that looks like a lower case “l.” So, I don’t like Arial. TNR is more old school, which I find appealing, but then, I also enjoy a good Comic Sans, which is the “moist” of fonts.
I was glad to see you take a reasonable stance for the different fonts. So many people have a hatred towards certain fonts and want to wipe them out and it just doesn't make sense to me. If you really dislike it that much, don't use it. But don't expect everybody else in the world to agree with you!
Okay, in case you're serious, let me learn you a thing. People say things, and sometimes they don't actually mean the *literal* thing they say. This is called figurative language. The human who uttered that sentence does not, in actual fact, believe that "letters have feelings." See also: jokes; metaphor.
@@amouramarie Doesn't know if I'm joking or being serious... tries to explain when people are kidding around or being literal. haha. Your pathological need to project your intellectual insecurities onto others made me laugh.
So before seeing the results of this video, I can say that my engineering professors told us (in the last 5 years) that serif fonts are easier to read on printed paper, but sans-serif fonts are easier to read on computer screens, so please submit your assignments in sans-serif fonts. Arial is the standard font for our technical drawings and email at my engineering job.
I HATE Times New Roman because it uses ligatures (squishes certain letters together into one character). My favorite is Consolas because it is monospaced (all characters, including periods and commas, are the same width), has small serifs, and clearly distinguishes between similar characters. I find that monospaced fonts are easier to read. Coding is typically done in a monospaced font with small serifs because it is legible and all characters line up vertically. It's much easier to spot mistakes with monospaced text. I would love to see another video that discusses kerning (letter spacing), ligatures, and monospaced fonts for readability!
It's possible that some academic journals want to keep papers across the years somewhat consistent across the time and as times new roman is a old font it has a legacy of use making it more ubiquitous
Yep. They've always been following the traditional standards which is what makes the papers easier to read and follow because of the consistency of formats.
@@p_mouse8676 I can see that, if I'm honest. My favourite is actually Verdana. It's the font I use for any sort of public speaking because I find it easier to read (possibly because it's a larger font).
@@djalland1 That's funny, I just posted my liking for Verdana as well. The biggest issue with Arial is the letters I and l , (yes that is a capital i and a small L ). In different languages were that combination is used a lot more, it just looks so silly. Way back when I started at my university, we could pick any font we liked. I tried a couple, but quickly stayed with Verdana. I think it's by far the best compromise, at least for scientific papers. It's a lot more readable, easy to print (important back in the day) and still looks professional and clean like Arial. I always got compliments about the readability of my papers.
@@cribas_trope1024 It really is a central point to the debate though and not an afterthought. Excluding it would be like doing a video on the increase in forest fires and not even mentioning climate change.
What I'm reading here is "So I was writing this research paper and had to do tedious reformatting so I ended up procrastinating making a video on fonts instead"
I’ve read that Times was designed for space efficiency-to get more type on the page. Century School Book is a serif font designed for readability. I’ve also read that serif fonts are more readable in print while sans-serif fonts are more readable on a screen, because the serifs don’t resolve cleanly (though that becomes less of an issue with higher resolution). Personally, I like Bookman.
I'm personally not the biggest fan, specifically of Bookman Old Style, but perhaps that's because of its overuse in local government documents and public school modules here in the Philippines, so I subconsciously associate it with subparness or an uncanny valley between amateur documents and professionally typeset ones.
One way to stop MS Word from unexpectedly changing fonts of your paragraphs to defaults is to learn about styles and default template, that will make many other things easier too. Basically just open Normal.dotm, change font for every style to your favourite, and save it.
And if you use multiple formats, you are screwed. Not to mention that you have to go through and fix all the bad Microsoft defaults if you want things to look good. Yes, I've written software to explicitly generate Word styles. Not my favorite.
I have dyslexia, adhd slows my reading down more than dyslexia probably haha. Spacing lines and having text broken up by some whitepace now and then is also important for me. As far as fonts go, I like lato, roboto, oxygen, quicksand, monserat. Bebas neue is also nice but not for long texts.
I'm genuinely surprised at all the people saying comic sans is easy to read. Excluding the dyslexic people. I always get a sort of uncanny valley effect from it and just want to look away. I really like Arial though. I recognize it has some issues. But on the whole, it has an understated elegance that is hard to come by among the most common typefaces.
Makes a video titled "Why You Should Stop Using Times New Roman". Then the video doesn't back up the title. Instead the video basically says: It's not especially helpful to choose Times New Roman for readability, but it surely doesn't hurt. Nothing in research tells us to stop using Times New Roman. Helvetica and Arial however are not very legible and we can only read them so well, because they are so omnipresent and we got used to them. So a big factor in readability is the bias we have towards the typefaces we read a lot. Our brains are really flexible.
It's NOY-uh because it's short for German "Neue Schrift" = New Script. "Schrift" is feminine, therefore the second e ("-uh"). "Helvetica" is Latin for "Swiss".
When I studied art in high school I was told serif fonts are designed to help readers follow a line of text. Which might be why academics who read a lot of papers prefer Times New Roman.
reading a page-long paragraph printed in Arial 11pt is super-annoying and uses up your concentration and ability to focus really quick, because it starts dancing in front of your eyes at some point. It good for headlines on posters and presentations, you can easily read it from afar, but for dense text it´s a nightmare with its uneven spacing , open ended lines and weird dark and white areas.
@@slimekittenv and walkers/rollators are death traps imo do you qualify for a mobility chair? my partner went to a vendor who was wheelchair bound and fixed her up with a nice jazzy with mushroom joystick (can be put on right or left armrest). getting out of the chair could be an issue for you. I wish I had a solution for you...not an easy fix, for sure, but I admire your tenacity. Blessings to you!
For another look at readability, take a look at Extended Times New Roman. At one time this was used on railroad cars as it is quite readable at an angle and especially as that viewing angle changes.
