The Best Fonts, According to Science

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Күн бұрын

We all know our favorite fonts, but did you ever think about why some fonts are just clearer than others? Well there's a surprising amount of research into just what makes certain fonts better, and there's a case to be made for that loveably goofy Comic Sans.
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Sources:
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/arti...
www.sciencedirect.com/science...
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Image Sources:
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www.gettyimages.com/detail/vi...
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Пікірлер: 1 600

@harvest5218 4 ай бұрын

Comic Sans is a wonderful way to figure out who likes to hate stuff for no reason.

@MammothBehemoth 4 ай бұрын

I had a friend who hated pineapples on pizza so much he ordered 4 boxes of all meat combos, when everybody in the group openly said they wanted at least one with pineapples. He also hated comic sans and he had to finish all 4 boxes by himself

@dangerfly 4 ай бұрын

Well, do you LIKE things for no reason? Why do you like symmetry? There's always a reason for EVERYTHING.

@eris9062 4 ай бұрын

I just think it looks kind of stupid, like it has its place, but then again I’m also a sucker for serifs

@gravity00x 4 ай бұрын

its not for no reason, its because its either inapropriate to the subject, or because of the rather unappealing design. u dont wear a clown costume to a funeral either.

@CortexNewsService 4 ай бұрын

I feel like I can now admit that I like comic sans.

@kirkrowe2901 4 ай бұрын

It's not just 'more space' between letters in Courier, it's a monospaced font, meaning every letter and space is the same width on every character. Very handy for coding!

@JeffKaylin-ft5cx 4 ай бұрын

And some of us grew up on typewriters. Courier is more readable to me than Lucida Console, but I don't trust Courier to be absolutely monospaced. Should I learn to trust?

@kirkrowe2901 4 ай бұрын

@@JeffKaylin-ft5cx At least in Notepad++, I never encountered a character that didn't fit the grid that monospace makes. Everything always lines up nice.

@EduardQualls 4 ай бұрын

Except that 1's (one) and l's (lower case 'L'), and 0's (zero) and 'O' (uppercase 'o') are often too similar, and at some point-sizes, even indistinguishable. For coding, it's better to use a monospace font (like Consolas) that was designed specifically to avoid those confusing conditions.

@JaneNewAuthor 4 ай бұрын

Courier is used for scripts too.

@KBRoller 4 ай бұрын

Consolas is the default (and also monospaced) font for VSCode, and it's served me well.

@kiomopo 4 ай бұрын

i have a comic sans tattoo which reads "memento mori" sometimes i cover most of it so it just reads "meme"

@world_still_spins 4 ай бұрын

Vala.

@starrywizdom 4 ай бұрын

I think you would be fun to hang out with.

@corpsehandler5321 4 ай бұрын

oh hohohoho, you've given me ideas

@LurpakSpreadableButter 4 ай бұрын

Memento Mori, UNUS ANNUS

@KBRoller 4 ай бұрын

"Remember that you will type."

@pumpkinghead15 4 ай бұрын

My favorite font is Verdana for the simple fact that it's a sans serif font in which the capital I and lowercase L are actually DISTINCT from each other.

@alexandred.4248 4 ай бұрын

Try Consolas, the added plus is that it's monospaced

@batintheattic7293 4 ай бұрын

Ah... Comic Sans was my first love. It's Verdana I married, though.

@jaylewis9876 2 ай бұрын

Verdana is definitely under appreciated

@second0banana 2 ай бұрын

This is my biggest beef with most san serif fonts! It was a genuine factor when we were considering the name Iona for a kid. (It just looks like lower case Lona in a lot of fonts which bugs me an unreasonable amount.)

@thomascastleman314 4 ай бұрын

As a programmer, Courier is the bomb. Some characters (like l and I, or O and 0) look VERY similar in certain fonts. Courier and other Serif fonts make these letters easier to tell apart, which is very important when debugging code. Courier is even fixed-width so it helps with eyeballing indentation and line length.

@clickrick 4 ай бұрын

There are more modern monospaced fonts, such as Lucida Console, Consolas, and Cascadia Code. I'll not express my preferences between them, but they're definitely geared towards programmers.

@borttorbbq2556 4 ай бұрын

Love courier new honestly got so many f's because I hate using Arial and time new Roman. For myself parchment is my favorite

@hibryd7481 4 ай бұрын

You may want to check out Akkurat-Mono; I've programmed in a good many fonts and color schemes and I find Akkurat-Mono and Solarized Dark to be my overall favorites, respectively. There's many glyphs in Akkurat that I like feel are a little cleaner than Courier, like r, q, ?, etc.

@FlesHBoX 4 ай бұрын

Personally, I really prefer Fira Code for programming. It's free, configurable, and supports ligatures.

