Alex Poole writes research reviews on typography and legibility, mainly whether serif or sans serif type reads better.
HN commenters cite it as the starting point showing little or no evidence that serif or sans serif is more legible, though one warns some claims are dated.
I went Googling for science on this subject and promptly found a review of the usability literature:
http://www.alexpoole.info/academic/literaturereview.html
and a second study:
http://www.unc.edu/~jkullama/inls181/final/serif.html
And a poll of user preferences:
http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/html-email-fonts.htm
The apparent conclusion:
Serifs hsve a small-to-nonexistent effect on the readability of digital text, one way or the other.
However, other qualities like x-height and letter spacing do make a difference. In a Times New Roman vs Arial battle, Arial tends to come out on top. But that may well be because it has a larger x-height.
When you poll users on their preferences they love sans-serif fonts. But a big part of the problem is that so few serif fonts come installed in all browsers. Times New Roman seems to be a poor screen font, and Georgia is better but isn't installed everywhere. In short, the fact that we prefer sans serif fonts for the web may be an artifact of our crappy selection of web fonts.
It will be very interesting to see if and when serifs stage a comeback in the era of 300dpi displays and, more importantly, a much larger choice of fonts.
As a cautionary note, a few of the claims in this document don’t stand up well in light of more recent research. If you’re interested in the technical aspects of typography and how humans really read text, you might like to try these more up-to-date starting points:
Alex Poole’s “Which Are More Legible: Serif or Sans Serif Typefaces?”:
http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/
Kevin Larson’s “The Science of Word Recognition”:
http://www.microsoft.com/typography/ctfonts/wordrecognition.aspx
In particular, if you’re about to comment on how serifs or sans-serifs are better for X, or to explain how we read by following the serifs along a line or by recognising word shapes, I strongly encourage you to study the above first.
There are unfortunately a lot of urban legends in typography that simply aren’t supported by the evidence. Some of them came about because of studies that have since been shown to be flawed in methodology or even based on outright falsified data. We help no-one by perpetuating the myths.
While designers/bloggers tend to cite scientific studies advocating sans over serif (or the other way around depending on the context), no conclusive scientific evidence to prefer one or the other [1]
However, the historical reason why sans-serif are generally recommended over a serif on a computer screen was a matter of practicality. The computer monitor simply couldn't replicate the tiny detail required by serifs. Higher resolution screens are becoming more common place, which is why you'll see more serifs in use online (IMO... correlation vs causation and all that). Somewhere along the line someone cited scientific articles to help justify this practice, but I'm convinced it became common place was really for practical reasons/aesthetics more than anything.
[1] I haven't personally done a literature review, but this post is great in discussing the conclusiveness around the research (and readability vs legibility vs....) http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/
> I'm not really buying the narrative that they're not suitable for the web.
Good, because from a technical perspective, you don't need to. The legibility argument has been less and less relevant as screen resolutions have gotten good enough to display serifs in a reasonably print-like manner. (Which was arguably around 2010–2014 when Apple normalized “Retina” displays above 200 dpi, but is especially true today, now that the majority of web browsing occurs on mobile devices).
What makes the difference is of course the cultural and branding associations with serif typefaces. But actually thinking about it now, I feel like I've been seeing a lot more serif typography on the web recently, even in modern, tech-related contexts. And looking at the big example of theverge.com with its quirky redesign, I think you might just get your renaissance soon :)
(Related: http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/)
Just because you can't prove it doesn't mean it's not true.
No, but the body of evidence suggesting that there is little if any difference might. The best starting point I know if you want to explore it is Alex Poole's site[1], which cites a large number of sources and some critical commentary similar to the blog post introducing this HN discussion but with much more material.
[1] http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/
... I think the market is evidence enough that ...
The "market" used to think the world was flat and if you didn't drown you were a witch. Common perception is a lousy substitute for properly conducted experiments, particularly in any usability-related field, where it's been found time and again that self-reported preferences don't necessarily correlate with measured performance.
This page says no:
"Sans serif is better for children learning to read"
Books produced for children are often printed with sans serif text as teachers claim that the simplicity of the letter shapes makes them more recognisable ( Coghill, 1980) , Walker, 2001 ). But studies with child participants have found no difference in their ability to read either style of typeface. ( Coghill, 1980) ; Zachrisson, 1965 , Walker, 2001 )
http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/