Comic Sans doesn't deserve all the hate

I thought the serifs on a font were supposed to improve one's comprehension of the material, wherever I got this information from.. it didn't mention reading speed. I know handwriting helps our comprehension & recall, especially cursive handwriting for some reason. Off topic, but want to mention anyway: My handwriting is absolutely terrible but I feel like, even if it's illegible when I read it later.. just the fact I was made more conscious of the notes I made (due to writing by hand) that's helped my comprehension & recall.. to a degree... depending on the time passed before I've looked over those notes again.. 😅 ..I mean it seems to help 'seal it in my mind' at the moment I'm taking the notes anyway & I've my own crude version of shorthand (I'm sorry about the terrible grammar).

You admit font size has the most effect but then don't calibrate for the size difference between fonts. Of course you like cosmic better, it's 3.5 characters longer than TNR at the beginning.

I love how this video is about something you never really think about. Somehow you can make such an ordinary thing as fonts sound so interesting, great video!

One factor you didn't say anything about is text length: For shorter texts (say, no more than a hanfull of pages) sans serif fonts may be more comprehensible, but take a 600 page novel completely typeset in a sans serif font, and compare it to the same novel typeset in any serif font. In my experience (i work as a professional typesetter and layout programmer) sans serif fonts are more exhausting over longer texts than sans serif fonts. Although, i cannot name any studies that prove this observation scientificly.

The first comment I can agree with

Yup yup

Ill get right on that...

Same goes for the letter O and the number 0. We have the technology to make zero look like a zero and not an O.

Yes! Preach!

Former physics teacher and I absolutely agree. In Times New Roman you know exactly what every letter is. Now that I'm retired and my eyesight has gone to crap, size totally matters. Also, for readability, spacing matters as well. I use a Kindle and can set the font, the size, and the spacing. It has made all the difference for me.

It's the same for programming. A very clear distinction between O and 0 is also very important. On the other hand, programming fonts are not very good for general writing because they are monospace. Each letter should take up an equal amount of width for the spacing to look identical with every font.

One thing related to your point I have not yet seen in this comment section is having a standard. She began the video with how she was writting a research paper. It is very useful for those to use, as with well-defined terms and grammar, a standard font style + font size. It is not only I and l, O and 0, but the mathematical operators, indexes and such. It is essential to mutual understanding, which is in turn itself essential in scientific community.

Former physics/chemistry teacher and current PhD student in statistics - I could not agree more.

@@Kenionatus If I had a dollar for every time I've cried over coding in R only to find out that I mistook a 0 for a o or a - for a ~ I could pay off my student loans!

Courier new también.

in Times l looks like 1 😄

@@DanielGonzalez-nr6ic Also*

@@felipevillalba9311 also = también

Many fonts do lol

Exactly. And the video also didn't distinguish between print and screen. As a designer I was taught that Times New Roman is easier to read in print because the serifs help to lead the eye to the next letter. Additionally Times New Roman in its full glory uses different spacing between letters to make them easier to read. So an 'i' next to an 'm' is different from an 'i' next to an 'o'. On screens these advantages go away so it becomes easier to read with sans serif fonts like Arial. Without differentiating between print and screen, much of the information in this video feels out of context. Not that I don't agree we should be using a larger font size no matter what font you're using. I try to stick to at least 14pt.

@@0hermitworm I increase font size and make the paragraphs into narrow columns for personal reading (to increase speed). Yay, ePubs! So convenient. I dread opening up PDF documents.

Yes, this video was actually disappointingly uninformative. It seems like they were stretching the video out with excessive examples just to hit the 10 minute mark.

That's been true of pretty much every true type font since the '90s, because of Unicode, and it's definitely true of Arial and Calibri.

@@Jivvi Two missing factors in this video: 1) the choice of font will depend on the nature of the text; i.e., is it a brief newspaper story in short columns, or a long novel? 2) speed is not the only criterion of readability; there are also clarity and affect (aesthetics) to consider. This in turn refers back to point 1), which is the most important criterion when considering anything - what's it for?

👏🏼😂🤣

You sir/madam, are aptly named.

😂🤣😂🤣😂🤣😂

Seconded

I couldnt read this, you didnt write it in wingdings

Excellent!