@caesarxinsanium4008 4 ай бұрын

Iosevka gang

@lutilda 4 ай бұрын

Personally, I don't find Comic Sans to be hard to read, but it gives a sense of informal/ light hearted/ childishness that causes issues when used as an inappropriate design choice. 😂 I think that's why it has the reputation it does. Though it's perfect for use in comic books!

@lutilda 4 ай бұрын

Also, if you look at it closely, Comic Sans has a lot of subtle non- symmetric details (like the bottom of a capital B isn't as round as the top).

@bluefish239 4 ай бұрын

That is spot on the reason why typographers would make fun of comic sans. It's a good font, but is plagued with people using it in settings that don't feel appropriate. I suspect it's readability is part of why it tends to get used a lot the way it does though. I think it would be more accurate to say early on before it became a meme, that typographers weren't making fun of the font, they were making fun of the people that chose to use it for their "Wash Your Hands Before Returning to Work" signs.

@ssatva 4 ай бұрын

In comics, lettering is such an art form, adjusting stroke and width and all that in so many little ways to be more readable and expressive (even when it looks normal) that it's shocking when you see a comic where the type was just a font, it looks surprisingly bad. Comic sans evokes, but is not useful for, comics--way more than one might expect!

@macherie1234 4 ай бұрын

I used to write my HS class lecture overheads in Comic Sans to make them less imposing. Seemed to work.

@tonymouannes 4 ай бұрын

@macherie1234 Comic Sans is great for headers and titles and random text you want people to notice first. On the other hand, it's not the best for a whole essay or resume or report. I usually like Comic Dand when used with other fonts, bot when it's the main one.

@mariaraposabranca7062 4 ай бұрын

Tip for writers: whenever you get tired, swap your document's font to Comic Sans (or another radically different font, but comic sans is just strikingly different than most). You'll recover some stamina and notice more mistakes to correct!

@Sujowi 4 ай бұрын

Thanks for that! Xx proofreader!

@KBRoller 4 ай бұрын

Is one of those mistakes that you're now using Comic Sans? 😁I kid, I kid.

@mariaraposabranca7062 4 ай бұрын

@@KBRoller I'm an ESL and I was in bed.... :(

@ravioliis_ 4 ай бұрын

I absolutely adore comic sans. It's super readable for dyslexic people, ESL learners, people who have trouble focusing, etc, etc. Also, it just has a super fun, loose personality to it. Whenever I would have to type anything for school, I learned that typing it up first in comic sans helped me get my thoughts out of my head quicker and easier.

@MinurielLai 4 ай бұрын

Same to that last part - I find that using a font like Times New Roman when trying to write a first draft is much slower than using some kind of silly handwriting font. It's almost like my brain thinks "no one could ever take my report seriously in that font" and lowers the expectations xD

@ryanap8396 4 ай бұрын

It’s great for people with dyslexia

@who9387 4 ай бұрын

@ravioliis_ _ I really don't get the anti Comic Sans thing. It's the most friendly-looking and READABLE font there is. What is not to like ?

@tultrapfighter 4 ай бұрын

@@who9387 it's because it used be used *everywhere* by inexperienced designers. You could see comic sans in business settings, or even at funerals. The silly look is very off-putting in that context.

@who9387 4 ай бұрын

@@tultrapfighter Yes it's not a businesslike font and that's why I like it for emails etc between friends, I'm now retired so have no bisiness communication, to me it's PERFEC for wha tI need, friendly and HIGHLY READABLE

@AdrianHereToHelp 4 ай бұрын

An example of a font specifically developed for people with low vision is Atkinson Hyperlegible, which was made by the Braille Institute. It's a really cool font, and tries to make sure letter differentiation is as easy as possible without making the whole thing look like a ransom note.

@LendriMujina 4 ай бұрын

That's one I tend to default to. It's a pretty "invisible", "neutral" font that doesn't draw attention to itself while still being extra readable.

@NatSparky 4 ай бұрын

I've been scrolling through the comments for someone who would bring this up! It's SUCH a great good font! It's extremely readable. The designer worked with the Braille Institute to develop a font that looked beautiful but that also could distinguish between lowercase L and uppercase i, the number 0 and the uppercase O and uppercase Q, and the uppercase B and number 8.

@leave-a-comment-at-the-door 4 ай бұрын

as a programmer, something I've strongly felt is needed is a Atkinson Hyperlegible that's monospace; I feel it would make everything so nice if I could have a variable width font as a default in the OS but still be able to use the same font when coding where being ablet to line things up vertically is very useful.

@AdrianHereToHelp 4 ай бұрын

@@leave-a-comment-at-the-door There are a few fan-made monospace conversions, like eHyperlegible and Atkinson Monolegible, if you want to try those

@neenajaydon9641 4 ай бұрын

As a graphic design student, I was happy to see this topic covered. I don’t know if I will ever have a default font again because the suitability of a font depends on the situation, and I spend a lot of time discovering new fonts I like.

