General Conclusions to Part I

Abstract

This chapter concludes Part I by summarising and discussing the key findings. Are there any differences in the legibilityLegibility of serif and sans serif typefaces when they are used to generate printed material? Are there any differences in readers’ preferences and connotations between serif and sans serif typefaces when they are used to generate printed material? Where does this leave previously stated assumptions about the legibilityLegibility of serif and sans serif typefaces? The chapter concludes by assessing the position adopted in the latest edition of the American Psychological Association’sAmerican Psychological Association, Publication Manual Publication Manual.

Full text

JohnT.E.Richardson
TheLegibility
ofSerif and Sans
Serif Typefaces
Reading fromPaper
and Reading
fromScreens
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John T. E. Richardson
The Legibility of Serif
and Sans Serif Typefaces
Reading from Paper and Reading from
Screens

John T. E. Richardson
Institute of Educational Technology
The Open University
Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, UK
ISSN 2211-1921 ISSN 2211-193X (electronic)
SpringerBriefs in Education
ISBN 978-3-030-90983-3 ISBN 978-3-030-90984-0 (eBook)
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Dedicated to
James Hartley

Acknowledgements
I am most grateful to Charles Bigelow, Bethan Bolton, Francisco Cano-Garcia, James
Clough, Martyn Cooper, TimCoughlan, Mary Dyson, Robert Edmunds, Matt Elcock,
James Hartley, Jason Humphries, Woojung Kim, Agnes Kukulska-Hulme, Christo-
pher Lightfoot, Fulvia Mainardis, Marc Marschark, Rod McDonald, Kate Nation,
Marta Novello, Bart Rienties, Norbert Schwarz, Ormond Simpson, Rebecca Treiman,
Nicholas Wade, Sue Walker, Arnold Wilkins, Jiyeon Wood, and Gesualdo Zucco
for their comments and advice. Any errors, inaccuracies or omissions are my own
responsibility.
I am also very grateful to James Clough for his kind permission to make use of
his photograph of the inscription in honour of Titus Annius Luscus in Fig. 1.3,to
the Medical Research Council, as part of UK Research and Innovation, for its kind
permission to make use of Fig. 2.1, and to the Philip’s Division of Octopus Publishing
Group and Sue Walker for their kind permission to make use of the photograph of
pages from Nellie Dale’s Reader in Fig. 7.1.
Milton Keynes, UK
September 2021
John T. E. Richardson
vii

Contents
1 Introduction .................................................. 1
1.1 TheOriginsofthisBook .................................. 1
1.2 Serif Typefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.3 Sans Serif Typefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4 Review Methodology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
2 Concepts and Research Methods ............................... 11
2.1 Concepts ................................................ 11
2.2 Objective Methods for Measuring the Legibility
of Typefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12
2.3 Subjective Methods for Measuring the Legibility
of Typefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
2.4 The Size of Typefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15
2.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Part I Reading from Paper
3 “Everybody Knows”: Reading from Paper ...................... 21
3.1 Attitudes of Typographers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
3.2 DissentingVoices ........................................ 22
3.3 Are Serifs Purely Decorative? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
3.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25
4 The Legibility of Letters and Words ............................ 27
4.1 Reading Letters and Words in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces . . . 27
4.2 The“Stripiness”ofPrintedWords .......................... 29
4.3 Confusions Among Letters in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces . . . 31
4.4 MeasuringVisualAcuity .................................. 32
4.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33
ix

xContents
5 Reading and Comprehending Text .............................. 35
5.1 Reading Text in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
5.2 Comprehending Text in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces . . . . . . . . 36
5.3 The Connotative Meaning of Typefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
5.4 Connotations of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
5.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 41
6 Reading in Context ............................................ 43
6.1 The Importance of Context . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
6.2 Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces in Newspaper Headlines . . . . . . . . 44
6.3 Wheildon’s Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 46
6.4 More Recent Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48
6.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51
7 Younger and Older Readers .................................... 53
7.1 Younger Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53
7.2 BurtandKerr’sResearch .................................. 54
7.3 Zachrisson’s Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
7.4 OtherResearchwithChildren .............................. 56
7.5 LetterReversals .......................................... 59
7.6 Older Readers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
7.7 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61
8 Readers with Disabilities ....................................... 63
8.1 Readers with Visual Impairment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
8.2 Shaw’sResearch ......................................... 64
8.3 Children in Special Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66
8.4 Readers with Congenital Visual Impairment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
8.5 Readers with Acquired Visual Impairment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68
8.6 Readers with Aphasia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
8.7 Readers with Dyslexia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71
8.8 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
9 General Conclusions to Part I .................................. 75
9.1 KeyFindingsfromPartI .................................. 75
9.2 Preferences and Connotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
9.3 ImplicationsforPreviousAssumptions ...................... 77
9.4 The American Psychological Association’s Current
Position ................................................. 77
9.5 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
Part II Reading from Screens
10 “Everybody Knows”: Reading from Screens ..................... 83
10.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
10.2 Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces Using Older
Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Contents xi
10.3 Issues with Screen Technology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 88
10.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 89
11 The Legibility of Letters and Words ............................ 91
11.1 Reading Letters and Words in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces . . . 91
11.2 The “Stripiness” of Words Displayed on Screens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
11.3 Confusions Among Letters in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces . . . 94
11.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95
12 Reading and Comprehending Text .............................. 97
12.1 Reading Text in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
12.2 Comprehending Text in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces . . . . . . . . 99
12.3 RapidSerialVisualPresentation ............................ 102
12.4 Reading Material on Handheld Devices and Smartphones . . . . . . 103
12.5 Connotations of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104
12.6 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106
13 Readers with Disabilities ....................................... 109
13.1 Readers with Visual Impairment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
13.2 Readers with Dyslexia . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109
13.3 Readers with Age-Related Macular Degeneration . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110
13.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
14 Reading Text in Internet Browsers .............................. 113
14.1 The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces in Internet
Browsers ................................................ 113
14.2 The Research of Bernard and Colleagues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 114
14.3 Subsequent Research . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
14.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 121
15 General Conclusions to Part II ................................. 123
15.1 KeyFindingsfromPartII ................................. 123
15.2 Preferences and Connotations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 125
15.3 ImplicationsforPreviousAssumptions ...................... 126
15.4 Conclusions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
16 Coda: Lessons Learned ........................................ 129
References ........................................................ 133
Author Index ...................................................... 151
Subject Index ..................................................... 155
Typeface Index .................................................... 159