Interesting. That's probably also the main reason I dislike it; it's too thin (i.e. hard to read). Professors like to demand papers in it because it's smaller than other fonts and they wouldn't want students to get around their obnoxious minimum page requirements! Quantity > quality according to the professors I guess, eh?

yeah, that's too... due thinness is use less ink, but when you try print it, Times New Roman always be thicker due ink bleed. I think I remember original Times New Roman font is thinner than what we use in Digital version. also fun fact, when I was in Internship program in design & print agency, I learn that many printer seller use Times New Roman as benchmark of sharpness, how sharp their text are in smaller point when using Times New Roman. but somehow, Times New Roman is look thick compared to other stylish thin serif font, and thinner than thick serif font.

Interesting!

Oof

Agreed. I’m a technical editor-I read exactly the same text every day in TNR on paper and in Arial in interactive courseware. When you get blocks of text, TNR is much easier to follow-the serifs create a linear connection at the base of the word that helps keep the eye from flickering up and down between lines. Arial is cleaner visually, but much harder to eyeball for things like alignment, and a headache if you’ve got 300 words on a page, every page. This video ignores the fact that ALL fonts are tools designed to do specific jobs-some catch attention, but are lousy for volumes of text; some align better when printing manually; some are easier to replicate clearly on lower resolution screens; some are designed for the printed page and high word counts. Which one you as a reader “like” is irrelevant.

Times also carries with it a tone conveying “confidence” and “authority.” No?

When a font takes up less space, then you might be able to use a bigger size of it and still get the same number of pages. And a bigger font size helps readability the most as was said in the video. Of course aesthetics are usually weighted over readability as can be inferred by the almost universal preference of block set over left aligned.

Yeah we do and the requirements are usually per page not per character so the need to use TNR hurts lazy ass master's candidates >

@@gwahli9620 you can't in hyperstandardised world of academia :(

This! I'm 7+ minutes in and this very important distinction hasn't yet been mentioned even once. Unfortunately that doesn't speak well for the rest of the "research" of the video, nor its value. Disappointing.

Exactly. Medium matters a lot and the perfect example is Arial: perfectly readable in almost any screen size and resolution, but almost unreadable in paper.

@@Exelius what about Calibri?

@@Exelius Except for the lowercase L and Uppercase I. (lIlIlI)

Or maybe a billboard, which usually has giant letters , or packaging, which has fonts as tiny as 4 or 5 pt

They’re not equal, though, if you look closely you can see that the lowercase “L” is slightly taller than the uppercase “i”: Il (“iL”). But yeah, they’re so close there might as well be no difference. Still, I don’t see that being a problem except in some specific contexts...

I was confused about this comment for a moment but then i remember that androids can change their fonts and the font that im using is 'SamsungOne' and the I and l is different as l (lowercase of L) has a slight tail(?) so it's not hard for me to read it. Though i remember choosing this font specifically because it gives me the same neat feeling as the font on iphone.

@@GRBtutorials my second name is Ilich, I know there's a slight difference, but don't expect others to notice and write it right. Of course, that's not the only reason.

@@horyer8684 I liked this detail in the font that differentiates the letters.

@@EulerFink yes i never realized the importance of that small detail until i found your comment.

Noooo papyrus is the coolest!!!

It belongs on The Avatar poster! *Ryan Gosling screaming*

I happen to think it belongs EVERYWHERE

NYEH HEH HEH! PUNY HUMAN. YOU ARE NO MATCH FOR THE GREAT PAPYRUS.

What about a school project on ancient Egypt?

I also write in my preferred font and then change it to the font required right before I submit, but I never thought to change fonts as I was writing. That's a fun idea

This is a lovely idea. I’ve been struggling to keep myself writing lately so I’m going to give this a go.

My friend suggested to me that when I need to White something, I use Comic Sans and then change it to what it should be, and it's actually helped me

i've definitely heard the fact before that changing the size, color, and font of a text makes it easier to spot mistakes you'd been glossing over because the stimulus is novel.

Same!

So blocky, stiffy and just ugly.

Arial is a bastardization of Helvetica, one of the most elegant and subtle fonts ever designed. By contrast, Arial is a clumsy knockoff. Very sad that anyone would think of Arial as an avatar of sans-serif typography.

​@@jamesheartney9546 Arial is an avatar of sans-serif typography because it's accessible, which makes it practical, unlike Helvetica, whose owning company continues to aggrandize and hoard its font like linecaster printing presses are still a hot commodity.

Arial is just Dollar Store Helvetica.

A true visionary

my human anatomy professor's lecture slides were ALL in comic sans 🤧

My school uses comic sans in the text of official documents

@@anse7288 I wouldn't take these documents serious with comics sans :D

I know of at least one textbook company whose prepackaged slides were written in Comic Sans

Well said sir.