@c.augustin 4 ай бұрын

Read the Vignelli Canon (available as a PDF for free), if not done already. He has a point (or two) … ;-) Oh, and preference changes with age (and who are your "heroes" in typography).

@animeartist888 4 ай бұрын

I used to specifically and intentionally make every text document I started in a different font depending on what it was. Funny silly little story I'm sharing with a friend? Comic Sans or Kristen ITC. Diary entry? Handwriting font of some sort, maybe changing the specific one per day depending on mood. Notes for myself to reference later? The default Arial is fine. And if a specific word needed extra emphasis, I'd make it a different font so it would stand out i.e. in a document with a handwriting font, I'd use chiller to say I was SCARED. I also wrote a screenplay for school where I used different fonts for each character, the narrator, and the scene-setting bits that aren't supposed to be spoken aloud. I've always loved playing around with fonts! Except wingdings and similar symbol-based ones though. Those... kinda take away the point of writing anything down, yanno?

@alexandred.4248 4 ай бұрын

If it was up to me, Consolas, just everywhere for everything (which is what I do on my browser)

@OlgaAndreyeva 4 ай бұрын

i had a hard time picking a font for my personal 'branding' ended up going with old garamond just bc i like how it makes the g in Olga look :) the rest of the body text i used din, cause i like the mix of old school and new high tech

@4RILDIGITAL 4 ай бұрын

Never knew fonts could impact so much more than just aesthetics. Definitely going to be more conscious about the fonts I use in the future.

@WildFyreful 4 ай бұрын

Fonts come up quite a bit in the accessibilty community, mainly around which is the most accessible for people with vision problems. So, so glad to see you cover this topic!

@PaddyWolfe 4 ай бұрын

The Interdisciplinary Journal of Signage and Wayfinding... i had no idea this was a thing.

@robinharwood5044 4 ай бұрын

I felt an immediate urge to subscribe.

@jonyeawright 4 ай бұрын

You used the word kerning to describe letter spacing. Kerning affects letter spacing but is not the same thing. You also neglected to mention that Courier is a fixed pitch font. It was invented for the typewriter. With fixed pitch fonts every character has the same width which means fewer characters can fit on a line. On a screen where space may be limited, fewer character will fit. In book printing this results in more pages and costs.

@animeartist888 4 ай бұрын

Yeah, for larger blocks of text, I absolutely hate Courier. It's the best for coding, though!

@am2dan 4 ай бұрын

As a Russian learner, it's sometimes hard to distinguish between Cyrillic п and л in certain sans serif fonts. That little hook on the latter is very important, and it's usually more obvious in serif fonts. But for native-level readers it might not matter so much since it's known that you learn to recognize the shape of entire words rather than reading them letter by letter.

@michaelwright2986 4 ай бұрын

It was really useful to hear that spacing is a major factor in readability across different font styles. Times New Roman is the most common serif font, but it was specifically designed to get the most letters in the smallest space, so it's not an especially good test of the readability of serif fonts. Its ubiquity is a result of commercial choices. About thirty years ago, I composed a guide to learning a language directed at strictly monolingual students; so, it had to introduce a lot of new concepts, as well as the detail of the language. I was printing out a draft, and someone came in and asked what it was. I explained, and added (with a tone of voice that I thought was evidently cynical) "And I've set it in Comic Sans, so it will be easier to understand." "Good idea," they said. So I left it in Comic Sans, rather than changing it to Garamond.

@luizotavio2116 4 ай бұрын

I unironically use comic sans (or knockoff versions of it) on all my devices, because it truly helps me distinguish between I and l.

@FeeshUnofficial 4 ай бұрын

Why... Why would you use a knockoff... It's literally an open source, public domain, web standard font

@TanninValerian 4 ай бұрын

@@FeeshUnofficial I've seen quite a few devices/programs that don't support what you think would be a standard font, so a knock off would be necessary.

@CorgiTheRegularCorgi17 4 ай бұрын

That’s why I started using Times New Roman, it makes it so much easier.

@MarsJenkar 4 ай бұрын

I use Tahoma as my default for similar reasons.

@MaxGengar 4 ай бұрын

That's what I always thought with I and l

@elliottgussow9555 4 ай бұрын

Comic Sans is the best because there are differences between upper case "I", lower case "L" and number "1"; also between number "0", and upper case "O".

@Just_A_Dude 4 ай бұрын

Yeah, but so does Consolas.

@Ptaaruonn 4 ай бұрын

Thank you! fonts where there is no difference between capital i's and lower case L's are BS.

@Joao-pl6db 4 ай бұрын

You are missing the wonders of Monospace fonts.