List of Figures
Fig. 1.1 Examples of common serif typefaces (Baskerville,
Garamond, Palatino, and Times New Roman)
and common sans serif typefaces (Arial, Comic Sans,
Tahoma, and Verdana) . .................................. 3
Fig. 1.2 The surviving inscription on the base of Trajan’s
Column. Licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution–
Share Alike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0), https://commons.
wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Base_columna_trajana.jpg . . ......... 3
Fig. 1.3 An inscription in honour of Titus Annius Luscus. Reproduced
by kind permission of James Clough from https://articles.c-a-
s-t.com/letter-hunting-in-italy-2-e7b51cd821a6 . .............. 5
Fig. 1.4 A typical Snellen-type chart, used to evaluate visual
acuity. Licenced under the Creative Commons attribution–
Share Alike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0), https://commons.
wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=4262200 .................. 7
Fig. 2.1 Key concepts in the measurement of typefaces. From
Effects of printing types and formats on the comprehension
of scientific journals (Applied Psychology Unit Report
No. 346), by E. C. Poulton, 1959. UK Medical Research
Council, Applied Psychology Unit. Used by kind permission
of the Medical Research Council, as part of UK Research
andInnovation .......................................... 16
Fig. 7.1 Two pages from one of Dale’s Readers.FromThe Dale
readers: Infant reader (new ed.), by N. Dale. 1902. George
Philip & Son. In the original, the illustrations and some
letters in the sans serif headings were rendered in colour.
Reproduced by kind permission of the Philip’s Division
of Octopus Publishing Group and Sue Walker from http://
www.bookdata.kidstype.org/database/database/getImage?
id=1018 . . . ............................................ 54
xiii

xiv List of Figures
Fig. 10.1 Examples of common serif typefaces (Times New Roman
and Georgia) and common sans serif typefaces (Arial
and Verdana) for displaying text on screens .................. 84

Chapter 1
Introduction
1.1 The Origins of this Book
Many interesting research projects begin with an apparently simple question. The
question with which this project began arose in the context of managing an online
course.
In 2008, I and a colleague at the UK Open University were charged with designing
and implementing a postgraduate distance-learning course with the title Accessible
Online Learning: Supporting Disabled Students. The course was to be taken entirely
online and would contribute to the University’s master’s programme in Online and
Distance Education. All the course material was available online, either from a dedi-
cated website or through the University library’s online resources. In particular, the
course textbook (Seale, 2006) was available free for students as an e-book. The
course would run annually from September to January and would be equivalent to
one quarter of a year’s full-time study.
We recruited four experienced associate lecturers to serve as tutors for the course.
They were each assigned 10–20 students, and their duties were to moderate online
discussion forums among the group of students and to assess the assignments
submitted by each student. The assignments were to be submitted in Microsoft Word
format through a dedicated online system, and the students were given advice and
instructions with regard to essay structure and referencing. The tutors provided an
overall evaluation and mark (out of 100%) on each of the assignments using a sepa-
rate form, and they provided more specific feedback in the margins of the assignment
using Word’s “comment” facility.
During the first presentation of the course in 2008–2009, one of the tutors
suggested that students should be required to submit their assignments using a sans
serif typeface, on the basis that “everybody knew” that sans serif typefaces were
easier to read on screen and that this would make the task of evaluating the students’
assignments more efficient. This seemed to overlook a number of points regarding
the process of learning and assessment:
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0_1
1

21 Introduction
•Many students were using the default typeface in Microsoft Word to type their
assignments. At the time, this was the serif typeface Times New Roman.
•The idea that the appearance of written work could be changed to suit the potential
readers’ abilities, skills, and preferences was introduced during the course.
•A tutor who downloaded an assignment to provide feedback could change the
appearance of the assignment to suit their own abilities, skills, and preferences.
•Tutors might choose to evaluate assignments on screen, or they could instead
choose to print off the assignments to read and evaluate them in hard copy.
The last point raised the question of the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces
when they were used to produce material intended to be read on paper or other hard
surfaces. Here, a cursory view of the literature suggested that “everybody knew” that
serif typefaces were easier to read on paper than were sans serif typefaces. Of course,
the fact that everybody knows something is no guarantee that it is true. Until the time
of the Pythagorean School in the sixth century BC, “everybody knew” that the earth
was flat; and until the time of Copernicus in the sixteenth century AD, “everybody
knew” that the sun rotated around the earth. Nowadays, we expect such matters to be
determined by empirical evidence, not by majority opinion. This book is concerned
with the empirical evidence concerning the relative legibility of serif typefaces and
sans serif typefaces: Part I is concerned with their legibility in “hard copy” (i.e.,
when presented on paper or other hard surfaces), and Part II is concerned with their
legibility when presented on computer monitors or other screens.
1.2 Serif Typefaces
There are many dimensions on which typefaces can vary, but this book is concerned
with the legibility of typefaces with and without serifs. A serif is “a short, light line
projecting from the main stroke of a letter” (Chicago Manual of Style, 2003, p. 837)
that often takes the form of a small finishing stroke at the top or bottom of a letter.
(In English-speaking countries, typographers have variously spelled the word ceref ,
ceriph,seriff ,seriph,seryph,surriph,surripse,surryph,orsyrif : Mosley, 1999, pp.
53, 55.) One feature of typefaces with serifs is that the main strokes constituting
each letter are often of varying thickness. The left-hand panel of Fig. 1.1 shows
some examples of common serif typefaces (Baskerville, Garamond, Palatino, and
Times New Roman) as they are currently rendered in Microsoft Word. (The example
sentence is a pangram—a single sentence that uses all 26 letters in the English
alphabet—which is often used as a typing exercise.)
Serifs have been noted in Greek inscriptions from the fourth century BC, but
they became widely adopted during the Roman Empire (from 27 BC to AD 476)
(Mosley, 1999, p. 18), when they are generally thought to have resulted from the
practices of Roman masons (Bringhurst, 2019, pp. 119–120). It is likely that the
latter used a flat or square-edged brush to draft symbols on pieces of stone before
carving them with chisels, and the serifs were left at the ends of the brushstrokes

1.2 Serif Typefaces 3
Fig. 1.1 Examples of common serif typefaces (Baskerville, Garamond, Palatino, and Times New
Roman) and common sans serif typefaces (Arial, Comic Sans, Tahoma, and Verdana)
(Catich, 1991). By the beginning of the Common Era, Roman inscriptions used a
standard alphabet of capital letters in which serifs were a characteristic feature, and
many examples have survived in their original locations or else in museums to the
present day. A commonly cited example is the inscription on the base of the column
that was completed in AD 113 to commemorate the emperor Trajan’s victory in
the Dacian Wars, shown in Fig. 1.2. The column itself survives largely intact in the
otherwise ruined remains of Trajan’s forum near the Piazza Venezia in the centre of
modern Rome.
Smaller versions of these letters were used when writing books. However, towards
the end of the eighth century AD, a simplified version of this alphabet, nowadays
known as the “Carolingian minuscule,” was introduced across the Holy Roman
Empire as a standard handwritten script for rendering the Vulgate Bible in Latin. This
incorporated strokes that extended above or below the main body of each letter but
Fig. 1.2 The surviving inscription on the base of Trajan’s Column. Licensed under the Creative
Commons Attribution–Share Alike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0), https://commons.wikimedia.
org/wiki/File:Base_columna_trajana.jpg

