A study has found that your choice of fonts influences your perception of the message. That’s not too surprising. Unfortunately, they only compared Times New Roman and Arial, when what we’re really interested in is the effect of Comic Sans.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Damn, really? I love Georgia, I wonder if that makes people think I’m from the US bible belt?
Nothing is more powerful than the impact of ALL CAPS! (Except perhaps the use of multiple exclamation points.)
Yes, I’ve been reading too many posts by people of the fringe.
What about huge, all-blue, all-caps Comic Sans.
That is how all Insane Clown Posse lyrics should be printed.
Do we really need research on a font designed for Microsoft Bob? And Times New Roman is about the worst serif font out there – unreadable unless it’s at least 14 point, which sort of defeats it’s original purpose of cramming as much text into as little space as possible.
Walt Kelly knew that, which is why he used different fonts to represent the voices of characters in Pogo. Deacon Mushrat’s Gothic font let you know what a pompous, self-righteous hypocrite he was.
This actually interests me, because I write equipment proposals, and we are about to change the font from TNR to Arial. I don’t know what to take away from the study, though. Is TNR more persuasive in general, or does it just make our customers more emotional?
I love typography. There’s a whole science behind it, picking out the right fonts, etc.
I’m glad to see that while you’re not very familiar with it, you at least know that Comic Sans is an abomination and yet some how the go-to font for like minded people. Seriously, the font was designed for comic books, and that’s it. I wish Microsoft stopped shipping it with windows.
Comic Sans gives me the impression of a troll on Pharyngula, and elicits an appropriate level of respect. The article (and linked study abstract) put me in mind of old arguments about Serif vs. Sans Serif fonts that I’ve read in the past.
So I shouldn’t be doing my resume in Wingdings, then?
All documents should be written in Wingdings. That would clear up this whole mess.
This is news? I suppose the fact that it was the subject of a controlled study makes it so, but graphic designers have known this for…oh, at least since the first calligrapher figured out he could draw letters in more than one way.
If you want an extreme example, imagine a wedding invitation set with a typewriter-lookalike font compared with one hand-lettered in an Edwardian script. Now, think of a used car advertisement in the newspaper done with either.
There’s a reason graphic designers tend to collect massive font libraries, and why they sometimes spend as much time agonizing over which to use as they spend on the whole rest of the job.
Cheers,
b&
—
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
“All but God can prove this sentence true.”
Are some fonts more accommodationist than othes? Discuss! Or not.
Comic Sans is the Southern accent of the internet.
I kid! I kid!
But seriously, I wonder if this is similar to the perception a particular accent gives a message.
I actually have a very soft spot in my heart for Comic Sans – it’s definately become vougue to rag on it, but it doesn’t deserve it.
An overused, misused, bastardized tool is still a tool – blame the people that use it, not the tool.
Back in the day, when it was released (this had to be what, mid-nineties) I used it on my first website – a travel guide to Boston (I had recently moved there and loved it).
The designer wrote me – turns out he grew up over in Fenway – and we had a wonderful little conversation about some of the places that he had left and I was just discovering.
Comic Sans generally fills me with blind, seething rage. Blood has been spilled. I will never be the same.
Fuck you, Comic Sans.
Comic Sans is like a chisel that’s been used to open paint cans for twenty years: misuse has dulled its edge past the point of repair.
You people are just lucky you’re not stuck with the choice of Dot Matrix Near-Letter-Quality Courier or nothin’.
my lawn: off it
I’m interested as well, but from the perspective of software documentation. But I don’t think this research is decisive on the aspects that may be of interest to us. I’d like to know what would be an agreeable font to transfer knowledge in, for example. What font entices reading? What font has an authoritive or knowledgable ring to it? What font makes the words stick around longer?
I’m also missing any information with regard to font size as well as the medium on which it was projected. For example, TNR and Arial look quite different in print and on the screen.
Needs more testing, this.
Ummm…when and why did Comic Sans become so hated? I just totally missed the memo on that. When I was teaching, I did my exams in Comic Sans because it looked fun— though I later discovered Papyrus, which is the font o’ my heart. I still use Papyrus for anything personal, though it’s Eurostile at my office. I hate hate hate Times New Roman as dull…
So— what’s the Comic Sans backstory?