And personal letters. When was the last time you got a handwritten letter? From grandma, I'll bet!

@@nickbarton3191 Meant in general about grandparents. No, no one writes letters anymore. Lucky to get a birthday text from the kids

@@scottslotterbeck3796 One of my colleagues never gets the correct spelling of... there they're their Usually he write "thier" in every case. Drives me bonkers!

@@nickbarton3191 spell check

Been there

Lol

Topaz8

I think that's why TNR was loved by schools it was a way of telling students to "not go crazy"

Verdana is excellent for screen content and extremely legible at smaller sizes in my experience. There was a period of a few years in the mid-2000's where I used it everywhere...

Arial just needs to go to hell.

100% respect.

This is great

Thanks for solving the font problem.

it's called impact for a reason

bold impact

I agree.

It would be so much easier if numbers were generally written in *bold* - independant of the font. Or just the numbers in a special font.

Hard Agree. Also, because I'm a sadist, have yourself an Il. One of those is an "i" and one is an "L" but you'll never know which

For l, l and 1, Comic Sans is more readable than Times New Roman. Type designers should put the top and bottom bars on their sans serfi's capital i's to improve readability. The bars are part of the letter, not serifs. Verdana is one sans serif font where it is easy to tell a capital i from l

@khandwa style … I… I had never noticed that… thank you so, so much. Now I can finally tell the difference on sans serif fonts. Despite the research and despite this though, I stand by this: ALL HAIL TIMES NEW ROMAN

You have a point. I think OpenDyslexic looks ugly, but that's probably just because I haven't seen it.

That's what I was thinking to. Some fonts might just be easier to read simply because we're forced to use them in everything. It's like a positive feedback loop and self-fulfilling prophecy

@@monkiram except the video mentioned that type ;) of research and the familiarity/preference does not seem to make a difference. Really weird fonts would likely tip the scales I suspect.

Never get near a Pixar studio

Point 2 is why I made sure to pick the widest font possible for my BSc thesis that needed minimum 40 pages.

1) This is completely incorrect. The font that works on your computer is related to whether you have it installed. The font is installed by the software you use or by yourself. This in turn is used by the graphics font rendering software. If you're writing a document in HTML, then you can inject whatever hell type of font you want, by downloading it straight into the computer as the page get's rendered. It is incorrect to say that a font will work for everyone, because text is not written in English, it's written in UTF8 or some other common binary encoding, which is then converted locally by your computer into some supported font. If the font isn't found, then the computer substitutes another, assuming your software is capable of doing assuming such things, which is usually the case. 2) It's really not that narrow and your computer has virutally infinite amount of horizontal and virtical scroll space, so saying it's narrow is not saying much, and only means that you may need to actually increase the size of the text in order to read it. The ability to print less pages is a neat party trick, but really this is a defect of your old habits and nothing else. 3) I'm not entirely sure you understand how to use computers, again not judging, but a computer will give you the word count in seconds... let's take a simple example, your text here contains... 211 words... depending on how you define _word_ obviously, and this was as simply as openning up a terminal and copy pasting your text into a python string, and then doing _text.split(" ")_ which is to say, less then 30 seconds. 4) Assuming you had a computer, you would read it even faster, because you would be able to increase the size, and increase the readability. Assuming you didn't print to paper, you would be able to control f search for previous things you've read to cross-refarence. Assuming you didn't print it to paper, you wouldn't even need to read it, and could just control f search for what you need. I would recommend using LaTeX instead of Words, or even better, to just switch to a plain text format like Org mode or Markdown, because then you don't endup needlessly depending on fonts and document rendering, and especially how it gets rendered to paper.

Saves a ton of ink

@@SimonWoodburyForget Clearly you're not understanding the medium... @berlinezka is talking about printed documents in TNR. Not ones that are on the computer. So it DOES matter what the width of the font is to save printed paper and it DOES make it easier to know if it's got the required number of words, etc... Also, while you CAN get another font downloaded for web use, you CAN'T with a document in most cases. The user has to have the font already installed. So using a common one like TNR, Arial, Calibri, etc means it's less likely the user won't be trying to view the document in a font that you don't prefer. And having every web page have its own font is kinda crazy in terms of additional bandwidth. Especially for those areas that are still fairly internet limited.