@pboplatypus 4 ай бұрын

And in comic sans, lowercase "A" is an easy to read "one story" a. No weird extra curved line.

@mcv2178 4 ай бұрын

My first (manual) typewriter had no number 1 key - you had to use lowercase L.

@vanaals 4 ай бұрын

Fonts are my life. I suffered severe interest in fonts when first studying commercial art in college. That segued into further exploration working as a layout artist for a manufacturer of marine gauges and instrument panels. And, during all the in-between times, there was experimentation when designing posters and programs for the entertainment industry. (There was serious thought behind which to use for reading in dim light, when sitting in a seat in a theater.)

@carloguerrero6583 4 ай бұрын

My condolences. But "Suffered severe interest in fonts" is a dope villain origin and i also welcome my noble font overlord

@squirrel5809 4 ай бұрын

I continue to love and admire this channel for communicating nuance accessibly

@OuiOui-hu1ko 4 ай бұрын

I'm dyslexic and I've always liked Comic Sans, but my favorite is Black Chancery.

@BritishBeachcomber 4 ай бұрын

Black Chancery is a beautiful font, but not easy to read.

@andrewchance8449 4 ай бұрын

Any font named Chancery is desined to be awesome!

@FeeshUnofficial 4 ай бұрын

@@BritishBeachcomberI mean lowercase is very legible in black chancery but the numbers are mediocre and the upper case letters are abysmal to read

@Magnymbus 4 ай бұрын

I just looked it up. It's one of the few fonts in which the capital letters grow down rather than up. Feels very pirate-y

@SmallSpoonBrigade 4 ай бұрын

Take a look at OpenDyslexic, it's definitely my preferred font, provided that I'm dealing with text that's large enough for it.

@Angrynood 4 ай бұрын

I always believed in Comic Sans being the most iconic and best font. Glad to feel validated by science.

@samwisegamgee6532 4 ай бұрын

From Europe the most strange is the fact that fonts were tested for security road signs. In Europe as in many other part of the world, road signs are mainly using shapes, colors and ideograms and very few text except when there is no other choice. Because recognizing shapes, colors and simple images is far less brain consuming and easier to understand for people unable to read easily for any reason. And even if I don’t have any precise references that I can remember, I’m pretty sure it has been established by studies.

@madelinemcdonald2609 4 ай бұрын

This is true in the US too (that most signs are shapes and color-coded). It’s just signs telling you about cities/road names/etc that are words (for the most part)

@GonzoTehGreat 4 ай бұрын

I think the video refers to DESTINATION signs, which need wording.

@jurjenbos228 4 ай бұрын

@@madelinemcdonald2609 That's not true. Europeans driving in the US are flabbergasted by the black text on yellow background signs that contain important information like "yield".

@GroovingPict 4 ай бұрын

The more important distinciton when it comes to road signs is ALL CAPS vs Mixed Case, and actually Mixed Case is vastly more readable at a glance (like when looking at a road sign quickly) than ALL CAPS is.

@Codeexcited 4 ай бұрын

I think for things like STOP(aka expected and consultant) all caps is better, but for anything that is unexpected and you have to parse on the go mixed case is better

@nethhass2950 4 ай бұрын

My favorite font is Lucida Casual. Its in between serif and sans serif with just enough thickening at the end of each stroke to locate it without making the letters run together. Times Roman has too many straight vertical line segments. In small print I sometimes have to bracket each letter between my thumbnails to decode the text one letter at a time.

@mrcryptozoic817 4 ай бұрын

If we were voting, my vote is always "Century School Book": nice style, a little flourish, easy to read, really looks good whether at 8, 12 or larger. It's sure hard to replace Calibri as a default (in Windows). And I've tried but like a virus, it keeps coming back.

@Fasteroid 4 ай бұрын

This should have been the APA / MLA standard font imo. Much easier to read than Times New Roman and it even stands out by having "school" in the name.

@c.augustin 4 ай бұрын

Calibri is a good, modern, typographically sound font. Not the worst choice for a default font in MS Office (Arial was way worse). Century Schoolbook is a "Modern" typeface (which isn't modern by now, but the category is called that), and a bit out-of-date aesthetically, but still used in science (TeX's standard font is from this family). If using Word, you can modify your standard settings, also in PowerPoint, but it's not easy.

@nandam3779 4 ай бұрын

@@c.augustin Microsoft just recently changed the default font from Calibri to Aptos and it's killing me. I need to get around to changing the default instead of just working myself up over it every time.

@ngw03 4 ай бұрын

The Supreme Court of the United States agrees with you.

@janedoe3043 4 ай бұрын

I love Comic Sans, unironically. It's bold, easy to read and a little goofy. The absurdist nature is great.

@conlon4332 4 ай бұрын

I've really never understood what's not to like about Comic Sans.