41 Introduction
retained the use of serifs. In the early fifteenth century, Italian calligraphers combined
the Roman capitals with the Carolingian minuscule; these were used as the basis for
the earliest Western typefaces and evolved into the combination of uppercase and
lowercase alphabets that is used in Western countries today (see Bigelow, 1981, for a
more detailed account, of which this is mainly a summary). Due to the origins of their
capital letters in inscriptions from the Roman Empire, serif typefaces are sometimes
referred to as Roman or roman. For instance, Times New Roman was developed by
Stanley Morison, working for the Monotype foundry, for use in the London news-
paper, The Times, in 1932. A rival printing company, Linotype, developed a similar
typeface known as “Times Roman” (or even just as “Times”).
Several theories have been put forward regarding why serifs should have survived
in modern typography:
•Early researchers sometimes claimed that serifs provided additional visual cues
to enable readers to direct their gaze at successive words in a line of text. This
idea can be found even in some modern accounts. However, the work of Hering
(1879) and Lamare (1892) showed that the eye movements of experienced readers
consist not in a continuous horizontal gaze but in a series of discrete fixations
separated by jumps or “saccades”. (This finding is often erroneously attributed
to their colleague, Louis Émile Javal: see Wade & Tatler, 2008, for discussion of
this issue.)
•Other early researchers argued that serifs helped to overcome the harmful effects
of “irradiation” (see Pyke, 1926, pp. 21, 99–101, for examples). The latter is a
well-established optical illusion whereby a dark figure that is presented against
a light visual field appears to be larger than an otherwise identical light figure
that is presented against a dark visual field. Taylor (1934) claimed that irradiation
explained why letters printed in serif typefaces were harder to read when shown in
white print against a black background than when shown in black print against a
white background. Nevertheless, the relevance of this phenomenon to the legibility
of typefaces is otherwise unclear.
•Robinson et al. (1971) hypothesised that serifs facilitated the operation of line
detectors in the human visual system. They found evidence in support of this idea
using a computer model of visual processing. Nevertheless, computational models
which assume that specific and unique brain cells are dedicated to the detection of
lines or other features have since been criticised in favour of connectionist models
which assume that groups of brain cells function as a distributed network (e.g.,
Schiffman, 2000, pp. 83–85, 163–166).
1.3 Sans Serif Typefaces
Sans serif typefaces are presented without serifs. (In English-speaking countries,
typographers have variously used the expressions sans-ceriph,sans-serif ,sans-
surryph,sanserif , and sansserif : Mosley, 1999, p. 53.) In contrast to serif typefaces,
the strokes constituting each letter are often of constant thickness. The right-hand

1.3 Sans Serif Typefaces 5
panel of Fig. 1.1 shows examples of common sans serif typefaces (Arial, Comic
Sans, Tahoma, and Verdana) as they are currently rendered in Microsoft Word.
Early Greek and Etruscan inscriptions routinely employed a sans serif style
(Mosley, 1999, p. 17), and they were widely adopted during the Roman Republic
(from 509 to 27 BC) (Bringhurst, 2019, p. 261). In contrast to serif inscriptions, rela-
tively few examples survive today (Lightfoot, 2009), partly because of the poorer
quality of the material in which they were inscribed (wood or local stone, rather than
marble) and partly because from time to time the Republican authorities discouraged
the construction of inscribed monuments. Nevertheless, the National Archeological
Museum in Aquileia in north-eastern Italy contains many Republican inscriptions
using sans serif capital letters (Clough, 2015), and about 150 of these are displayed
in the online Lupa database (http://lupa.at). Figure 1.3 shows an inscription dating
from the middle of the second century BC that was discovered in the area of the
Roman forum in Aquileia in 1995. It came from a monument (now lost) to Titus
Annius Luscus, who was elected as praetor in 156 and consul in 153 BC. Clough
Fig. 1.3 An inscription in honour of TitusAnnius Luscus. R eproduced by kind permission of James
Clough from https://articles.c-a-s-t.com/letter-hunting-in-italy-2-e7b51cd821a6

61 Introduction
(2020) provided a more detailed discussion of this inscription. (I am grateful to James
Clough for permission to reproduce his photograph of the inscription here.)
Sans serif inscriptions had a brief revival in the fifteenth century, when they were
used to decorate buildings and monuments in a number of Italian cities (Clough,
2020; Gray, 1960). The origins of the style are a matter of debate (Stiff, 2005).
Nevertheless, these developments had little or no effect on the evolution of early
typefaces. Instead, early typographers used serif typefaces modelled on surviving
inscriptions from Imperial Rome, and these had become widely adopted by the end
of the eighteenth century.
During the latter part of the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century,
sans serif inscriptions became popular on monuments, public buildings, and garden
features in the United Kingdom, where they were seen as being more natural or prim-
itive than serif inscriptions. Between 1800 and 1820, hand-etched sans serif letters
were used in publicity materials printed for commercial signwriters or engravers
and on the title pages of British catalogues of antiquities, while lowercase sans serif
letters were engraved from around 1810. At this time, the style was described as
“Egyptian”, and it was this term that was used to describe the first uppercase sans
serif typeface produced in 1816. However, the first sans serif typeface produced in
both uppercase and lowercase in 1832 was described as “sans-serif”, and variations
of this term were used thereafter. Such typefaces were occasionally referred to as
“antique” or “grotesque”, and the equivalent terms were adopted by typographers in
France and Germany, respectively, later in the nineteenth century (see Mosley, 1999,
for a more detailed account, of which this paragraph is mainly a summary; see also
Mosley, 2007).
Possibly in reaction to the popularity of sans serif styles, some printers devised
a variant of the serif style in which the serifs were of a similar thickness to the
letters’ main strokes. These were used in wood blocks from 1810 and in metal type
from 1817. Somewhat confusingly, these typefaces were referred to as “antique” in
the United Kingdom and the United States. However, they were also occasionally
referred to as “Egyptian”, and the equivalent terms were adopted by typographers in
France and Germany. In English-speaking countries, they are nowadays referred to
as “slab serif” typefaces (Mosley, 1999, pp. 42, 56; 2007). Figure 1.4 shows a typical
example of a Snellen chart, used to assess visual acuity (to be discussed in Sect. 4.3).
This uses slab serif symbols, each constructed within a 5 ×5grid.
From the 1830s, sans serif typefaces were widely used in commercial printing
(Mosley, 1999, p. 43). Initially, they were mainly used for display purposes (Kinross,
1992, pp. 28–29; McLean, 1980, p. 64). Nowadays, as Perea (2013) noted, sans serif
typefaces are widely used in many countries for public direction signs, although it
caused some controversy when they were introduced for a new motorway (freeway)
system in the United Kingdom in 1959 (see Lund, 1999, pp. 126–147). Some
foundries in the United Kingdom adopted the term “gothic” for sans serif typefaces
around the middle of the nineteenth century, and this term became generally used in
the United States (Mosley, 1999, pp. 55–56). There was much global interchange in
the evolution of typography, and the distinction between serif and sans serif typefaces
appears to be universal in countries that have adopted a Western alphabet (Ovink,

1.3 Sans Serif Typefaces 7
Fig. 1.4 A typical Snellen-type chart, used to evaluate visual acuity. Licenced under the Creative
Commons attribution–Share Alike 3.0 Unported (CC BY-SA 3.0), https://commons.wikimedia.org/
w/index.php?curid=4262200
1938, pp. 188–228). More recently, this has been compounded by the hegemony of
word-processing software originating in the United States.
The distinction between serif and sans serif typefaces applies to most typefaces
that are designed for reading over long stretches of text. It is less applicable to other
kinds of typeface, such as display typefaces that are designed to attract attention

