From: Stan Halpin
From: steve harley
on 2011-09-15 20:38 Stan Halpin wrote
Ann, I was a bit surprised by Mark's earlier comment that this attitude is
more opinion than scientifically derived Truth, or words to that effect. I
coulda' sworn that I had read a couple of articles on the topic in Human
Factors or IEEE-SMC a few decades ago. I did a quick search, starting and
ending with Wikipedia, and found that the apparent consensus is that there is
no solid evidence one way or the other.
perhaps you missed the link i sent earlier -- thorough review of the research,
concluding that no conclusion can be drawn
<http://alexpoole.info/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces>
On Sep 16, 2011, at 12:02 PM, John Sessoms wrote:
Interesting article.
The whole debate has a flaw from my point of view; the unproven assumption that
one is better than all of the others for EVERYONE.
John - the only Truth in research on human behavior is "It Depends." No
serious social/behavioral science researcher even pretends to be looking for what is the
right answer for everyone. The line of questioning is rather something like: a. Is there
a difference? b. what is there about the persons and/or the situation that may cause such
a difference (in attitude, performance, whatever.) c. Can we formulate some hypotheses,
nascent theories which predict the phenomena? In this case it seems that there hasn't
been enough work to get beyond (a) or (b), but there is also no indication that this is
any big deal. So a first-cut good enough answer is to go with serif fonts on paper and
sans-serif on screen. Take into account possible distinctions among audiences. Then have
a small group of people from your target audience look at your design proposal and let
you know if they think it works. If an audience member doesn't like it, then they can
change it. On-screen they can mani
pulate the underlying CSS files to match the screen to their preferences. On
paper, they can switch to an e-book reader and, again, switch font size and
style to suit.
I don't mean to sound pedantic, but I am at that point in the semester where students are starting
to ask "what is the answer?" And I keep saying over and over, "It Depends."
Until the answer changes to "It's Depends."
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