​@@SimonWoodburyForget Per 1: Not all fonts are designed to support multiple languages. Furthermore, requiring additional downloads is itself a barrier to accessibility which requires persistent access to a given font type (ie. it's good only so long as that download source is). For style guides this is not ideal. The more work you put in front of a user to maintain compliance the more likely that at some point in the process a mistake is made or you exceed the current knowledge base of said user. To put that more simply, requiring, say, students to download an additional font for homework is just a pain in the ass that some may struggle to perform; with the bias against those with more limited access to tech now or while growing up. Ie. any economically disadvantaged demographic. Protip: don't do that. This applies less in professional circles (where tech familiarity is essential) but you're still left with the "pain in the ass" dynamic for submitting manuscripts in an irregular font if THAT'S what you specify. In general if you're going to specify a font for a style guide pick one that is universal across dominant word processors. Simply being installable doesn't meet the criterion. Use what you want for your own purposes and writing but if you're going to specify a common font for the sake of standardization then TNR is a perfectly fine choice (per Coronel-Beltrán & Álvarez-Borrego 2009, Arditi & Cho 2005, Bernard et al. 2003. The theme in this research is that [general use] font types have limited repeatable impacts, if any.)

Cos it’s boring! 😁

@@EH23831 it's a font. It's supposed to be boring. The things the letters spell are the ones that should not be boring. If you work with marketing, sure, use not boring fonts. For a book? A scientific paper? Newspaper? Use a boring font.

Because Perpetua is better than TNR...

I guess you should ask the people who you want to read your stuff.

@@fredneecher1746 if you write to a small group of people, use the font you like. The font will not change much. If you are going to write to a big group of people, then use a boring font, unless you are writing a marketing stuff (a billboard, the name on the cereal box, etc).

Arial is doller store Helvetica

Exactlyyyy

@@tommj4365 Funnily enough, Monotype literally had it made to be interchangeable with Helvetica but without the need for an expensive licence, so you're absolutely right. You may have already known that tho ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

I wonder how much of that is cause and how much is effect. As in, was it designed and chosen to appeal to some subconscious process that makes us think of it as authoritative, or do we think of it that way because it became ubiquitous in professional, prestigious and parliamentary publications?

@@hughcaldwell1034 My guess would be that it's more of how it's viewed in today's context. Most don't like Arial because of its differences to Helvetica. Meanwhile, Helvetica has become somewhat of a Silicon Valley designer font used for nearly everything to look like what we consider "modern". Because of this, Arial feels like the "cheapened" version (because it is, to an extent). I think Helvetica might shift into a role of traditional professionalism as more people get used to the returning ubiquity of Helvetica. I mean, Helvetica used to be the default font for instruction manuals and stuff, to my knowledge anyway. I think the main reason for TNR's relevance is that it's been renewed and conserved for so long. Watched a Linus Boman vid (that I can link if you want) that talked briefly about TNR's history and origins. Fascinating topic imo

Up

But TNR is Silent Gen so they won't.

LoL

Calibri: hold my beer

The problem I have with Ariel is the capital ‘I’ (shown here because I don’t know how to change the fonts on my phone😝😊). This is very difficult for folk with learning disabilities and those at the beginning stages of learning English. For that alone I don’t think we should use it.

Noiiiice.

I tell my students to use Palatino. It's similar to TNR but less compact and, to my eye, easier to read.

It's also the default HTML rendering font. It conveys that the author focused on the content more than the appearance.

You are correct. Times New Roman feels formal. It is for serious writing. ...at least that how my brain has been trained to perceive it. The other fonts are for casual or marketing purposes.

Yes I agree

@@bennri Or that the author has no concept of how the typeface can affect the messaging of your text. HELP written in Brush Script can appear less serious than HELP written in Bodoni Bold Italic.

Excellent point! I never thought of this.

And Times New Roman is commonly available, so you're not locking into specific platforms or versions. Ah, for the days when our choices were Courier, Elite, or Prestige....

Y'know I think your onto something.

No, it´s about having to read and assess dozens of theses, papers and stuff, and if ppl send in *.doc with their favourite personal, super-weird exotic font that you don´t have, your PC will set it to a default font and totally screw up the formatting. Therefore, you request everything to be sent in Times New, because that is installed on every PC, so you know you see exactly what the student saw when she/he sent it. Edit: If it is about a finished product that you want to present, either in print or PDF, that´s a different story ( e.g., we had no formatting rules for our doctoral thesis, except that the first 2 pages had to be very specifically accurate in what is on them, but there where no restrictions towards fonts, whatsoever), but for a text that several people have to work on, so it is sent back and forth between different machines, maybe even machines running different systems, it is absolutely crucial to agree on something that 100% works on every machine. Weird things happen if a formatted text is sent to a machine that can´t process the formatting. Btw, if you submit a paper, most publishers require the manuscript to be sent in TNR, 12pt, because that is something everyone can deliver, all the reviewers can read it, and the publisher can parse it through an automated system to format the final proof in the journal´s own style. So you get used to it.