81 Introduction
(for instance, in advertisements or logos) and cursive typefaces that are intended to
mimic handwriting.
1.4 Review Methodology
This book reports the findings of a systematic review of research comparing the
legibility of serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces. As Uman (2011, p. 57) explained,
“narrative reviews” (in other words, conventional literature reviews)
can often involve an element of selection bias. They can also be confusing at times, partic-
ularly if similar studies have diverging results and conclusions. Systematic reviews, as the
name implies, typically involve a detailed and comprehensive plan and search strategy
derived a priori, with the goal of reducing bias by identifying, appraising, and synthesizing
all relevant studies on a particular topic.
Readers may be aware of the systematic reviews from the Cochrane Collaboration,
an international organisation created in 1993 to focus on health-related issues. A
complementary organisation, the Campbell Collaboration, was established in 2000
to focus on social-related issues (see Noonan & Bjørndal, 2010).
The first stage in any systematic review is to identify a search strategy based upon
key terms. This can be simple or complex and in clinical research can involve the
specification of inclusion or exclusion criteria. In this case, the aim was to identify all
previous studies which had endeavoured to compare the legibility of serif and sans
serif typefaces. It was therefore decided to use the single key term serif . “Legibility”
is intrinsically a psychological concept with educational applications, but it was
recognised that the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces might vary across
particular clinical populations. Accordingly, the following online databases were
deemed relevant:
•APA PsycInfo (https://www.apa.org/pubs/databases/psycinfo;formerly
PsycINFO) contains approximately 5 million records, mainly relating to
peer-reviewed publications. It subsumes the journal Psychological Abstracts,
which went back to 1894, but it also contains some earlier publications.
•ERIC (https://eric.ed.gov/) is the bibliographic database of the US Education
Resources Information Center. It contains more than 1.6 million records of
education-related materials. The collection was initiated in 1966, although it
contains some earlier material. In the past, authors could use it as a repository
for their own material, and so a proportion of the records relates to “grey” liter-
ature that has not been peer-reviewed. However, with effect from January 2016,
ERIC introduced a selection policy that limited new records to material that had
undergone some kind of review process.
•MEDLINE (https://www.nlm.nih.gov/medline/index.html) is the bibliographic
database of the US National Library of Medicine. It contains more than 27 million
records relating to journal articles in the life sciences with a focus on biomedicine.
All three databases are accessible through EBSCO Information Services, which
means that they can be searched simultaneously to avoid duplicate results.

1.4 Review Methodology 9
These three databases were searched repeatedly during the period 2019–2021 to
find publications containing the term serif in their titles, abstracts, keywords, or
metadata. This led to a high number of false positives mainly because “Serif” is a
common first name and family name in Turkey. It was also suspected to lead to a
high number of misses, because informally it was noted that some relevant sources
were not covered by any of the three databases. The results were therefore used as a
basis for the conventional procedures of backward searching and forward searching.
The former refers to the examination of previously published sources cited by the
obtained hits, while the latter refers to the examination of subsequently published
sources that cite one or more of the obtained hits. This process was facilitated by
employing the database Web of Science (https://clarivate.com/products/web-of-sci
ence/, formerly Web of Knowledge), which enables searching among 79 million
cited or citing sources in the form of books, journals, and conference proceedings.
When there is sufficient commonality with regard to research methods, it is
possible to integrate the quantitative findings of a systematic review using statis-
tical techniques, thus yielding a single overall estimate of a difference, variation, or
effect size. Such an approach is known as “meta-analysis”. A classic example is the
analysis of differences between men and women in their performance on particular
cognitive tests or similar tasks (for example, see Caplan et al., 1997). Nevertheless,
despite the apparently simple nature of the research question, the present literature
review yielded extremely diverse methods of data collection and analysis, and this
ruled out any formal statistical meta-analysis to integrate the research findings from
the wide variety of studies that will be described.
The alternative approach is to rely on “vote counting” (sometimes known as the
“box score” approach). For present purposes, different studies are sorted according to
whether their results are statistically significant favouring serif typefaces, statistically
significant favouring sans serif typefaces, or not statistically significant, and I shall
invite readers to plump for the majority outcome across these three categories in
particular tasks, in particular contexts, and in particular subject populations; in other
words, I shall focus readers’ attention on the most common finding or, as statisticians
would say, the modal finding. Such an approach is not without its hazards (see Caplan,
1979; Maccoby & Jacklin, 1974, pp. 355–356), and it can in theory lead to misleading
conclusions (see Hedges & Olkin, 1985, pp. 48–52). Nevertheless, it has the major
advantage over the use of narrative review that the criteria and standards used for
the selection and interpretation of individual studies have been made totally explicit,
and hence the findings can be readily replicated. In fact, in most cases the results
are sufficiently unambiguous that readers should have little difficulty sharing my
conclusions.
The final methodological point is that there is no reason to think that typographical
features have the same consequences when people are reading from paper or other
hard surfaces and when they are reading from computer monitors or other screens.
It follows that reviews which indiscriminately combine research on reading from
paper with research on reading from screens (e.g., Chung, 2020) are unlikely to be
informative. Accordingly, Part I of this book reviews the research literature regarding
the legibility of serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces when they are used to generate

10 1 Introduction
material that is printed on paper, and Part II reviews the research literature regarding
the legibility of serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces when they are used to produce
material that is to be viewed on display screens or by means of other kinds of
technology.
1.5 Conclusions
This chapter has introduced the distinction between serif and sans serif typefaces.
There seem to be widespread assumptions about their relative legibility both on paper
and on screens. The chapter also described the methodology of systematic review
employed to address this issue.
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate
credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and
indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from
the copyright holder.

Chapter 2
Concepts and Research Methods
2.1 Concepts
Since the introduction of movable type in Western countries during the fifteenth
century, many thousands of different typefaces have been designed for use in printed
material. A typeface can be expressed in several different fonts (bold, italic, etc.) by
varying the weight, width, and style of individual characters. Since the seventeenth
century, there has been an alternative use of font (and its variant fount) as a synonym
for typeface, and this has become more common since the introduction of digital
typography (Oxford University Press, n.d.). Nevertheless, for consistency, the words
typeface and font will be used in their original senses in this book; thus, a typeface is
comprised of a family of related fonts. In Sect. 1.2, for example, Fig. 1.1 showed eight
different typefaces, and both the name of each typeface and the example sentence
(the pangram) were shown in the typeface’s regular font.
Typefaces are designed to be read, and thus an obvious research question is
whether different typefaces vary in how legible they are for readers. Readable can
be used as a synonym of legible, although there are technical definitions of both
legibility and readability that go beyond their daily use. Some researchers have used
“legibility” to refer to the recognition and the identification of individual letters or
words and “readability” to refer to the reading and the understanding of connected
prose. Others have devised “readability formulas” to measure the level of mental
difficulty involved in reading specific material. Yet others have used “readability”
to refer to the extent to which a typeface is subjectively appealing or comfortable
to the reader. Even so, as Chomsky (1970) pointed out, in many current versions of
English, readable is much more sharply restricted in meaning than “able to be read”:
it is instead often used to mean how easy, enjoyable, or engaging a work is to read,
as in “This is a most readable novel”. (Chomsky explained that this phenomenon
was problematic for theories of transformational grammar.) Consequently, legible
and legibility will be used throughout this book.
The legibility of typefaces is pertinent to a wide variety of everyday settings, but
it is particularly relevant for the field of education. First, much of the information
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0_2
11

