No. You capitalized "Education" to make it seem more important.
Well aren't you just the projecting Asshole. I have a Masters of Arts in Education, and other degrees in German, English and Arabic. Happy now? Dick. Do I really give a rat's ass what you think about my authority? No. Do I think others might like to know what my background is, and why I would know anything about cognition at all? Yes.
and you say nothing about not being a native English speaker with that more reasonable excuse for that kind of slip.
How in the hell does speaking English have anything to do with this conversation? This is a discussion forum, not a dissertation.
Given that "education" is the formal meaning of the word "teaching"
Given you are completely wrong, just shows you are a dick. I don't hold a teaching certificate, and never have in 10 years of working in the field of education. My area is in cognition, which has everything to do with this topic at hand. I explained why reading all upper-case words is difficult from a cognitive perspective. That's it. If you disagree, please explain why instead of attacking me.
a degree in "Education" is a waste of college tuition, classroom space, and printer paper
And on behalf of millions of hard working honest educators everywhere--go fuck yourself.
Drop the "appeal to authority". All that shows is you passed Logic101 class in college. Trying to call somebody out on it, especially when you are wrong, is your own personal appeal to authority fallacy.
Just to make you happy, I'll try again.
Hi guys! I'm random slashdot guy. Upper case letters are harder to read! That's my opinion, thanks for listening! Believe me because I have an opinion! Thanks, I look forward to lots of uninformed replies from 20 year-old dropouts who are posting on Tuesday while Blizzard has WoW offline! What's that? Oh, no, I'm not going to tell you what my work experiences are or what my field of study is because some pseudo-intellect on slashdot will call me out on a logical fallacy. Sorry!
You are exactly right. People like what they are used to. More importantly, they'll even think inferior things are superior, due to familiarity. Here's a good link that explains it better than I can:
http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/12.html
Huh? All I'm saying is that authors would type stuff using cheap and available typewriters. Typewriters, however, were not suitable for professional publishing, so an entire industry sprung up around turning amateurish looking type fonts into professional looking (and easier to read) published products.
1280x800, 13.3" MacBook. No problems here. Perhaps the fact you can't see the defects in ClearType, even when given guidance on what to look for, is the reason you don't have a problem with ClearType?
Somebody else already posted that link so I looked at it. Sure enough, the guy is paid by Microsoft to work on the TrueType team. Doesn't quite pass the "free of bias" test.
His findings are interesting, but he even admits that he's pretty much the only one saying that, and that his findings are controversial. Besides, I don't really care WHY people read lower case faster--the fact remains that they DO read lower case faster--even if it is just due to more practice.
Well that's not entirely true. Printed works were professional typeset, even before desktop publishing. Very few books were typed on a typewriter, because, alas, mono-spaced fonts are hard to read.
I remember painstakingly cutting out letters and laying them out on the light board to avoid the problem of typewriter monospacing. And that was in a low budget high school yearbook production. I'm pretty sure professional publications of the same time didn't just crank out some text on their IBM typewriters!
I think I'm getting my arguments mixed up. In anycase, look at the inside of the letter O in ClearType and the hump on the letter h. Compared to, OS X, it is jaggy. You can actually see square pixels on the inside of the Os. In any case, I think ClearType is easy to read BECAUSE of the jaggies. Incidentally, I find the middle picture to be the easiest to read--just less aesthetically pleasing. My main gripe with ClearType (other than my "white clouds" argument that it is hit or miss, depending on hardware configuration) is that it changes the shapes of the letters and the spacing erratically. Look again at the first picture, and look out how the word letter O in the word "font" is erratically spaced, compared to the "smoothing" where it isn't. Notice how "thing" in "smoothing" looks like somebody manually (and poorly) positioned the characters.
I thought it was accepted that techies don't make good managers, and managers don't make good techies? Look at any Applied Information Management grad program in the US and they all have the same thing in common--you have to be good at management, yet you only need basic understanding of current technologies. As a CIO, it will be your job to make decisions about technology for others. There is no need to be an techie to be a good CIO.
In comparison to Apple's heavily dithered font rendering, ClearType suffers from the jaggies. That's the point people on both sides of the preference argument are making. As far as non-standard color-order (whatever that is), that sounds like a casualty of one OS trying to work on hundreds of different hardware options. All I know is ClearType sucks on my Dell computer at work using Dell 19" flat screen monitors that came with the computer.