Also, some fonts take more room, so standard font, size, and margins were typically given when I was going if the assignment was by the page.

yep..i j l u v are the problematic letters. TNR handles it clearly

Comic Sans also distinguishes the two. It's a sans serif font. It's not the lack of serifs that's the problem, it's whoever the heck decided that capital i doesn't need anything to distinguish it from lowercase L, and somehow made that concept popular.

@@JanMaynz Verdana is another sans serif fonts where the capital i has top and bottom bars. Both Comic Sans and Verdana are very readable. Whenever I open a reading app, I increase white space and choose a sans serif font.

@@JanMaynz Technically, the bars on the I are serifs, so I guess someone decided that a "pure" sans-serif font shouldn't have them. But it creates too much confusion, so an otherwise sans-serif font like Comic Sans, that has the bars on the "I" but no other serifs, makes sense. Get rid of the deliberate pseudo-handwritten irregularities and it would be a very nice font.

Also better for reading italics. There is hardly any difference in regular and italics in Arial.

"Says You!" (Hehehe... Couldn't help myself.)

I think that's a bit of a cop-out to ignore facts and research, and more importantly, one of those facts is that readability is a choice you make for others. So font selection should by definition NOT be about YOUR opinion, not if you want to be read. Also, missing in the video are "in-font" size and kerning, both massively influential. I much prefer e.g. Garamond to TNR, both serifs but Garamond letters are much bigger and wider, and, I expect, more readable. These non-Microsoft days I find myself drawn to Noto Serif, of similar advantage and in my recollection, also spaced wider. Just sayin': there is a TON of research that can be done and pointing at 'preference' and 'opinion' this quickly is just dumb. But the bottom line is that while I hate comic sans, I'll use it if my audience calls for it.

@@LRataplan go touch grass

@@reneeedwards9858 Any particular reason? Or are you too lazy to read, but really want to be obnoxious?

@@reneeedwards9858 😮😀 I'm using that expression from now on its fantastic.

I could see this, I found using sansserif font whole programming was easier on my eyes

Yes exactly. Before watching the video I was assuming this would be the main argument. That the reason we should stop using Times is because everything is switching from print to electronic blah blah.

What OP says definitely.

I agree, I thouched this point in my answer, too, becaause I prefer different fonts for different mediums, even when they are digital (reading an eBook versus using a spreadsheet....)

And would a Kindle Paperwhite (which uses e-ink, and retains the image until refresh) work like paper or screen? It's a screen, but it seems to me to be more like reading on paper (so it won't keep one up if read late at night).

Trebuchet MS is similarly suitable for exactly this reason.

Personally, this is the aspect of fonts that I would most like to focus on. I would like to see a new font that that removes them ambiguity of those and others such as how Europeans disambiguate O and 0 further by adding a slash through the zero and 1 and 7 with a slash in the seven. I would like to see a one be an upside down T and a capital I to be a rotated H.

@@snorky2k521 I always cross the "7" in hand printing, also the "Z" to differentiate it from a "2."

This makes me feel Ill.

I can't tell the "ells" from the "eyes" in your example, but then, I'm not sure what font it's in. I guess that's determined by my operating system, isn't it? Anyway, in TNR, the "eyes" are quite distinct, but the "ells" and ones differ only by their height, and the difference is tiny. Curiously, it's the much-maligned Comic Sans that clearly differentiates all three.

@@viddork The comment section does not allow TNR font my dude. So his example, you would need to copy and change to TNR in your own word document to see what he means.

I could imagine, that the serifs are getting in conflict with the pixelation of the screen, so they tend to get fuzzy edges, whereas on papaer, they kind of guide the eye and make it easier to follow a line in a longer paragraph. Btw, I kind of like Calibri, Tahoma and Verdana. They are decent allround-go-to fonts imho, and they don´t look half bad.

The theory has always been that serifs make it easier for the eye to track between characters, although there's not a lot of evidence to fully support that. But Paavo is right about monitor resolution -- if you're using a device whose screen is at a high enough DPI, like nearly any recent Mac or nearly any smartphone, it's sharp enough that serifs "work," although you still want the text size to be big enough to be comfortable.