12 2 Concepts and Research Methods
that is acquired by students is delivered in books, articles, or other printed documents
presented either on paper or computer screens or in printed displays projected using
PowerPoint or other software. Second, students often submit their work to be evalu-
ated by their teachers or other assessors in the form of word-processed documents,
which raises the issue of their legibility for those teachers and assessors, and which
led to the question that gave rise to this project.
2.2 Objective Methods for Measuring the Legibility
of Typefaces
Attempts to measure the legibility of printed material go back at least to the 1880s.
Tinker (1963, pp. 5–7, 9–31) provided a useful summary of the relevant methods of
investigation (see also Pyke, 1926, pp. 25–34; Reynolds, 1979; Zachrisson, 1965,
pp. 44–69). The following list of methods is a paraphrase based mainly upon Tinker’s
account, but it covers most of the techniques that have been used to measure the
legibility of printed material. Most of them can be applied equally to measure the
legibility of material presented on computer monitors or other screens.
•Short-exposure method. Printed symbols are briefly presented (e.g., by means
of a tachistoscope, which carefully controls the duration of a presentation using
shutters and mirrors) to measure the speed or accuracy with which they can be
perceived and reported.
•Distance method. Printed symbols are presented in clear view but at a distance
from the observer. The material is then moved towards the observer in gradual
steps to measure the furthest distance at which they can be perceived and reported
correctly. A variant is where the observer gradually approaches the stimulus.
Similar techniques to compare the legibility of different typefaces have been
employed since the eighteenth century (Kinross, 1992, pp. 23–24).
•Perceptibility in peripheral vision. Printed symbols are presented to one side
or the other of a central fixation point to measure the furthest horizontal distance
at which they can be perceived and reported correctly. Similar effects can be
obtained using the “focal variator” (Weiss, 1917), which uses a system of lenses
to project a visual stimulus onto a ground glass screen to varying degrees out of
focus.
•Visibility threshold. Printed symbols are viewed through two photographic filters
with precise circular gradients of density which are rotated until the material can
be perceived and reported correctly. The filters reduce the apparent brightness of
the material and also lower the contrast between the material and its background
(Luckiesh & Moss, 1935, 1942, pp. 71–79).
•Reflex blink method. The observer reads text, and the experimenter counts the
number of involuntary eye blinks made during a standard observation interval.
This assumes that the blink rate is reduced and the reader’s progress faster with
more legible text.

2.2 Objective Methods for Measuring the Legibility of Typefaces 13
•Rate of work. This covers a variety of tasks including speed of reading, amount
read in a specified time limit, the time taken to look up specific information in
printed sources such as telephone numbers or functions in mathematical tables,
and output in tasks involving visual discrimination.
•Eye movements. The observer is asked to read continuous text, and the experi-
menter measures the number of fixations and the number of jumps or saccades
between successive fixations. This assumes that more legible text results inshorter
fixations and fewer saccades.
•Fatigue in reading. This approach is concerned not with visual fatigue in reading
per se, which has proved consistently difficult to measure; rather, legibility is
defined in terms of the ease, accuracy, or efficiency of perceiving printed symbols
while reading for understanding.
Of course, new technologies to measure legibility have been introduced over
the years. For instance, to employ the short-exposure method, Cattell (1885) used
a “gravity chronometer” in which printed material was obscured by a vertically
sliding panel held in place by an electromagnet. On its release, the panel fell, and the
material was visible for a brief period of time through a small window in the panel.
Cattell found that both uppercase letters and lowercase letters varied considerably
in their legibility. More sophisticated tachistoscopes became available in the early
twentieth century. Since the 1970s, technology has included cathode-ray tubes and
liquid crystal displays, and these will be discussed in Part II. Again, studies of eye
movements in reading have become more popular with the use of computer-based
eye-tracking devices, and these will also be discussed in Part II.
Not only have researchers adopted different methods for measuring the legibility
of printed material, but they have presented their participants with different kinds
of material: individual letters or other characters; letter strings that do not constitute
words; individual words; sequences of unrelated words; strings of words that consti-
tute grammatical sentences; or coherent grammatical prose. The materials towards the
beginning of this list afford more opportunity to control the participants’ behaviour,
whereas the materials towards the end of the list are more akin to those encountered
in everyday reading situations. As in other kinds of educational and psychological
research, there is a trade-off between experimental rigour and “ecological validity”
(i.e., whether the findings can be generalised to real-life settings).
In particular, Kinross (1992, p. 32) noted that most of the research carried out
before the end of the nineteenth century had tested the recognisability of individual
letters rather than the legibility of words or passages of text. As he pointed out, it took
a change in the theoretical climate around 1900 for legibility to be interpreted as the
comprehension of meaning: “not recognition, but reading.” Tinker (1963) went so
far as to propose the following conclusion: “Research dealing with individual letters
or letters grouped in nonsense arrangement offers little that is important concerning
the legibility of type faces. Satisfactory results are obtained by measuring speed of
reading continuous, meaningful material” (pp. 65–66).
It is important to distinguish between the legibility of different typefaces and
readers’ familiarity with these typefaces. This is reflected in a study of binocular

14 2 Concepts and Research Methods
rivalry by Zachrisson (1965, pp. 128–131). The latter phenomenon occurs when a
stimulus is presented to one eye but another stimulus is presented to the other eye:
instead of seeing the stimuli superimposed on each other, most observers report
seeing images of the stimuli alternating with each other. Zachrisson presented 28
students with individual words. In each case, the word was presented in the serif
typeface Imprint to one eye and in the sans serif typeface semi-bold Grotesk to
the other eye. The participants pressed one of two buttons to report which typeface
they were seeing over a period of 3 min. The results showed a strong dominance
of the serif typeface over the sans serif typeface, regardless of the eyes to which
they were presented. Zachrisson repeated his study with 9-year-old children and
found that the dominance of the serif typeface was much weaker. He took this to
reflect the children’s reduced familiarity with these letter forms. The implication
is that the stronger ocular preference seen in adults was mainly due to their more
extensive experience of reading documents (such as newspapers, magazines, reports,
and books) in serif typefaces rather than to any inherent superiority in their legibility.
2.3 Subjective Methods for Measuring the Legibility
of Typefaces
Researchers have also collected subjective reports from their participants concerning
the legibility of different typefaces. Examples of different typefaces can be presented
either individually or in groups of two or more for comparison. The self-reports can
be collected either informally (for example, through interviews) or more formally
(for example, through the use of rankings or rating scales). Pyke (1926, pp. 58–59)
asked 60 participants to rank order eight typefaces (including one sans serif typeface,
Lining Grotesque) in terms of their “relative merits”. He found that the participants
gave various reasons for their choices, and many found it difficult to differentiate
between the typefaces on this basis. He found that there was a correlation of just
+0.46 with the rank order of performance in a speed-of-reading test, and he concluded
that the relationship between the two measures was unclear.
Tinker and Paterson (1942) asked a group of participants to arrange samples of
ten different typefaces “in order from most legible to least legible” (p. 38). Tinker
(1944) then obtained results on the legibility of the ten typefaces using the visibility
threshold method, which he referred to as their “visibility”. He had existing data on
the legibility of the same typefaces using the distance method (which he referred to as
their “perceptibility”) as well as data on their legibility using their speed of reading.
He found a high positive correlation between the ranks of their visibility and their
perceptibility, which suggested that the two measurements had much in common.
Nevertheless, their ranked visibility and perceptibility both showed a modest negative
relationship with their ranked speed of reading. In addition, their judged legibility
showed a high positive correlation with their ranked visibility and perceptibility.