There’s a definite correlation between fundamentalism and random USE OF CAPITALS and placing “things” in inverted commas.
I’m sure it merits a research project.
This is news???? I learnt at Art College in the 60’s (what little I can remember, obviously) that the font you use is the tone of voice you deliver your message in.
Arial is the bastard love childe of Bill Gates and his greed. Google it, and see the convolutions his minions performed to avoid paying for a proper font.
@13—
Comic Sans as “the Southern accent of the internet”? Oh dear God. Now I am scared. I’ve spent my whole life trying not not not to have any trace of a Southern accent (or least any trace of a “Southern” accent that doesn’t hint at old-money Virginia Tidewater). Comic Sans as “the Southern accent of the internet”… Well, that’s that. However unfairly Comic Sans may be hated, it now has to be off my list.
@19
Oh god, papyrus is the new comic sans. It’s frigging everywhere and it sucks! I do not need to feel like i am in ancient egypt while ordering a sandwich or getting a haircut.
Platypus, there have been all kinds of readability studies done on typefaces over the years, both for print and screen applications. If you’ll forgive me, much ink has already been spilled on the matter.
The difference between print and screen has more to do with resolution than anything else. Once we get 300+ PPI screens (and, of course, resolution-independent operating systems to match), all the old paper-based design wisdom will again reign supreme.
Short version? Lots of text needs a well-designed, unobtrusive serif face set with proper leading and line lengths. Itsy-bitsy stuff needs a simple sans-serif face. Almost everything else is a creative choice.
When it comes to typography, Microsoft sucks ass. Their fonts suck, their kerning sucks, their rendering engine sucks, their layout engine sucks, their sub-pixel rendering sucks…they just majorly suck.
Cheers,
b&
—
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
“All but God can prove this sentence true.”
@23—
And you have exactly what against the Anubis Special (rare roast beef on a kaiser roll with Russian dressing and dill spear) served at Saqqara Sandwiches?
@25
At least that would make sense! It’s when I’m at Joe’s Old Fashioned Eatery ordering a Day After Thanksgiving sandwich that the incongruence becomes obnoxiously apparent.
@19
Ummm…when and why did Comic Sans become so hated?
As far as I know, Comic Sans has been hated almost as long as it has existed. My art school friends hated it early on, though the hate for Comic Sans seems to have turned into some kind of Internet meme a bit more recently.
I only dislike Comic Sans when it shows up in comic books – it’s not actually a very good comic book font. But it amuses me to see it show up in places where I think it’s kind of inappropriate. Like seeing signs posted using Comic Sans at the doctor’s office.
@Fossilfishy
Yup. Yur clearly in an inbred, rekneck shitkicker who’s been too busy a’ cornholin’ yous cuzzin in th’ wood shay-ud ter re-a-lize thayut Times New Roman is t’ be-yust fawnt.
Jeebus, PZ: I can’t believe you forgot about the octo-font. It definitely trumps all others. I think your next grant proposal needs to be submitted in full-on cephalopod.
Maybe it’s just the pragmatist in me, but at least Comic Sans and Papyrus are readable. It’s the overly fancy fonts, which because of resolution and complexity are difficult to read, which I hate.
@19, 23:
Reminds me of The Editing Room’s abridged Avatar script, at the point where Jake has just met Neytiri:
As for me, I can’t stand Arial, but it’s the font our organisation chose for its visual identity (well, actually Helvetica, but it doesn’t ship with Microsoft, so…) Every time I prepare a document written in Arial I briefly consider pissing on a dirty rag and scanning it into a pdf just for the aesthetic improvement. Personally, I’ve really gotten into Calibri as of late.
I don’t mind Papyrus, but I like serif fonts with long stems and short bowls. I wouldn’t use it for anything I wanted people to read and not think I’m someone’s grandmother who’s just been taught to use the formatting toolbar.
I’ve been using Comic Sans when quoting woomeisters and New Agers for years. Have I been committing a straw man fallacy?
One of my favorite fonts. But alas, I have nearly forgotten how to read it.
Ben @ 24
Road signs?
Hardly a representative sample of the populace, of course.