I'm sure you are aware there are multiple levels of writing formalities. I don't write on slashdot as I do in an APA paper. Besides, my undergrad degree is in German, with a minor in English and my other undergrad degree is in Arabic, so I accidentally capitalized education out of habit. Guilty.
What does teaching have to do with this discussion?
As far as the appeal to authority goes, people don't know me here, so it's not a bad idea to give my background before making posts like the one I did. I have and more experience credibility than your average slashdotter in this discussion, take it or leave it.
I assume you mean we should refrain from "indiscriminate fuzzing of sharp edges" in text? I'd hate to think what fine photography or illustrations would look like without the ability to dither the pixels. Oh wait, no, I know what they'd look like...the Microsoft Windows boot screen!
I'm not sure we don't disagree about anything. I was merely stating that Arial is a bad font, and it is extra-bad because it is a bad imitation of a good font.
Lower-case letters have certain shapes--some hang down, some extend up, some are right in the middle. We learn to recognize these visual clues. Upper-case letters lack these visual clues. Instead, upper-case letters revert to a different shape, but these different shapes never vary by hanging below the line or above the line, because by definition of being upper-case, they take up the entire space.
WHEN YOU TYPE EVERYTHING IN UPPERCASE LETTERS THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY DESCENDERS OR ASCENDERS TO HELP DIFFERENTIATE THE SHAPES OF THE LETTERS. The reader then must slow down and look at each individual letter, then put the word together in their mind. If you don't believe me, take a 1,000 word document read it, then change it to all upper case, then read it again. Tell me you aren't slightly mentally fatigued upon the second reading (give yourself time to recover between readings).
Word shape is important. Take mono-spaced fonts for example. They may work well in writing lines of code or in spreadsheet columns (where it is helpful for the letters to line up), but in English prose, they are tiresome to read, because they completely eliminate the shape of words that we are used to reading. Again, change your paper to Courier, then try to read it. Tiresome.
Being able to change the font won't compensate for the differences between how ClearType and MacOSX display the font, though. And by "fuzzy" you mean dithered. If you prefer jaggies to dithering, then more power to you. Perhaps jaggies are easier to see when you have less than perfect vision (don't wear glasses, so I wouldn't know).
Quick sidenote, I see the part you cited has nothing to do with teh study by microsoft, so I take back my criticism of Microsoft in this regard. Looking at that study, though, I'm incredibly dubious of the "lack of bias". "I work for Microsoft's ClearType and here is why ClearType is better!".
First, why am I not surprised that Microsoft is completely backwards in thought compared to the rest of the industry? Second, the research you cited is dated. Third, the excerpt you provided proves my point. We spend our entire lives reading text in lower case. Certainly we'd get faster reading all upper-case the more we read it, but we'd never surpass our ability to read what we've been reading all our lives (lower-case).
In short, it isn't important WHY we can read lower case faster, only that we do.
My design and typography skills come from the mid-late 80s. My graduate degree comes from the late 2000s. I've seen a lot of changes over the years, and I am not limited to post-"typography in computing" knowledge.
Single words are very short phrases are acceptable in all-caps, but there is no benefit to doing so. What is bad about all caps is by assuming that capitalizing everything, it becomes important. In actuality, by capitalizing everything, nothing stands out. I was in the Army, and they are notorious for all-caps. For one presentation, I made all the key points lower case, just to make a point. In a solid block of upper case text, the one or two lower-case words are the ones that stood out, which is the entire point in the first place.
It's covered in typography and design courses, but it actually belongs to the area of cognitive studies. I learned more about good/bad fonts in graduate Psychology courses than I ever did in undergraduate design courses. I know, I know, graduate level Psychology...just lost my slashdot cred.
I think the most offensive thing about the picture you posted is that if you are going to go out of your way to build a nice, professional looking sign, why not do it professionally, by professionals? That sign looks like my mom fired up her PC and her copy of PrintShop Pro.
Slashdot Mirror
No. You capitalized "Education" to make it seem more important.
Well aren't you just the projecting Asshole. I have a Masters of Arts in Education, and other degrees in German, English and Arabic. Happy now? Dick. Do I really give a rat's ass what you think about my authority? No. Do I think others might like to know what my background is, and why I would know anything about cognition at all? Yes.
and you say nothing about not being a native English speaker with that more reasonable excuse for that kind of slip.