2.3 Subjective Methods for Measuring the Legibility of Typefaces 15
However, consistent with the results obtained by Pyke (1926), their judged legibility
showed only a correlation of +0.33 with their ranked speed of reading.
These findings could be interpreted in a number of different ways. Tinker himself
argued that both visibility and perceptibility at a distance represented abnormal and
artificial reading situations, even though they were highly correlated with judged
legibility. Instead, he argued that speed of reading constituted the best possibility
as a measure of legibility since it provided “measurement in a normal, ordinary
reading situation” (Tinker, 1944, pp. 393–394). In addition, he claimed that subjective
judgments of legibility “can only be considered as an expression of preference which
may be employed to advantage in a practical way for the guidance of printers when
there is a choice to be made between equally readable typographical arrangements”
(pp. 394–395). Even so, Tinker’s results imply that the techniques listed in Sect. 2.2
do not simply constitute alternative measures of a single construct of legibility. Any
research findings with regard to the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces therefore
need to be qualified by a clear explanation of the measure or measures of legibility
on which they are based, and this practice will be adopted in this book.
Participants’ preferences might not be a reliable indicator of the objective legibility
of different typefaces, but they may well have practical consequences. Song and
Schwarz (2008b) carried out three studies in which the participants read instructions
for carrying out a particular task printed either in a plain sans serif typeface (Arial in all
three studies) or in an elaborate cursive typeface (Brush455 BT or Mistral in different
studies). In all three experiments, the sans serif typeface was rated as easier to read
than the cursive typeface, but there was no difference in the participants’ memory
for particular details in the instructions. The participants who read the instructions
in the cursive typeface reported that the task would take more time, would feel less
fluent and natural, and would require more skill, and that they were less willing
to engage in the task than were the participants who read the instructions in the
sans serif typeface. Song and Schwarz concluded that the participants had mistaken
the ease of processing the instructions as indicating the ease with which the relevant
tasks could themselves be executed. Song and Schwarz (2008a) showed that the same
manipulation affected how participants answered distorted and undistorted questions
based on their general knowledge.
2.4 The Size of Typefaces
It might seem plausible that the legibility of different typefaces depends on their size.
In fact, Legge and Bigelow (2011) showed that legibility was essentially constant
across the range of type sizes that readers might encounter in books, magazines, and
newspapers. Nevertheless, comparing the physical size of different typefaces is not
a straightforward matter.
Traditionally, the overall height of typefaces (technically known as their body size)
has been expressed in terms of points, where one point is approximately equal to
0.35 mm. However, the size of typefaces is also expressed in terms of the dimensions

16 2 Concepts and Research Methods
Fig. 2.1 Key concepts in the measurement of typefaces. From Effects of printing types and formats
on the comprehension of scientific journals (Applied Psychology Unit Report No. 346), by E. C.
Poulton, 1959. UK Medical Research Council, Applied Psychology Unit. Used by kind permission
of the Medical Research Council, as part of UK Research and Innovation
of lowercase letters. Some lowercase letters have features that extend above their
main parts (e.g., band d); these are called ascenders. Others have features that extend
below their main parts (e.g., pand q); these are called descenders.Thex-height of
a typeface is the height of lowercase letters that do not have either ascenders or
descenders (such as the letter xitself). Finally, the cap-height of a typeface is the
height of capital (or uppercase) letters, which may or may not be the same as the
height of ascenders. Key concepts in the measurement of typefaces are summarised
in Fig. 2.1.
The body size of a typeface is thus made up of its x-height and the combined
heights of the ascenders and descenders, plus small margins above the tops of
ascenders and below the bottoms of descenders. (The latter are known as leading,
pronounced “ledding”. This term originated in the practice of using thin strips of
lead to separate lines of text in order to increase the vertical space between them.
Such terminology was developed in the age of movable type, but it has been carried
over into electronic printing, where it is also known as interline spacing.) When
comparing different styles of typeface, researchers have often matched them on the
basis of their body size. Nevertheless, Poulton (1972) noted that this does not equate
the sizes of the individual letters, as measured by their x-height. In general, it is often
not possible to match pairs of typefaces simultaneously on the basis of both their
body size and their x-height.
Poulton (1972) simulated the situation of a shopper looking for a particular item
in the list of ingredients on a package of food. Because food containers are often quite
small, the typefaces used for lists of ingredients are themselves usually quite small.
Poulton tried to determine the minimum legible size of lowercase letters printed in
one of two serif typefaces (Times New Roman and Perpetua) or in one sans serif
typeface (Univers). He asked a total of 264 adult volunteers to find a designated
target word within each of 15 lists of food ingredients, for which they were allowed
25 s. The number of target words found within this time limit was used as a measure
of legibility.

2.4 The Size of Typefaces 17
Poulton found that performance markedly declined when the x-height of a typeface
was less than 1.2 mm. He also found that Times New Roman and Perpetua yielded
similar results, even though the latter’s body size was more than 30% greater than
that of the former. He inferred that body size was not an important determinant
of legibility. Performance was significantly poorer with Univers than with either
Times New Roman or Perpetua, but not when the x-height of the two latter typefaces
was reduced photographically to match that of the former. Poulton concluded that
Univers was less legible than the other typefaces because of its smaller x-height and
not because of the absence of serifs. In fact, typographers have believed for a long
time that the visual impact of lowercase letters is determined by their x-height rather
than by their body size (Craig, 1971, p. 24; Williamson, 1966, p. 37).
2.5 Conclusions
This chapter clarified the distinction between typefaces and fonts and that between
legibility and readability. It described the variety of objective methods that have been
used to measure the legibility of printed material and the different ways of collecting
subjective reports from participants regarding the legibility and other properties of
presented material. Most of these techniques have been taken over into research on
reading from screens. Finally, this chapter described how typographers define the
size of typefaces and discussed which aspects of the size of typefaces are likely to
affect the legibility of material.
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate
credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and
indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from
the copyright holder.