I suspect the hatred of Comic Sans is just another geek trend that most people don’t know about and would be baffled by if they were told about it.
Yahoomumble #34, signage is a whole different kettle of alternatively-colored pastas.
Cheers,
b&
—
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
“All but God can prove this sentence true.”
In a study of fonts for speed and accuracy of readability, Verdana came out best. Boringly safe.
Hopefully hasn’t been posted in the above comments yet:
http://julianhansen.com/files/infographiclarge_v2.png
Font Flowchart!
Ban Comic Sans!
http://bancomicsans.com
With this excellent progagandum:
http://bancomicsans.com/main/pdf/comicsanscomic.pdf
Arial wasn’t designed for Microsoft Bob. It was designed to get around the copyright on Helvetica. Really.
What? Comic sans the Southern accent of the Internet? I assure you, I don’t think of Shelby Foote when I see Comic sans.
It’s a shame that a few thugs and ignoramuses have so badly tainted the Southern accent–it’s far more beautiful than the flat Midwestern Accent that is the American standard. I wish we had a wider appreciation of how lovely a soft Southern accent sounds, rather than always associating it with hicks and rubes.
Of course, some “Southern” regional dialects are a hell of a lot more “lovely” than others.
no doubt about that
It was designed to get around the copyright on Helvetica.
Shouldn’t it look a bit more like Helvetica then? Helvetica is a bit boring and was overused for many years, but the designer knew what he was doing and did a great job within the constraints of the design goals. I can’t see how that applies for Arial at all.
Another font that needs to be shot is Clearview, a hideous substitute for the traditional FHWA typefaces.
My excuse is that I’m from New Jersey (no, I don’t talk like Joe Piscapo). We talk fast and hit our consonants hard. I don’t have time for a Southern drawl, I’m in a hurry, even if I’m not.
I remember having to write shitty papers from my intro to Ethics class in college. I would be done saying whatever I had to say in like 3 pages or something, and I was supposed to write 5. How do you get 5 out of 3? Switch the font from TNR to Arial and BAM! You get 5. Other than that I don’t really care. The only thing I find annoying is when people TyPe LiKe ThIs.
I have a slight southern accent but I talk fast.
It’s confusing.
monimonika #38
Ha ha! That’s a great flowchart. The path to Comic Sans was the highlight for me.
What?
How about: “Comic Sans is the Baltimore accent of the internet.”
Maybe there is, or should be, a study of people’s visceral reactions to different Southern accents. Even though I know a lot of smart Bawlmerese-talkers, I have to work at it to not internally dismiss speakers thereof. I’m rather ashamed of this. I’m curious about what other people think of that or other Southern accents.
I have a similar shameful, visceral reaction to print that doesn’t use Times Roman or fonts undetectably similar (by me) for body text: “who do these self-righteous font-wankers think they are, foisting off their artsy fartsy design crap?” It takes work to focus on the content rather than the presentation, sort of defeating the purpose. It generally keeps me from using other fonts when I have the choice, for fear of off-putting people like me who get suspicious easily when faced with what might be form over function. Just a reflex, but it takes effort to overcome.
We talk fast and hit our consonants hard.
We’re all pikers compared to most Spanish speakers.
They talk faster, but they don’t spit properly on their p’s and t’s.
It was my understanding (from one of my lecturers who always insisted we handed our printed assignments in a a serif font) that serif fonts aid in comprehension.
Apparently it helps with some vision disorders and readers generally extract more information from serif fonts.
Actually comic sans is one of the better fonts for dyslexics. It does a better job of breaking the symmetry between ‘p’ and ‘q’ etc, and maybe that’s why some people like it. The Roman character set was stupidly designed from the start; since our brains are designed to perceive mirrored and rotated images of objects as being the same object, such symmetries should be avoided in character sets.
Apple and Microsoft teamed up to create truetype, to avoid paying Adobe for Postscript fonts.
Just as Apple and Microsoft are attempting to sidestep Flash (videos), for the same reason.
For the record, fonts are quite different on video monitors than in print. Several, including Ariel and Verdana, were created to be readable in small sizes on computer monitors.
I thought the Roman character set “evolved” (unlike the Intelligently Designed Cyrillic)
This is a good thing. Flash is fundamentally broken.
