Are serifs or non-serifs easier to read?

Are serif fonts easier to read than non-serif ones? No, is the conclusion in Alex Poole’s exhaustive post.

After reviewing more than 50 studies, Alex comes to the conclusion that “serifs or the lack of them have an effect on legibility, but it is very likely that they are so peripheral to the reading process that this effect is not even worth measuring”.

Serif vs. non-serif fonts as illustrated by Wikipedia

Thanks to Chris Atherton for pointing me to this post which perfectly complements one of my most popular posts: Ragged-right or justified alignment?

I must admit this came as a surprise to me, since I always liked the argument “Serifs are used to guide the horizontal ‘flow’ of the eyes”. But unfortunately, simply liking an argument doesn’t make it so. 🙂 It might just be a case of confirmation bias, as in this case…

Typography primer

Today’s bonus link is to a cool, comprehensive article in Smashing Magazine about typography including justified text, hyphens, dashes, smart and dumb quotes: Mind Your En And Em Dashes – Typographic Etiquette.

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