How in the hell does speaking English have anything to do with this conversation? This is a discussion forum, not a dissertation.
Given that "education" is the formal meaning of the word "teaching"
Given you are completely wrong, just shows you are a dick. I don't hold a teaching certificate, and never have in 10 years of working in the field of education. My area is in cognition, which has everything to do with this topic at hand. I explained why reading all upper-case words is difficult from a cognitive perspective. That's it. If you disagree, please explain why instead of attacking me.
a degree in "Education" is a waste of college tuition, classroom space, and printer paper
And on behalf of millions of hard working honest educators everywhere--go fuck yourself.
Drop the "appeal to authority". All that shows is you passed Logic101 class in college. Trying to call somebody out on it, especially when you are wrong, is your own personal appeal to authority fallacy.
Just to make you happy, I'll try again.
Hi guys! I'm random slashdot guy. Upper case letters are harder to read! That's my opinion, thanks for listening! Believe me because I have an opinion! Thanks, I look forward to lots of uninformed replies from 20 year-old dropouts who are posting on Tuesday while Blizzard has WoW offline! What's that? Oh, no, I'm not going to tell you what my work experiences are or what my field of study is because some pseudo-intellect on slashdot will call me out on a logical fallacy. Sorry!
You are exactly right. People like what they are used to. More importantly, they'll even think inferior things are superior, due to familiarity. Here's a good link that explains it better than I can: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/items/2007/06/12.html
We aren't discussing content. We are discussing how different typesets and font rendering technologies make something easier or harder to read.
Huh? All I'm saying is that authors would type stuff using cheap and available typewriters. Typewriters, however, were not suitable for professional publishing, so an entire industry sprung up around turning amateurish looking type fonts into professional looking (and easier to read) published products.
Books and articles may have been written on a typewriter, but very few were ever PUBLISHED using the typewritten original.
1280x800, 13.3" MacBook. No problems here. Perhaps the fact you can't see the defects in ClearType, even when given guidance on what to look for, is the reason you don't have a problem with ClearType?
Somebody else already posted that link so I looked at it. Sure enough, the guy is paid by Microsoft to work on the TrueType team. Doesn't quite pass the "free of bias" test.
His findings are interesting, but he even admits that he's pretty much the only one saying that, and that his findings are controversial. Besides, I don't really care WHY people read lower case faster--the fact remains that they DO read lower case faster--even if it is just due to more practice.
Well that's not entirely true. Printed works were professional typeset, even before desktop publishing. Very few books were typed on a typewriter, because, alas, mono-spaced fonts are hard to read.
I remember painstakingly cutting out letters and laying them out on the light board to avoid the problem of typewriter monospacing. And that was in a low budget high school yearbook production. I'm pretty sure professional publications of the same time didn't just crank out some text on their IBM typewriters!
I think I'm getting my arguments mixed up. In anycase, look at the inside of the letter O in ClearType and the hump on the letter h. Compared to, OS X, it is jaggy. You can actually see square pixels on the inside of the Os. In any case, I think ClearType is easy to read BECAUSE of the jaggies. Incidentally, I find the middle picture to be the easiest to read--just less aesthetically pleasing. My main gripe with ClearType (other than my "white clouds" argument that it is hit or miss, depending on hardware configuration) is that it changes the shapes of the letters and the spacing erratically. Look again at the first picture, and look out how the word letter O in the word "font" is erratically spaced, compared to the "smoothing" where it isn't. Notice how "thing" in "smoothing" looks like somebody manually (and poorly) positioned the characters.
I thought it was accepted that techies don't make good managers, and managers don't make good techies? Look at any Applied Information Management grad program in the US and they all have the same thing in common--you have to be good at management, yet you only need basic understanding of current technologies. As a CIO, it will be your job to make decisions about technology for others. There is no need to be an techie to be a good CIO.
In comparison to Apple's heavily dithered font rendering, ClearType suffers from the jaggies. That's the point people on both sides of the preference argument are making. As far as non-standard color-order (whatever that is), that sounds like a casualty of one OS trying to work on hundreds of different hardware options. All I know is ClearType sucks on my Dell computer at work using Dell 19" flat screen monitors that came with the computer.