My word processor is Star Office (which I got free*). I am not one to play about with things I can work so I have not moved away from the default Thorndale font.
Any comments about Thorndale from the experts here?
* The Open University provide this free to students and supports Microsoft Office and Star Office.
I wonder if there’s a font that looks like the letters of a ransom note. ‘Cause I don’t have time to cut out all the letters from newspapers and magazines.
In print, the serif fonts are easier to read because the serifs make those similar letters different. Fonts like Arial make capital I, lowercase l and the number 1 all look like the same character.
On a screen, with its lower resolution, the serif fonts can be difficult to read, especially by those who have reading disorders.
Comic Sans actually combines the best features of the two classes. It’s easy to read on screen, but it throws in a few serif-like qualifiers to distinguish between those similar characters.
Of course there are other fonts that also do this, but TNR, Arial, and Comic Sans are standardized, so almost anyone can access them from their own computers or see them when someone else specifies them on their webpages.
I have to use Comic Sans in heat-transfer t-shirt printing because the serif fonts can’t get small enough. Their little serifs mean that each character has to be bigger than a corresponding sans serif font in order for the plotter to cut the letter. This means you can’t get as many characters onto a shirt or the design has to be larger.
But if I use a sans serif font, then you can’t tell I from l from 1, and in non-English slogans (math terms, 733t speek, industry babble, etc.), context doesn’t help. Enter Comic Sans, where I can print it nice and small, thereby fitting more characters in the same space, but still readable and distinguishable.
I understand its negative associations, but it has real practical value and makes up for some of the flaws in the traditional fonts.
That being said, however, if I am trying to make a particular impression (usually professional or want to be taken seriously), I would use a serif font like TNR. T-shirt slogans are rarely supposed to be “serious” or “professional”.
Ask and ye shall receive…
http://www.fontspace.com/category/ransom+note
Here comes the Society of Vertebrate Paleontology‘s official advice on font choice for PowerPoint presentations:
* * *
On paper and on screens, Georgia is fine, except for its incredibly stupid 19th-century treatment of numbers as lowercase. The zero (0) can be distinguished from the lowercase O (o) only because it’s a little bit broader (one pixel on this screen).
Get new glasses.
I’m completely serious.
That’s it: it doesn’t look serious. It looks like it’s making fun of the subject matter.
Intelligent Design in Cyrillic only involves a couple of letters (a different handful in each language that uses it); the rest is inherited from 9th-century Greek uppercase.
Details, please.
Bottom line: don’t write “I shot the Serif” in a Sans font. Or prepare for readers who don’t get it.
Oh, and by the way, if you think Comic Sans MS is annoying, try to Google what typographers think of Papyrus for a really good laugh…
Not true for 1, which is /| as opposed to |. It’s English- and French-language handwriting that reduces 1 to | or I.
Flash is fundamentally broken.
Details, please.
It’s a resource hog and doesn’t need to be. The video sites are all moving to a format that can be decoded in hardware rather than software anyway, so flash video is as good as dead.
How odd. Someone told me a Comic Sans joke yesterday:
Comic Sans walks into a bar. The bartender says “Get out! We don’t serve your type in here.”
Cheers.
Blockquote fail.
@ daveau #9
Probably not, but that could depend on the job you’re going for. I remember that Wired mag, many years ago, ran a short (1/4 page?) article on cryptography, and they used Zapf Dingbats for the text…
I’m amazed no one’s posted the font conference yet.
David @#62, I’m not evangelical about free/open-source software, but I am about open standards, on the web at least. And flash isn’t.
TRiG.
#61 Thanks, so much for me thinking I may have an original idea for a font. Damn those other smarter and quicker people.
Here ya go. The answer to all questions about which typefaces are most readable on computer screens:
http://www.typetester.org/
Personally, I like the Helvetica font. Speaking of fonts, there’s and documentary film about the aforementioned font: http://www.helveticafilm.com/
Helvetica is an awesome typeface. You just have to know how to use it properly.
Times — and I’m referring to either the version from Adobe or what was fed into a Linotype, not the abomination that Microsoft shitted all over — is another beautiful typeface, poetry in ink when set by somebody who knows what to do with it.