Yeah I remember this also.

Yep i remember this one but probably screens changed a lot and this needs to be updated.

This is exactly the "guideline" that I also heard about a number of years ago. Likewise, I don't know the authority on it, but it seemed like a reasonable distinction. However, after watching this video, I'm inclined to start using Comic Sans whenever I can get away with it.

Haha yess

No. Comic Sans is part of the divers community.

Ah, I see you are a man of culture as well...

You BIGOT, there is an infinite nmber of "genders" :p

Comic Sans is human-like on the right side of Uncanny Valley. But it is already a bit chonky, so I don't like its bold variety. And italics, bold or not, look squooshed and blurred. But for a friendly, "can you help me find my dog?" flyer, and for large captions, it works. The ability to add visual emphasis is important when you are communicating exclusively in text.

You should check out Comic Neue

@@iron_pickaxe I've seen it. That font is what you get when you take away everything I love about Comic Sans. I will never use Comic Neue.

@Matthew Morycinski Yes, I agree there's certainly a time and a place. Comic Sans is very casual, but not every _situation_ is casual. It certainly doesn't belong on official corporate documents. But you say she just used it around her personal desk? That seems perfectly fine to me. Her desk, her business. If you're cringing at it, that seems more like your problem than hers 🤷‍♂️

@@Markle2k That seems like a balanced fair opinion 👍

Also a bookman fan… 🎉

I'm personally not the biggest fan, specifically of Bookman Old Style, but perhaps that's because of its overuse in local government documents and public school modules here in the Philippines, so I subconsciously associate it with subparness or an uncanny valley between amateur documents and professionally typeset ones.

Can you only change the line spacing or the kerning (space between letters) too? I've heard wider kerning increases readability and, from what I've seen, I agree.

@@JohnMoseley Nope. Font type, font size, line spacing, margins, and justification. No kerning options.

@@aliquida7132 I'm not surprised, but maybe it's a shame.

@@aliquida7132 I suppose that's not a problem if the font you're using avoids "keming" (bad kerning).

I'm dyslexic too and have found the same having a kindle has opened up a new world of reading for me.

My guess is that she has not modified the Normal style in Word. Besides font options, the tool can clean up Word's wonky default line and paragrah spacing settings, too.

You read my mind.

I last version of Word that I liked/could use was Word 5 which came out with Win 95. Since then I cannot touch a document without totally ruining it. People would ask me to edit a doc, so I'd print it and edit it on paper for them. Or cut and paste a section and edit it in Notepad then send that back. When they complained I'd say I was hired to be a programmer, which I do an excellent job of. Editing your docs is not programming.

The default font should be Computer Modern. Either that, or Johnston.

You know you can change defaults in Word, right?

It's not the only serif typeface. For fiction literature I prefer Garamond.

III. Illinois

@@MildMisanthropeMaybeMassive Il|1O0x×

clearly inois is not well... :D

That’s called a serif and there are many serif typefaces…

I read somewhere once it was designed to be readable at small sizes on a screen in the early days of the Internet. I’m surprised it isn’t used more, to be honest.

Was that ever in doubt?

In lowercase it's iiiinois

@@tommj4365 silly noise

yep this is along with the fact that everyone has times new roman on their machine is the reason why i choose it sans-serif has that problem, and the serif fonts i like have given me trouble when displaying on other people's devices :( so it's tnr for me

@@legal040 Just use Tahoma, the upper case I is the only letter that uses serif, just to take it apart from the lower case L.

We also mustn't forget the pipe symbol | 🤯

I would not have guessed that the middle character of " 1Il " was a lower-case "I".

The problem with serif fonts, however, is if you are visually impaired, the serifs can be even more (very small) information needing to be parsed and so make the font harder to read.

Dude. Comic Sans is cringe. It's like the minion meme of fonts.

@@salmonproduction1990 hating on the most accessible version of something is super cringe. You think people with vision impairment shouldn't be able to read. It only follows that you think that short people should stand in the back of photographs so no one can see them.

@@BS-bv5sh I see your logic follows the initials of your name.

Comic Sans was used to announce the discovery of the Higgs boson by CERN. Checkmate!

If not ya gonna have a bad time

I love Garamond. Regularly have to decide between Garamond and Tufte's ETBook font.