@SpoopySoup 4 ай бұрын

including courier, i just find most monospaced fonts easier to read in general, and if you want text thats heavily formatted like in a programming setting, it's pretty important to have it all lined up too

@tavdy79 4 ай бұрын

Many authors I know (and I know a LOT of authors) use Comic Sans for writing first drafts, because they hit word-count milestones more quickly and are less prone to writer's block. I've tried it, and it does work - but I have no idea why!

@KitsukiiPlays 4 ай бұрын

I love Open Dyslexic. I don’t have dyslexia but I have TDAH and reading, even if I love to, it’s super hard After changing the font in my kindle, I finally stop abandoning books in mid reading, because it’s not an exhausting activity anymore! One aspect these studies didn’t took in consideration is that not everything is about velocity or speed. Quality of life also matters

@Tyrandir 4 ай бұрын

This is really helpful, as someone with optic nerve damage. I came in to learn random interesting things and wound up with really applicable info for me, so thank you Scishow ❤

@nandam3779 4 ай бұрын

I have ADHD, not dyslexia, but I often have trouble keeping my eyes on the page. For me, monospaced fonts like Courier keep my attention better, but Comic Sans is also high on the list, and yes, it pains me to say that because I have some experience in graphic design. I also tend to switch fonts often while writing drafts because it helps me catch typos.

@THE_GREMLINZ_OFFICIAL 4 ай бұрын

Monospaced comic sans

@PLuMUK54 4 ай бұрын

During my teaching career, I dealt with a number of pupils who spoke little to no English (the school was near a university where there were a lot of foreign graduate students who brought their families with them). I discovered, through trial and error, that pupils whose native alphabet was different, such as Korean, Japanese, Arabic, and so on, made better progress if I used Comic Sans. I wondered if this was because as they learned to write in English, it was easier for them to make an approximation of Comic Sans shapes compared to other fonts. Pupils whose native alphabet was the same seemed to make better progress with other sans serif fonts, ie not Comic Sans, but less with serif fonts.

@skollrum 4 ай бұрын

My favorite fonts is the guy from Hapoy Days. He is so cool.

@skeletini9836 4 ай бұрын

i’m an elementary school teacher and while i do use comic sans occasionally, on a screen/projector, we use a slightly thinner version of a sans serif font that is also slightly curvy and stylistic. we want it to mimic our hand writing, but comic sans is usually too thick for the size font we use and the amount of words. in a second grade classroom, they are reading paragraphs on the projector, so thinner letters allows more space and for their eyes to easily glide through the words up close. the spacing is also important, more spacing between letters and words helps young readers as well. in my opinion, early readers need predictable fonts. there is a common font used in G1 books (beginning reading level books) where it doesn’t put the hook at the end of j and every student is always so confused because it looks like a long i. i can’t figure out why they do that and why we have to use them.

@just_kos99 4 ай бұрын

I like MS Tahoma, since it's named after my favorite volcano & mountain, Mount Rainier (Tahoma/Takoma was its original name, meaning 'White Princess').

@borttorbbq2556 4 ай бұрын

The mountain

@jkfecke 4 ай бұрын

Comic Sans is only hated because it appeared in one too many serious communications. But every font has its place, except for Papyrus.

@sheldonaubut 4 ай бұрын

Until recently, I owned a Web design company, designing my first Website in 1994. Over the years, I've taken tons of grief for my preference for Times New Roman and in recent years Comic Sans. Some from customers and some from the Website visitors. People were so vocal they pretty much screamed at me. My thought was that it wasn't about how pretty a font was, but rather the transfer of information, and that explanation did work at times. But there really are a whole group of people that fancy themselves the font police.

@jerelull9629 4 ай бұрын

I still am a guy who leaves sans serif for headlines and serif fonts like Palatino for the text. I *might* use Comic Sans for a joke headline, but not for as many as 100 words. I could be convinced if I got into texting to friends regularly. I used to have a very funny "old West" font for that sort of thing, but I haven't seen it for about 15 years, now.

@videokid521 4 ай бұрын

I put everything I do into comic sans, for myself, for my early childhood age students and most important, for my husband after a stroke completely took his ability to read and recognize letters. This is significant because every font was ground zero, he could not make out the letters, especially the serif fonts. Block print was readable in all caps, but again lower case was hard for him. Most of his reading practice now is street signs(his choice), and thanks, now I get it, it's got to be the additional spacing. Even moving, he can read signs better than a television screen.

@109Rage 4 ай бұрын

I've been using Comic Code for my text editors and such. It's basically a Comic Sans styled font with monospace, so its letters have the distinctiveness of Comic Sans, while having the spacing of fonts like Courier.

@christopherables4235 4 ай бұрын

I fell in love with Comic Sans the first time I saw it - it looks natural rather than harsh, is very easy to read, and I feel more like myself when using it. Most other fonts somehow make me feel artificial, less human.