Cheers,
b&
—
EAC Memographer
BAAWA Knight of Blasphemy
“All but God can prove this sentence true.”
@joreth (#60): I assume everyone agrees that Arial (and even worse Avantgarde) are hard to read. For maximal character difference (one vs ell vs I vs pipe), MS-Trebuchet seems optimal, since it has all the stubs belonging to these characters that are missing in other sans fonts.
The IMHO prettiest font for normal text is Knuth’s CM family (comes with TeX, cmr10 on typetester), closely followed by Zapf’s Melior (often named “Zapf Elliptical” and included with printer drivers, graphics programs etc., ).
For low-resolution print (or T-shirts, which seem to have similar problems), a font with a constant width stroke should be optimal (Trebuchet wins again, followed by Concrete-Roman (Knuth) and Georgia+Verdana (MS)). Experimenting on typetester.com helps (try pressing Ctrl-minus until everything but Trebuchet becomes unreadable).
Ralf Muschall
PZ@41
[blockquote]it’s far more beautiful than the flat Midwestern Accent that is the American standard.[/blockquote]
Um. I’m pretty sure the California accent is standard American English. (Hollywood/So Cal style, not Valley)
Only semi kidding :P
FUCK this is like the third time I’ve tried to use BBcode here. I blame my health and the fact it’s still morning here in my mind. (Morning is until 4 in the afternoon. Its not even two yet!)
That’s what happens when you live where the beach is on the wrong side.
I’m pretty sure that the beach is on the right side. Sunsets on the beach are beautiful and so much more convenient than sunrises over the water.
Do I even have to argue that we have nicer beaches and nicer weather?
The biggest problem with Flash is the fact that it’s horrifically computationally intensive — the event model is frame-based and apparently is based on polling like the old cooperative multitasking systems like Mac OS Classic. I play a few flash games from time to time, and they do eat a lot of battery power; in fact, it gets even worse since I have one built on top of a PowerPC runtime (I use a Mac) and the combination of Flash and Rosetta is a double-whammy power suck.
There’s also the problem that the Flash interface is essentially designed for a mouse environment. There’s no equivalent to mouseover on a touch screen (a tap/drag-over event, maybe?), so functionality will be limited on handheld devices.
Finally, the open standards problem is a legitimate issue. Adobe could eliminate that problem by open-sourcing Flash Player, but I’m going to go out on a limb and say that will never happen.
Depends on whether you live north or south of San Francisco for the weather. The East Coast, heck, Florida alone has more miles of good beaches than the West Coast.
I heard on NPR that you could save money on ink by using the least inky font– Century Gothic. http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=125639616
If thy font offend thee, pluck it out. Control PanelFontshighlightdelete.
There are any number of decent font utilities – many of them free – which can be set to substitute one font of your liking for another which may not exist on your system.
My right wing relatives used to send me those chain mails that circulate in the wingnut-o-sphere. They always seemed to be full of colorful and ever varied changes in font. Each point would have some different look. It seems to be a kook tell of some sort like the guy whose left eyelid twitches when he’s bluffing at poker. Thankfully they now know that I’m a hardcore pinko who is beyond hope and don’t bother anymore.
For some reason, I really like the way Garamond and Liberation Serif look when printed. I’m not a big fan of serif fonts in general, but I like Garamond. It is terrible as a screen font; Liberation is better, but it still doesn’t look as good to me as it does on the page.
I hope everyone has seen the “describe Marcellus Wallace” scene from Pulp Fiction rendered in typeface animation.
I’m staying with Papyrus and Eurostile.
Southern accents… I’d be okay with old-money Virginia, but I spent far too long at school in CT listening to people use “Southern” to indicate lack of culture and intelligence. Of course, I’m NOLA-born. NOLA and south Louisiana locals pretty much agree that “Southern” (something like far NE Louisiana or east Alabama) really does indicate those things…
Of course— a Dartmouth girl once said I had a “slight” Southern accent and I wouldn’t talk for weeks…clipped monosyllables only. Actually walked away from getting laid because I was afraid of the girl saying something about my accent. So— I have devoted myself these many years to trying for a clipped, crisp accent that suggests no particular US locale but might imply lots of time back and forth between the Upper West Side and Oxbridge.