Part I
Reading from Paper

Chapter 3
“Everybody Knows”: Reading
from Paper
3.1 Attitudes of Typographers
Section 1.1 noted the uncritical acceptance of the view that serif typefaces were
easier to read on paper and other hard surfaces than were sans serif typefaces. This
view has traditionally been adopted by typographers and typography educators (see,
e.g., Craig, 1971, pp. 123–125; Hamai, 1986, p. 7; McLean, 1980, p. 44; Williamson,
1966, p. 109). Such authors have often relied on their attitudes and experience (and,
sometimes, their authority and influence), but they show little awareness that the
issue might be subjected to formal empirical research. The most extreme position
was adopted by Morison (1959), who had developed the serif typeface Times New
Roman in 1932 for the London newspaper, The Times (see Sect. 1.2); Morison insisted
that “the serif is essential to the reading of alphabetical composition in long passages
and consecutive pages” (p. xi), but he provided no evidence for this assertion. In
short, as far as 20th-century typography was concerned, it was definitely a matter of
“everybody knew” that serif typefaces were easier to read than sans serif typefaces
when printed on paper.
These views have often been uncritically incorporated into the guidelines for
potential authors that have been produced by journal editors and publishers. Such
guidelines tend to include assumptions about the legibility of serif and sans serif
typefaces, typically without providing any arguments or evidence in support of
those assumptions. One characteristic example can be found in the sixth (2010)
edition of the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association.Ina
section headed “Preparing the Manuscript for Submission,” readers were instructed
as follows:
Aserif typeface...ispreferredfortextbecause it improves readability and reduces eye
fatigue. (A sans serif type may be used in figures, however, to provide a clean and simple
line that enhances the visual presentation.) (American Psychological Association, 2010,
pp. 228–229).
This is contrary to good practice in psychology and the social sciences, where it
is nowadays expected that assertions of this kind will be supported by citations of
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0_3
21

22 3 “Everybody Knows”: Reading from Paper
published (and, ideally, peer-reviewed) research, not based on presumed authority
or ex cathedra pronouncements. Even so, the Association’s guidelines were adopted
by the American Educational Research Association and by many other organisations
both in the United States and around the world.
Another example can be found in Merriam-Webster’s Manual for Writers and
Editors (1998), although this did at least allude to the existence of empirical evidence
on the issue:
Serif faces are somewhat easier to read in blocks or paragraphs of text than sans-serif faces. .
. . Studies of typeface legibility have tended to demonstrate that standard serif typefaces can
be read somewhat more easily and quickly than standard sans-serif typefaces. (pp. 329–330).
However, since no such studies were explicitly cited, it is impossible for an interested
but sceptical reader to determine whether or not the Manual’s account was accurate.
3.2 Dissenting Voices
During the twentieth century, there were few dissenting voices from this dominant
view within typography. Although he had been one of Morison’s colleagues, Dreyfus
(1985, p. 19) stated: “The outcome of many experiments indicates there is no statis-
tically significant difference between the legibility of a wide variety of text types,
even between seriffed and unseriffed types.” Unfortunately, he failed to specify which
“experiments” he had in mind.
In the twenty-first century, dissenting voices have tended to come from the editors
of journals in medicine and bioscience. They would, of course, be comfortable with
the idea that the legibility of different typefaces could be the subject of empirical
research, but their comments suggest that they typically lacked specialised knowledge
of this research literature. In 2004, for example, the Journal of Psychopharmacology
moved from a serif typeface to a sans serif typeface, which the editor claimed (once
again without citing any sources) “should improve visual impact and reading ease
of the Journal” (Nutt, 2004, p. 5).
In 2011, the editor of the Spanish journal Revista Española de Anestesiología y
Reanimación, notified its readers of a “new look” for the journal (Errando Oyonarte,
2011a). (It specialises mainly in anaesthesiology, resuscitation, and pain manage-
ment.) He mentioned a number of changes in the appearance and the format of the
journal with the aim of making it more pleasant to read. It is interesting that the
editor did not claim that these changes would necessarily render its contents more
legible, simply that they would make its contents more attractive to its target read-
ership. Among other changes, the journal had employed a different typeface, but in
his initial announcement the editor did not specify the typeface in question.
One reader, González-Rodriguez (2011), pointed out that the journal had adopted
apalo seco or sans serif typeface for both the headings of articles and their text. (The
expression palo seco literally means “dry stick” in Spanish. It is used as a technical
phrase by Spanish typographers, but there appears to be no counterpart expression
to refer to serif typefaces. Some authors use tipografía con remates and tipografía
sin remates—literally, with and without finishing—and others use tipografía con

3.2 Dissenting Voices 23
adornos and tipografía sin adornos—literally, with and without ornamentation—
while others simply borrow the foreign terms serif and sans serif .) The reader
complained that the exclusive use of palo seco violated the general custom in Spanish
typography of using sans serif typefaces for headings but serif typefaces for the body
text of articles. Specifically, he claimed that adopting a serif typeface facilitated a
reader’s eye movements in following a line of text. (This idea was discussed but
dismissed in Sect. 1.2.) In contrast, he claimed that the adoption of a sans serif type-
face meant that readers’ eye movements were in danger of being lost in a “river” of
white spaces.
González-Rodriguez allowed two exceptions to this generalisation. One involved
the preparation of texts for younger readers; the other was the situation of reading
written texts on computer screens. In both cases, he argued, sans serif typefaces
provided a clearer image. He cited one study with regard to younger readers, who
will be considered in Chap. 6of this book; nevertheless, his claim is clearly not
relevant to the task of experienced clinicians reading articles in a specialist journal.
He cited no empirical evidence with regard to reading from computer screens, and
so this is just another example of “everyone knows” discussed in Sect. 1.1. The issue
of reading from screens will be the focus of Part II of this book.
In his response, the editor identified the sans serif typeface that the journal was
now using as Akzidenz-Grotesk (Errando Oyonarte, 2011b). As he pointed out,
this was devised as long ago as 1898 and had since been used by a wide variety
of organisations and agencies; hence, it was by no means a novel and untested
intrusion into the publishing world. Even so, he acknowledged that the panel which
had recommended the “new look” for the journal had not included any experts on
typography. He also argued that the journal should be open to the possibility that
readers would increasing tend to access articles online rather than printed on paper.
On González-Rodriguez’s (2011) account, therefore, the adoption of a sans serif
typeface should actually enhance the journal’s legibility for those readers. The editor
agreed to keep the situation under review in the future, although in fact at the time of
writing the journal still uses the same sans serif typeface throughout. Indeed, since
2013 the journal has published articles in both Spanish and English using the same
appearance, the same format, and the same sans serif typeface.
There is one example of a journal that has flip-flopped on this matter. In 2009,
the journal Brain moved from a serif typeface to a sans serif typeface, but in 2015 it
moved back to a serif typeface; on the latter occasion, the editor made the comment:
“Whether serif or sans-serif typefaces are more readable has been addressed sporad-
ically with psychophysical studies, without a clear conclusion” (Kullmann, 2015,
p. 1). Whether this statement provides an accurate account of the relevant research
literature is the focus of Part I of this book.