@halem6580 4 ай бұрын

My brothers went to a school specifically for dyslexic kids that had it's own proprietary font, also designed specifically for dyslexia. I'd be interested to see how it would hold up in studies like these

@GeorgeWiman 4 ай бұрын

I often switch a document to courier or comic sans while editing, then back to whatever the font snobs like when I'm done.

@BrandEver117 4 ай бұрын

The best font is obviously Papyrus

@Moondew-epic Ай бұрын

no its flowey

@hancocki 4 ай бұрын

You guys are always a font of knowledge 😊

@ivytarablair 4 ай бұрын

😭😭😭😭😭😭🤣

@LarryGarfieldCrell 4 ай бұрын

Courier is a fixed width font. That's why its spacing is so easy. It's also why it's the most common font for programmers editing code. (Like me.)

@elisabetk2595 4 ай бұрын

After a brain bleed a few years ago I had a subtle nystagmus (a sort of shaking in your eyes) that made reading sans-serif fonts way more difficult. With serif I could rely more on the shape of the whole word. Ariel was the very worst; it was about a year before I could comfortably read more than a few words at a time.

@KenSnyder1 4 ай бұрын

It bothered me way too much that he says "Comic Sans" yet pronounces sans serif as "saahns serif"

@anujshah9335 3 ай бұрын

🤯

@absalomdraconis 4 ай бұрын

Courier is also a _slab serif_ font, meaning that it's lines never turn skinny, and instead are always thick. This produces that consistent width that one of the studies mentions.

@makeupbyushna3085 4 ай бұрын

This video is very relaxing and fun, thankyou!

@670839245 4 ай бұрын

There are things other than font that affect readability. More than once I've read academic papers that break up a long word at the end of a line with a hyphen and continue on a new line, and that makes the text much harder to read. I guess the editors just wanted the right edge of the page to be not too jagged.

@christopherkirkland7174 4 ай бұрын

Some people get wrong the answer to "Should it look nice or be easy to read?" Left justified for anything I produce and hanging indent for my own notes. It is time to forget the mechanical typewriter rules.

@358itachi 4 ай бұрын

SciShow again coming through with the question I never asked, but needed the answers to. I usually prefer TNR in word, but Arial for presentations.

@gegok42 4 ай бұрын

Fantastic video, thank you so much!

@hiimcrazyfordrwho 4 ай бұрын

I love the special dyslexia font. It helps to ground letters through my visual snow. It allows me to read paragraphs.

@flashboogey 4 ай бұрын

As someone with dyslexia I would really appreciate more stuff you use the special dyslexic font

@atish365 4 ай бұрын

Great job editing team

@JanTuts 4 ай бұрын

While I was in college, a researcher there had just finished their doctorate on readable fonts, with a focus on helping people with dyslexia. The final resulting font they had designed looked like a fusion of Comic Sans and Arial.

@Janokins 4 ай бұрын

Huh, I specifically heard the opposite about all caps, when they were doing the signs in Britain, they found that it was easier for people to recognise the shape of the word, and thus read it easier, when it was in lower case.

@deninetate 4 ай бұрын

Comic Sans has been my favorite font ever since I first discovered it, and I happen to be dyslexic. I realize that I looks very informal. So after I finish composing the letter, essay, or whatever, I select all and change it to arial. But after finding out that courier is more readable, I may switch from arial to that.

@Fasteroid 4 ай бұрын

I argued with my English teachers in high school AND college that Times New Roman should never have been made the standard for research papers due to its thin strokes being harder to read at 12pt than most other choices. My concerns were always dismissed because "serif fonts are easier to read" and I was sometimes threatened with point deductions if I deviated from it. I'm glad there's now research out there that shows ultimately that it never mattered. I get to have the last laugh.

@Tymbus 4 ай бұрын

I've always used courier. I like the way it harks back to old fashioned hand typing. I love its clarity and simplicity. And I love the feel of white space between and within letters. I also like Helvetica for headlines in copy. In contrast, Times New Roman and Ariel feel fussy and crowded.

@peggythomson8146 4 ай бұрын

As a former early childhood teacher, Comic Sans was much more useful with children who were just engaging with letter recognition for the first time.

@lawrl777 4 ай бұрын

yeah i was gonna say, Courier is a monospace font (which means every letter has the same width)

@wasd____ 4 ай бұрын

Courier is not only a wider font, it's also a monospace font (every letter takes exactly the same amount of width). This gives it a precisely fixed visual cadence, which makes it easier to read for some people with bad vision because every fixed amount of space is exactly one letter. There's no guessing and confusion about whether the letter you're trying to read at any given position is just one wide letter, or two thin letters blurring together, etc., and taking out the spacing and character count guesswork is a huge workload reduction (which translates to much better reading speed and accuracy) for anyone with less than perfect vision.

