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Which Are More Legible: Serif or Sans Serif Typefaces? — 17 February 2008

Many studies conducted in the past did indeed find a preference for serif typefaces. However, Tinker commented that perceived legibility was due to a great extent to familiarity with the typeface. 40 years ago sans serif typefaces were not as common as they are now, and if these studies were repeated, it would not be surprising to find completely different results. Indeed, more recent studies have shown that computer users prefer sans serif typefaces for body text online.

This is a nicely done synopsis; though I personally don't trust it as far as I can throw it, it does cast the debate in a different light: that unfamiliarity is the enemy of productivity and that the actual design (up to a point) turns out not to matter as much as we thought, further down the road.

The main cause of self-inflicted unfamiliarity: bored GUI design teams.

About that putative preference for sans serif: I personally love the clean look of sans serif for text I'm not forced to read. If the text is decorative, or supplementary, or only rarely essential to the purpose of the screen, sans serif can be a fine choice.

But if my purpose in life is to actually read and process and remember and mentally index the content, it's serif fonts all day, every day, and nothing but.

Funny, Firefox has a setting for that, which I tend to exploit.

If imposing a serif-font-only override against the page designer's wish breaks layout so badly I can no longer read the page (this is not common, but not uncommon, either) I will actually just cut and paste the article text into some large browser input text box (there's usually one handy), and read it there.

I've made heavy use of user CSS to eliminate page clutter on all my most frequent sites, which also makes my cut&paste text excision tool more effective.

I added a button to flip image content of many web pages on or off. Half the time I turn it off to clip something, then neglect to turn it back on for half a day (or half a week)—it takes me that long to chance across an article where I actually miss the photographic or graphical design flourish.

Just the text baby.

Yet again, another fine synopsis that shallowly testifies to a paucity of hard-core curmudgeon focus group spleen vent.

Serif fonts are readable: great for reducing strain from hours of reading under good conditions. That's why they're used for books (except some crazy tech books that get it wrong), newspaper text, magazine text, and so on.

[snip]

Sans-serif fonts are good for remaining legible under highly difficult conditions. That's why they're often the choice for billboards, for headlines (designed to attract you close enough to read the text), for advertising text

Nope, nope, and nope.

Basically, serif fonts are used where serif fonts are used because they're more familiar where serif fonts are used.

Sans serif are used where they are used because they tend to be used in those cases. Readers are used to seeing them there.

Numerous studies have come up with inconsistent results (for a good summary of what dozens of them on the subject say, see here).

The takeaway message is readers find familiar design choices to be easier to deal with. Most books and long texts tend to be set with serifs, so we've come to expect that -- but well-designed studies have shown little difference (or inconsistent results). Web fonts tend to be sans serif, so we expect that. And I have absolutely no idea what you're talking about when you say that sans serif will remain legible under difficult conditions -- if anything, studies tend to show that serif fonts have a small advantage (probably not significant) there. After all, serifs were inherited from Roman techniques for carving letters into giant stones, not in writing: I doubt Roman sculptors would have added things that seemed to decrease legibility to monuments. (The one "difficult condition" where sans serifs have a claimed advantage is in low resolution electronic situations, but recent studies have shown this advantage to be small or non-existent.)

Serif fonts are easier to read, especially large blocks of text. The serifs "lead your eyes" from one letter to the next, and help your eye group the words.

Actually, that's an old theory that has been solidly debunked on both counts at this point.

For a start, based on experimental research, we know that people don't actually move their eyes continuously across the text as we read. Instead, our eyes make short jumps called saccades, fixating on one point on the line and then another a few characters further along. That immediately makes any argument based on serifs "guiding" anything suspect.

Do you honestly find Courier easier to read? It really doesn't do a very good job of differentiating similar characters.

And I have to suspect you've subsumed the "sans fonts are harder to read" meme to the point where it effects your actual reading skills. Note that this idea, standard among web "experts", doesn't have much in the way of scientific basis.

In general, sans serif fonts are more immediately legible, but serifed fonts are easier to read in larger blocks of text.

[citation needed] ;)

There's been a few studies that claimed this, but they had flawed methodologies. Unfortunately, it's lead to widespread misconceptions. Here's a relevant literature review with more information.

It's all Arial. Arial, and other sans-serif fonts look very pretty, but are optimised towards small sections of text. Large blocks of text, such as article text, should be done using a serif font like Times, for readability.

That's interesting. Serif fonts are supposed to improve readability for printed text, but it's widely thought that sans-serif fonts are easier to read on electronic displays. Can you cite any sources for your assertion?

Actually, the difference between serif and sans-serif fonts may not be so great after all; maybe this whole issue is so much ado about nothing.