Lucky... "does not fulfill formal criterias" is the easiest box for me to tick whenever I want to grade someone down. Your work must have been really good!

I did the same thing but usually used Georgia

That made me laugh. Thanks.

I like Garamond too; its lovely and stylish for headings, however it fails hard when you use it at smaller sizes, so I never use it for body text.

Comic Sans has a lot of stigma attached to it! I like it too. It's often called juvenile - but does that mean everything that's round and curvy and fun is for children?! (that question could go in so many wrong directions lol)

@@braincraft I don't know why it gets that much hate. The same with the coriander hate that's popular right now or the bacon love a few years ago. I don't get it.

@@braincraft lol I see what you did there.

@@braincraft I wonder if the title of the font is most of what garners the hate for comic sans. If it was called Smooth sans would it be less hated?

Being dyslexic, I agree. And I hate Times New Roman (or any serif typeface). To much fiddly goings on for my eyes to keep track of what letter it is.

Totally agree. Imo individualism is spread thin when people are encouraged to express themselves freely in *everything*.

Simply assign a word count :)

My professors required a minimum word count.

@@jgunnels6773 there’s still an easy way around that that many classmates of mine used. Write random stuff and then put it in white font. Counts towards the word count on the computer but it’s not visible unless you know to look for it.

@@May-qb3vx Fascinating. Yet another incredibly creative tool for those who want to work three times as hard as those who just follow the directions. I'm a teacher, and this sort of thing tickles me (and baffles me) to no end.

I always wondered how to pronounce that. In my head it's always been "NOO-ee" 😂

it’s always been helvetica ’nyoo’ for me

It's NOY-uh because it's short for German "Neue Schrift" = New Script. "Schrift" is feminine, therefore the second e ("-uh"). "Helvetica" is Latin for "Swiss".

@@monkiram ha ha same

You might also like Garamond.

@@markproulx1472 i'll look that up later

Of course. It looks like you actually write letters.

You should also look at Lexia Readable font.

Yes ,same .

Same!

I'm not even dyslexic but English is not my native tongue and I found Illinois easier to read in Comic Sans at the beginning of the video.

one of my all-time biggest complaints about sans serif fonts. especially as an ESL teacher trying to have children read in their second language when they have been taught to write a "big I" with horizontal lines top and bottom.

sorry gotta keep going...which is also why I tolerate comic sans - "big I" retains it's lines, and it is pretty soft and readable, especially for children. I used to be a comic sans hater until I realized this, and now I use it frequently in powerpoints for class.

Exactly. That is why the serifs in fonts are very important and people forget that.

My name is spelled ian, but I've had many, many colleges assume it was Lan and that I was East Asian.

The problem isn't sans serif, it's the font itself. Comic Sans is a sans serif font but still distinguishes the two. It's not the only one, either. I don't know what idiot decided to drop those extra lines from capital i, but they've given sans serif a very bad name as a result.

Don't you mean capital O?

@@kc9scott Correct! You see, just fell because of the ambiguity 😀

Not sure which "OT" you mean... I do a fair amount of programming and command-line oriented work and I swear by monospace fonts, which weren't even addressed by any of the research referenced. My current favorite is a sans-serif by the name of "Hack", and contrary to what many may think it isn't the presence or lack of serifs that make it easy to tell 1Il7 and QO0 apart from each other.

You have got to be trolling.

Okay, in case you're serious, let me learn you a thing. People say things, and sometimes they don't actually mean the *literal* thing they say. This is called figurative language. The human who uttered that sentence does not, in actual fact, believe that "letters have feelings." See also: jokes; metaphor.

​@@amouramarie Doesn't know if I'm joking or being serious... tries to explain when people are kidding around or being literal. haha. Your pathological need to project your intellectual insecurities onto others made me laugh.

@@londonwerewolves I don't need to anything. You were being a knob. That's all.

@@amouramarie Uh-huh. And now you are projecting that I was the start of this. Take your meds and have a nap, pumpkin.

Hey! I did that job for 19 years in a healthcare settings. You have my sympathies. Also, don't get me started on getting people to spell things verbally... Even when I use a phonetic alphabet, they'll still insist on using the indistinguishable letter names. Gives Seth a Covid-19 save High Five!

There's a font named Hack that was specifically designed for easy discernment between O/0, I/1/l and so forth. It's not very attractive, but it works well for its purpose.

When I pulled helpdesk duty at my company (all IT people had to put in a week every year, unless that was your fulltime position) I wrote up my tickets using TELETYPE font. All caps and slashed zeroes.