@EAS76 4 ай бұрын

From my graphic design background, I thought the theory was that serifs weren’t originally there to make reading faster or help you to comprehend them better at normal printed paragraph sizes of around 10-14 points, but that they make it EASIER for your eyes to move down the line as they jump. Our eyes jump from one thing to the next, called “saccades,” and the serifs are little hints on the next letter to stand out a bit for your brain to notice the difference and help the saccade jump down the line more easily. At larger sizes such as a headline, the serifs were thought to be distracting and slow down the saccades.

@Dreamcass 4 ай бұрын

Now I wanna see a study like these that compares the readability of fixed-width and variable-width fonts.

@alexemann 4 ай бұрын

I teach young EFL students. I always use Comic Sans in my PowerPoint presentations, because it simulates handwriting. I used to use Times New Roman or Arial, but the lower level students who weren't comfortable with the alphabet would end up writing "a" exactly like a Times New Roman "a". After I started using Comic Sans, the kids started writing "a" like a normal person.

@annefoley6950 4 ай бұрын

I wasn't really paying attention for the first half, but then I remembered that I do have a wide choice of fonts to use in communicating information. I also happen to be huge fan of my typewriter, (for quickly typing small labels,) which just so happens to tap out letters in good old Courier! That's a win for me!

@Martcapt 4 ай бұрын

I'd love to be in a position in life where I could write everything in Comic Sans, just to be a menace to society

@DrachenGothik666 4 ай бұрын

Mad lad! LOL

@lakrids-pibe 4 ай бұрын

The industry standard font for road signs has been *Dansk Vejtavleskrift,* based on the british font *Transport,* since the 1960's. In Denmark.

@tmanook 4 ай бұрын

If you are a programmer, monospaced fonts are awesome. I love you Consolas :)

@madmcomber752 4 ай бұрын

As a writer and a font nerd, this video had me super excited. I like Centaur the best myself.

@tonics7121 4 ай бұрын

Comic Sans so appropriately named, my all time favorite. It enhances my favorite pastime.

@staceyhollerauer6712 4 ай бұрын

My experience is that serif fonts are easier for troubled or blurry vision because they emphasize the shape of the letters. They tell you all the important end points because they are bigger blocks of pigment. When you can’t see well, knowing where those points are can help you easily distinguish between letters, even if you can’t easily see the lines between those points.

@bongosock 4 ай бұрын

Because I used to be a computer programmer, I've continued to often use mono-spaced fonts - like Courier. Not exclusively, but about 50/50.

@jonutsthedanklordpayton 4 ай бұрын

I never knew that comic sense was officially recognized as one of the best fonts for dyslexic people. I just remember as a kid being confused why everyone hated comic sounds when it was my favorite and it was the easiest to read. And it was because the characters are all so different from each other. There's no way you can miss them.

@Lolalogo 4 ай бұрын

At work, I always know the research is going to be fire if the slideshow is in comic sans.

@rhov-anion 4 ай бұрын

As someone with both dyslexia and macular degeneration (diagnosed when I was only 39) I have been searching for a font that works for me. So many have suggested Open Dyslexic. While I found the heaviness on the bottom to be helpful at grounding the letters, I found the lack of serifs made things even worse. Now I understand WHY. Thank you, SciShow. May we all come to accept and love the diversity of fonts. (Even Comic Sans.)

@bones6996 4 ай бұрын

have you heard of Atkinson Hyperlegible?

@SmoochieRoo 4 ай бұрын

funnily enough I was actually expecting to hear about bolding specific letters in each word at random regarding dyslexia. surprised this wasn't mentioned.

@marciaboisvert9088 4 ай бұрын

As teacher who teaches students learning to read and English language learners, I like Comic Sans because it reflects how the students learn to read/write their letters.

@GAHAHAHH 4 ай бұрын

It's of note that serifs help when printing on low quality paper at small text sizes, because the ink tends to bleed randomly serifs increase the odds of there being ink where you need it most. But so much text is completely digital now and usually people have no reason to be cheap about font size or paper quality when it comes to actually printing something.

@sailiealquadacil1284 4 ай бұрын

I'll try out the thing about spacing tomorrow at work. Am currently working on the layout for a publication, and my colleague said that it was a bit difficult to read. We already increased the space in between lines.

@Thesnakerox 4 ай бұрын

For me, Consolas is one of my favorite fonts. I don't really know why, but it just...is

@gravity00x 4 ай бұрын

i love how you quoted the one study that couldnt find the differences vs the hundreds of studies that could find the differences 😂😂😂 well played man!

@tmutant 4 ай бұрын

In the military (USAF) we used Courier. (Back in the olden days, when we were using an IBM Selectric III instead of a computer.)