Well then you should have already known that Apple "took it, changed a few bits and called it" Chalkboard ;-)
Hmm, I don't see it. I typed it in and got a list of links to websites that host Heroes torrents. I wasn't able to download directly from google.
I'm sure you are aware there are multiple levels of writing formalities. I don't write on slashdot as I do in an APA paper. Besides, my undergrad degree is in German, with a minor in English and my other undergrad degree is in Arabic, so I accidentally capitalized education out of habit. Guilty.
What does teaching have to do with this discussion?
As far as the appeal to authority goes, people don't know me here, so it's not a bad idea to give my background before making posts like the one I did. I have and more experience credibility than your average slashdotter in this discussion, take it or leave it.
I assume you mean we should refrain from "indiscriminate fuzzing of sharp edges" in text? I'd hate to think what fine photography or illustrations would look like without the ability to dither the pixels. Oh wait, no, I know what they'd look like...the Microsoft Windows boot screen!
Must be slashdot gremlins again, as I don't see anything you said that would have had me respond the way I did...
I'm not sure we don't disagree about anything. I was merely stating that Arial is a bad font, and it is extra-bad because it is a bad imitation of a good font.
Lower-case letters have certain shapes--some hang down, some extend up, some are right in the middle. We learn to recognize these visual clues. Upper-case letters lack these visual clues. Instead, upper-case letters revert to a different shape, but these different shapes never vary by hanging below the line or above the line, because by definition of being upper-case, they take up the entire space.
WHEN YOU TYPE EVERYTHING IN UPPERCASE LETTERS THERE ARE NO LONGER ANY DESCENDERS OR ASCENDERS TO HELP DIFFERENTIATE THE SHAPES OF THE LETTERS. The reader then must slow down and look at each individual letter, then put the word together in their mind. If you don't believe me, take a 1,000 word document read it, then change it to all upper case, then read it again. Tell me you aren't slightly mentally fatigued upon the second reading (give yourself time to recover between readings).
Word shape is important. Take mono-spaced fonts for example. They may work well in writing lines of code or in spreadsheet columns (where it is helpful for the letters to line up), but in English prose, they are tiresome to read, because they completely eliminate the shape of words that we are used to reading. Again, change your paper to Courier, then try to read it. Tiresome.
Being able to change the font won't compensate for the differences between how ClearType and MacOSX display the font, though. And by "fuzzy" you mean dithered. If you prefer jaggies to dithering, then more power to you. Perhaps jaggies are easier to see when you have less than perfect vision (don't wear glasses, so I wouldn't know).
Quick sidenote, I see the part you cited has nothing to do with teh study by microsoft, so I take back my criticism of Microsoft in this regard. Looking at that study, though, I'm incredibly dubious of the "lack of bias". "I work for Microsoft's ClearType and here is why ClearType is better!".
First, why am I not surprised that Microsoft is completely backwards in thought compared to the rest of the industry? Second, the research you cited is dated. Third, the excerpt you provided proves my point. We spend our entire lives reading text in lower case. Certainly we'd get faster reading all upper-case the more we read it, but we'd never surpass our ability to read what we've been reading all our lives (lower-case).
In short, it isn't important WHY we can read lower case faster, only that we do.
My design and typography skills come from the mid-late 80s. My graduate degree comes from the late 2000s. I've seen a lot of changes over the years, and I am not limited to post-"typography in computing" knowledge.
Single words are very short phrases are acceptable in all-caps, but there is no benefit to doing so. What is bad about all caps is by assuming that capitalizing everything, it becomes important. In actuality, by capitalizing everything, nothing stands out. I was in the Army, and they are notorious for all-caps. For one presentation, I made all the key points lower case, just to make a point. In a solid block of upper case text, the one or two lower-case words are the ones that stood out, which is the entire point in the first place.
Overly hefty usage of arial for headlines was one of the reasons MS office documents looked so incredibly crappy when printed on a decent printer.
The other reason was MS Office ;-)
It's covered in typography and design courses, but it actually belongs to the area of cognitive studies. I learned more about good/bad fonts in graduate Psychology courses than I ever did in undergraduate design courses. I know, I know, graduate level Psychology...just lost my slashdot cred.
I think the most offensive thing about the picture you posted is that if you are going to go out of your way to build a nice, professional looking sign, why not do it professionally, by professionals? That sign looks like my mom fired up her PC and her copy of PrintShop Pro.