It’s pretty funny seeing all the people bashing on Arial while singing the praises of Helvetica, considering that they’re practically identical. What differences there are, I actually prefer Arial.
As for Comic Sans – our financial office uses it for all their MS Office-based forms, like purchase order requests, travel requests, etc. ‘Nuff said.
Helvetica – a complete font family designed by a trained, experienced professional typographer. That it is no longer fashionable diminishes its beauty not one iota.
Arial – an out of copyright grotesque font modified by Gates and Apple so that it will look like Helvetica at reduced on-screen resolution, whilst sidestepping rights payments to Adobe. Shipped with every copy of MS Windows since the middle ages. Subsequently re-drawn at typographic resolution, where even the most careful kerning cannot hide its mongrel origins. To pick this as your corporate typeface says so much about your corporation.
If you want to see the end of comic sans, the first step is to make a widely available font that fills the same niche and is guaranteed to always be there on every platform (so you can safely use it on websites). What niche is that? The niche for a blocky, curved font that looks a little like block printing, but is legible (unlike every other handwriting font I’ve seen) and scales up and down well.
At the moment the only other fonts that fill that niche are… well… niche fonts so you can’t reliably use them in internet-wide environments – they won’t be on the target machine.
I long ago read of some research showing that the same essay handwritten was given one letter-grade lower than a typed copy. I suspect that typeset-looking printouts are graded higher still. Oh, yeah, there was also something about papers with a female’s name getting a grade lower. Has anything changed?
I suggest that if you want someone to review a draft, you print it in typewriter font, double-spaced, so it doesn’t look too much like a finished product.
Ben Goren – thanks, sounds like a good rule-of-thumb. Although I have to agree with Midwifetoad that Arial indeed looks different in print and that there seems to be more than the resolution to account for the difference. I find Arial on screen to be amazingly thin compared to the printed variant, which succeeds in appearing to be very differently proportioned and much more bold than many other printed fonts. I’m somewhat suspicious that the printer takes a different font (Helvetica) somewhere down the process.
That’s exactly my position – my company is using Arial (their main reason being that they felt that TNR was overused). I’ve also recently been looking into Calibri and found it to be a nice alternative, a pleasant and comfortably small sans-serif. But it’s not as omni-present as TNR and Arial on operating systems, which means the typeface may be lost when used in an E-mail.
I’m going to print this out and hang it up behind my chair at work.
Ben Goren – thanks, sounds like a good rule-of-thumb. Although I have to agree with Midwifetoad that Arial indeed looks different in print and that there seems to be more than the resolution to account for the difference. I find Arial on screen to be amazingly thin compared to the printed variant, which succeeds in appearing to be differently proportioned – and much more bold. Or maybe somewhere down the line, a printer decides to take Helvetica as a replacement font.
That’s exactly my position – my company is using Arial (their main reason being that they felt that TNR was overused). I’ve also recently been looking into Calibri and found it to be a nice alternative, a pleasant and comfortably small sans-serif. But it’s not as omni-present as TNR and Arial on operating systems, which means the typeface may be lost when used in an E-mail.
Great – part of my post ended up duplicated. I wonder how that happened. :/
Myers talking about typography feels like someone touching my private places, in a very good way.
As usual, XKCD for the win: Cemetery
I hope the html syntax works, because it will effectively demonstrate that the only font the world has ever needed is courier.
shit … another failed demonstration
Ben Goren, I think that the past form of “shit” is “shat”. Or perhaps “coprolite”.
Garamond is, I believe, what Scientific American uses.
There are semi-serif fonts and fonts designed for clarity, such as the Lucida set.
@Ben Goren / #24
> “When it comes to typography, Microsoft sucks ass. Their fonts suck, their kerning sucks”
Actually, not at all. The typefaces in the so called ‘Cleartype collection’ are very, very well designed fonts, you know, Cambria, Calibri, Consolas, etc. They were designed by leading designers like Lucas de Groot, Jeremy Tankard and Jelle Bosma specifically for Microsoft. At this moment, they are pretty much the best screen-fonts available, while they are also beautiful enough for good print designs.