Best Fonts for Clarity?

[Kurch]

For the purposes of clarity and readability what would people suggest
as the best fonts to use?

 

[GM6TRS]

For the purposes of clarity and readability what would people suggest
as the best fonts to use?

If you mean on-screen, I like Franklin Gothic Medium & Comic Sans

 

[Andrea Jones]

Verdana is a good font as well.

Andrea Jones
www.stratatraining.co.uk

 

[anon k]

For the purposes of clarity and readability what would people suggest
as the best fonts to use?

It depends on your display medium (paper or screen), the background, and
also on the type size: all professionally-designed typefaces are
designed to work better over specific size ranges. Helvetica (Arial) is
usually best as a display type; it only works as body type when very small.

Part of the question depends also on the context. Many popular
typefaces are widely seen to compromise the message in the text, by
suggesting that it's sarcastic or pretentious, for example.

Another part of the question depends on how much text you have. Some
typefaces are more tiring to read than others, so the reader loses
concentration more quickly. Bites of the text might still be very
clear, but the overall argument can be completely lost by this problem.
The usual approach to this is to pick something with serifs and long
ascenders and descenders.

Also be wary of overly creative letter forms. The swan-necked S, for
example, can be very distracting to many readers.

 

[Gene]

A lot of text books use Century Schoolbook.
Gene

It depends on your display medium (paper or screen), the background, and
also on the type size: all professionally-designed typefaces are designed
to work better over specific size ranges. Helvetica (Arial) is usually
best as a display type; it only works as body type when very small.

Part of the question depends also on the context. Many popular typefaces
are widely seen to compromise the message in the text, by suggesting that
it's sarcastic or pretentious, for example.

Another part of the question depends on how much text you have. Some
typefaces are more tiring to read than others, so the reader loses
concentration more quickly. Bites of the text might still be very clear,
but the overall argument can be completely lost by this problem. The usual
approach to this is to pick something with serifs and long ascenders and
descenders.

Also be wary of overly creative letter forms. The swan-necked S, for
example, can be very distracting to many readers.

 

[Edward O'Brien]

Hi,

Microsofts research puts "Times New Roman" at the top. It is a font that is
readable on most types of paper, including book publishing, and works well
between 10 and 12 pt with good readability in correspondence. Like one
excellent contributor here says, the type of msesage, reader, paper and
context are all important. You can go wild with advertising, but much less
so with a doctor's letterhead.

If it's web publishing, however, life is much more difficult. Ariels
probably the most popular for small print - 8/10pt. For creating buttons and
so on, Tahoma and Verdana are good in character spacing. Otherwise, the page
content governs your choice.

Hope this helps,

Ed

 

[jmacleve]

In print, a lot of people avoid Arial and Times New Roman -- they're
kind of 'font cliches'. For a legible, but slightly different look,
(for ordinary text), consider Garamond or Palatino in place of Times
New Roman, or Gill Sans or Avant Garde in place of Arial.

jma

 

[anon k]

In print, a lot of people avoid Arial and Times New Roman -- they're
kind of 'font cliches'. For a legible, but slightly different look,
(for ordinary text), consider Garamond or Palatino in place of Times
New Roman, or Gill Sans or Avant Garde in place of Arial.

jma

Palatino was designed as a display type, not body type, so be careful
about spacing and size when you use it. Garamond was designed as body
type, but it's old-fashioned and connotes fine press, refined artistry,
old humanistic learning - perfect if that's the message that you want to
convey, but it looks silly in most of today's business contexts.

Nothing works better than printing out a page to see whether the
typesetting achieves the effect that you're after.