@Heowa 4 ай бұрын

Fun fact: Since Courier is monospaced (every character is the same width), it is the most common font to be used by translators (like me) in order to be able to invoice the amount of text fairly. However, while working on a translation and chewing on a tricky sentence, it can sometimes be helpful to change fonts to kind of "rewire" your brain and think of a solution.

@CSCharlesIV 4 ай бұрын

I loved Comic Sans lol. Wrote many a paper with it then changed the font to whatever the professor required after I was done.

@madeline-sparkles 4 ай бұрын

As a slightly dyslexic and terminally online being, Iosevka is our actual go-to for readable font, or any other monospaced fonts really. Courier isn't just wider, it's monospaced, and that does the trick for us.

@OlgaAndreyeva 4 ай бұрын

spacing is a great point. i didnt know it had that much impact. when coding, most ide programs use monospace fonts, which makes sense. i learned about comic sans being good for dyslexia a while back, definitely helped ease the hatred haha it's kind of a endearing underdog to me now. i'm not dislexic but i find reading sometimes difficult to focus on, i tried the open dyslexic fonts and didnt feel a difference, glad i'm not the only one lol i know theres plug ins and stuff you can switch everything to comic sans, maybe after watching this video i'll be able to bring myself to give it a try xD

@melsbacksfriend 3 ай бұрын

Fun fact: fonts with uniform character width are called monospace fonts and are commonly seen in terminals on computers due to working nicely with aligning text.

@allanrichardson1468 4 ай бұрын

In the IT world (and with all the security on apps and web sites, we are all involved in IT), codes and passwords that involve mixtures of letters and numbers MUST distinguish the letter I from the number 1, the letter O from the number 0, and the upper case I from the lower case L. Otherwise, codes and passwords will be entered incorrectly. And even for normal text, letters too close together, especially at small sizes. Aerial, for example, fails some of the tests in the previous paragraphs, but in addition, lower case R blends in with a following lower case M, N, or another R to make a jumble, a lower case M, or a lower case NR. This is especially true with bold type. When I receive a display of a code to be entered, I often use Ctrl+c, open a Notepad (which by default uses a monotype serif font) window, and Ctrl+v to be sure I’m reading it right.

@Davemon115 4 ай бұрын

Something not mentioned in the video that absolutely plays into legibility is contrast. Times New Roman has a much higher contrast (the difference between how thick and thin lines are in the same letter) than something like Courier, which is part of why Courier may be easier to read on a teleprompter.

@bartolomeothesatyr 4 ай бұрын

My own personal favorite font remains Trebuchet MS, mostly because the glyphs for "one", "aye", and lowercase "ell" (and also "zero" and lowercase "oh") are visually distinct, so there's no textual ambiguity between the characters.

@cheeseparis1 4 ай бұрын

I had a very hard time in the 2000's - this Powerpoint bug (at least in the French edition) adding a space _before_ apostrophes. It was fixed a few releases later - and ALL business presentations were written in Comic Sans. Dude! Found a way to search/replace fonts, its was impossible to focus on that.

@MrKotBonifacy 4 ай бұрын

1. Sans-serifs are generally more legible, because their shapes are "clearer". And for the same reason texts set in uppercase are easier to read than mixed case texts. And that's why uppercase letters are used for signs and headlines - because those are things one is supposed to "get at a glance". 2. HOWEVER, serif fonts make it easier for our eyes to group letters into words, and follow the line of text. Also, they makes easier for us to visually "keep apart" individual lines from each other - and that's why they are used for body of a text in books or newspapers - where one has to "scan" a page/ column LINE AFTER LINE, top to bottom. 3. "No significant difference" - I guess those two qualities of serif and sans serif fonts sorta "cancel out" each other. A body of a text printed in, say, Gil Sans is very clear - I mean, the typeface is clear and its letters are easier to read (distinguish) than those of Times (for instance), but then Times makes it easier to follow the line of text. Also, it's ALWAYS easier for us to read fonts "that we are used to" - for instance, for majority of people outside of Germany "Schwabacher" font is next to unreadable, and considering that we all are exposed daily, multiple times, to Helvetica/ Ariel and "Times/ ~ New Roman" it's no wonder they are very readable. 4. The "age difference" ( _"75 yrs olds took 38% longer to read the screen..."_ ) - you're jumping to conclusions, my dear Watson. The main reason for slower reading dashboard screens by older folks, WHILE DRIVING, is the problem with shifting the focus - when you get older your eyes need MUCH MORE time to adjust the focus from "(nearly) infinity" to "very close up". (Ask me how I know...). I can tell you that even a simple task of taking your eyes from the road in front of you and "reading" the speedometer (or a thermometer display next to it) takes a noticeable amount of time now - while 20 yrs ago it my eyes would adjust in an instant.