@@josephcote6120 Hehehe... I worked on a teletype system over at Burlington Air Express... The insane part, this was in the mid 90s.

@@josephcote6120 And everyone said, "Stop yelling at me?" :)

I’m dyslexic too. Unless a font is very difficult, it is unlikely to have a noticeable effect on my reading speed. My reading speed is mostly based on the speed at which the little narrator inside my head goes at, and that is a mostly fixed speed. The main thing that might change that is if my internal narrator is reading in a thick slow accent, like if the author wrote a character with a southern drawl I will read it at that speed. However, some fonts are more comfortable to read, and make scanning for information vaguely possible.

@@jenchan4817 I feel so identified with that experience, about the internal narrator. And yes, for me the most important thing is that the font is comfortable

@@estebanpadilla2607 Thanks for this. I'm not Dyslexic (I'm Dysgraphic instead...another form of damnation), but my understanding had been that the point of Dyslexic-friendly fonts was not higher reading speed but the dual goals of improved comprehension and decreased eye strain. As for myself, as I do a lot of programming-type tasks, I swear by monospaced fonts and currently prefer a sans-serif one by the incredibly appropriate name of "Hack".

Ja, and it's not really about speed? It's. More of an issue of reading the same line over and over and over again, reading something completely wrong or just in the wrong order, flipping letters, just not being able to decipher what in the world I'm looking at, plus everything you mentioned. Usually all the things listed above is why the reading goes slow. Hard to read at all when it doesn't even look like English (or German or whatever language you're familiar with and currently reading). It tends to also cause unnecessary arguments because I completely misread a text someone sent me.

Interesting to know that. I've read that dyslexics didn't find it that readable.

Yay, Computer Modern!

@@lunasophia9002 It looks good, and it's not just for maths.

This!

I've found Computer Modern looks similar enough to TNR (though, of course, quite different in details!) that people might not even notice it - and in my field at least, there's enough LaTeX usage that we're all used to it anyway :D

@@EcceJack I was doing Deaf Studies. I was probably the only person on the course who'd even heard of LaTeX.

That's my favorite font for computer screens, but not for the printed page.

Verdana and Georgia were designed to be read on a monitor.

It's my favorite too, but when I print stuff out it comes out too big, so for work (I'm a translator) I just use calibri.

Verdana reminds me of my middle school days reading fan fiction. Net 😂

I love Fraktur. I think it's the best font.

I suppose that would be important to assess if someone was teaching a course about document length and formatting. It would be a niche elective I think. I would generally advise against signing up for that one; there are invariably more important things to learn at most institutions.

I always liked Tahoma and Verdana myself

Interesting. Does spacing affecting your readability? (between letters vs between words)

@@WhatAreYouNew I love verdana for public reading. At a 14 pt it is infinitely more readable when reading aloud.

@@lelsewherelelsewhere9435 I, as a dyslexic slow reader, need a very specific spacing, the Goldilocks space, not too big, not too small. I prefer Arial, even though the video doesn't like it. The number of times the Illinois will come up is so few that the clean lines of Arial are better. Times just has more features to each letter that just aren't that helpful.

Same! Tahoma!

Both ways. :D

@@joshuapray And barefoot

I still like Courier, and always have, despite everyone else despising it.

@@MuriKakari I've no problem with Courier at all. It's tough to use, though, since people tend to assume you're trying to make your work look timeless, or classic, any time you employ it.

@@joshuapray Yep. Or back to when we printed things, it takes up a lot more space. I remember people having similar reactions to Courier New as Comic Sans.

And APA style indicates Times New Roman is the standard font for it.

@@saravaneerde6164 Yep, I was sort of speculating why APA specified that font.

My condolences

Styles. Styles everywhere.

@@sinecurve9999 I know. Once you start using styles, you won't go back. It's the superhero everyone needs, but few know about.

Yup. Had to install an extra Latex package that includes it.

•Right click •”Select all” •Click Font •Select font of choice •Click “Save” •Finished!

It's Times if you \usepackage{times}, otherwise it's Computer Modern.

me too

I love Old Bookman! My favorite font!

Same.

Oh Iove that font - it´s gorgeous! My font crush is Garamond, though.

Book Antiqua does it for me.

@@girlwithaharp agreed. Much more attractive than TNR with all the same benefits. It's a Palatino knockoff as far as I can tell.

Nice.

ON THE MONEY!!!!!!!!!!

Hit me!

No not like that