on 2011-09-14 23:36 John Coyle wrote
Interesting discussion: a journal I edit has just been criticised for using a sans-serif font (Arial 10-point) as body text. My reaction was that it's a modern-looking, clean and easy-to-read font .
that's the Swiss school, which i admire, and once emulated; it might feel right for social sciences; for shorter passages in print i prefer a carefully chosen, more humanist sans serif, probably at a lighter weight than Arial regular; unless i want the typeface to help make a point, though, for longer passages (articles and books) i'd use one of the better serif faces (chosen based on context)
but i would not make those choices for readability; many people think there is conclusive research about readability, but mostly there is just people who think the research must have been conclusive, and somehow this state of non-knowledge is not self-repairing
i personally think that people's reading habits and skills are too varied and that our typographic environment (and thus conditioning) is too rapidly evolving to pin this question down; here's an overview of the question you might find interesting:
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