24 3 “Everybody Knows”: Reading from Paper
3.3 Are Serifs Purely Decorative?
One simple idea can be rejected at the outset. This is the assumption that serifs are
purely decorative and superfluous to the task of identifying individual letters (e.g.,
Arditi & Cho, 2005; Burt, 1959, p. 8). There is good experimental evidence that
readers identify the specific typefaces that they are reading before they identify the
individual letters or words presented in those typefaces. For instance, words take
longer to identify if their constituent letters are printed in different typefaces than if
they are printed in one single typeface. This is true, in particular, if the letters are
printed in both serif and sans serif typefaces (Adams, 1979; Krulee & Novy, 1986;
Sanocki, 1987, 1988). Neurophysiological research indicates that typeface-specific
information is processed within the right hemisphere of the brain, whereas typeface-
independent information is then processed within the left hemisphere of the brain
(Schweinberger et al., 2006; Vaidya et al., 1998).
Weaver (2014) described the case of a 52-year-old woman with a history of
complex epileptic seizures that in recent years had been triggered specifically by
reading. She herself had observed that her seizures were associated with reading
material printed in serif typefaces (such as Palatino or Times New Roman) but not
with reading material printed in sans serif typefaces (such as Arial or Verdana),
although she also had intermittent spontaneous seizures. Her observation was
confirmed electrophysiologically by asking her to read the first three pages of Charles
Dickens’ novel, A Tale of Two Cities, typed in Times New Roman or Arial typefaces.
Weaver suggested that the presence of serifs constituted more complex visual infor-
mation that led to the activation of the hyperexcitable neuronal network responsible
for her seizures.
The neurological condition of synaesthesia, in which perceiving an object in one
mode stimulates the perception of a quite different mode, provides another example.
A common form is grapheme–colour synaesthesia, in which specific characters,
while printed in black, are seen as coloured. Weaver and Hawco (2015) described a
patient who tended to perceive the letters ll (as in silly) in a vivid blue colour. The
effect was more vivid for words presented in serif typefaces than for words presented
in sans serif typefaces. However, if the ll was printed in a sans serif typeface but the
rest of the word was printed in a serif typeface, the effect was more vivid than if the
ll was printed in a serif typeface but the rest of the word was printed in a sans serif
typeface. These findings show that serifs have a functional role that is not superfluous
to letter recognition. This objection also applies to the idea that serifs only serve as
visual noise (or as “cluttering incoming visual information”, as was suggested by
Woods et al., 2005, p. 97).

3.4 Conclusions 25
3.4 Conclusions
This chapter introduced Part I of this book by summarising the attitudes of 20th-
century typographers, who almost without exception considered that serif typefaces
were easier to read than sans serif typefaces when printed on paper. During the
twenty-first century, any dissenting voices have mainly come from journal editors
in medicine and bioscience, who have tended to recommend the use of sans serif
typefaces for the contents of their journals but have not provided any supporting
evidence. This chapter also considered but dismissed the idea that serifs are purely
decorative and superfluous to the task of identifying individual letters.
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate
credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and
indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from
the copyright holder.

Chapter 4
The Legibility of Letters and Words
4.1 Reading Letters and Words in Serif and Sans Serif
Typefaces
The earliest experiments on the legibility of printed material were concerned with
the relative legibility of individual letters presented in isolation in either uppercase
or lowercase in the same serif typeface using the short-exposure method or the
distance method. Other research was concerned with the relative legibility of charac-
ters presented in different serif typefaces. However, some researchers included one
or more sans serif typefaces together with a range of serif typefaces in investigations
of the legibility of letters and words:
•Griffing and Franz (1896) measured the “illumination threshold” of letters consti-
tuting from one to four words in a line. In this method, the distance between a faint
light source and the material was progressively reduced until the letters could be
correctly reported. They included uppercase letters in both thick and thin versions
of the sans serif typeface Block.
•Roethlein (1912) used the distance method to measure the legibility of indi-
vidual letters presented in the same typeface and included the sans serif typefaces
Franklin Gothic and News Gothic.
•Pyke (1926) measured the legibility of both meaningful and meaningless strings
of letters presented in the same typeface, including the sans serif typeface Lining
Grotesque. He used a speed-of-reading test, a letter-cancellation task in which
participants had to cross out all occurrences of the letters eand tin a page of
nonsense material, and a task which involved reading aloud coherent text (pp. 47–
58).
•Paterson and Tinker (1932) used a speed-of-reading test in which the participants
had to read short passages and in each case to identify a word that conflicted with
the passage’s meaning. They used a number of different typefaces including the
sans serif typeface Kabel Light.
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0_4
27

28 4 The Legibility of Letters and Words
•Webster and Tinker (1935) employed the distance method to measure the legibility
of individual words in different typefaces and also included Kabel Light.
•Luckiesh and Moss (1937) measured the visibility threshold of individual lower-
case letters and included a sans serif typeface in light, medium, and bold font.
They did not identify this typeface, but Lund (1999, p. 116) suggested that it was
Kabel.
•Luckiesh and Moss (1942, pp. 159–162) carried out a similar experiment and
included the sans serif typeface Metrolite No. 2.
None of these researchers focused upon the difference between serif and sans serif
typefaces, but the results that they presented indicate that the legibility of sans serif
typefaces was not markedly different from the legibility of serif typefaces that were
in common use at the time.
Ovink (1938) carried out two experiments to investigate the typographical factors
that might influence the legibility of printed letters. His first experiment used the
short-exposure method, and he presented individual lowercase letters in isolation
in both serif and sans serif typefaces (pp. 23–37). The second experiment used a
version of the distance method in which the printed material was presented in a
fixed location and the participants approached it in gradual steps until it could be
perceived and reported correctly. The material consisted of individual uppercase and
lowercase letters presented in isolation in one of several sans serif typefaces or in one
of two serif typefaces (Lo and Poster Bodoni) (pp. 38–71). The results that Ovink
obtained using both methods show that the legibility of the sans serif typefaces was
not markedly different from that of the serif typefaces.
Korean is another language where the alphabet can be rendered in either serif
(or Ming) typefaces or sans serif (or Gothic) typefaces. Two studies have compared
the legibility of the two kinds of typeface, but they yielded contradictory findings.
Kong et al. (2011) asked ten older and ten younger adults to read aloud sets of four
one- or two-syllable letters of varying sizes and then to rate how much discomfort
they had experienced when reading each set on a 4-point scale. The sets of letters
were presented either on paper or on a computer screen using either an unspecified
Ming typeface or an unspecified Gothic typeface. When the letters were presented
on paper, the participants’ reading speed was faster and their discomfort was less
with the sans serif typefaces than with the serif typefaces. Nevertheless, the relevant
differences were small in magnitude and unlikely to be of practical importance. The
results were similar in both age groups.
Kim et al. (2015) presented 14 Korean students with pairs of two-syllable words
printed side by side in 26-point type. On each trial, one member of the pair had been
designated as the target, while the other was a distractor, and the participants’ task
was to read aloud the target in each pair. The pairs of letters were presented either
on paper or on the screen of a smartphone in one of two serif typefaces (Batung
or Gungseo) or in one of two sans serif typefaces (Dodum or Gulim). Afterwards,
the students were asked to rate the typefaces of the stimuli in terms of their ease
of reading, their familiarity, and their comfort. When the words were presented on
paper, the participants’ reading time was significantly faster for the serif typefaces

4.1 Reading Letters and Words in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces 29
than for the sans serif typefaces. Despite the pattern of results for their response
times, they gave the highest ratings to the sans serif typeface Dodum and the lowest
ratings to the serif typeface Gungseo.
Wilkins et al. (1996) had devised the Rate of Reading Test for children with reading
difficulties. The child was presented with a display of 10 lines, each consisting of a
random ordering of the same 15 common words. For instance, the first line of one
such display was “come see the play look up is cat not my and dog for you to”,
except that the spacing between successive words was only 0.36 mm. This made the
display resemble horizontal stripes and thus rendered it visually stressful. (Horizontal
stripes are known to induce eye strain, visual illusions, headache, and—in people with
photosensitive epilepsy—seizures: A. Wilkins et al., 1984.) The researchers argued
that the use of random ordering minimised the linguistic and semantic aspects of
reading that tended to be emphasised in more conventional reading tests. Children
were timed while they read aloud the words in each display and were scored on the
number of words that they had read correctly per minute. The original version of the
Rate of Reading Test only used the serif typeface Times. However, Svensson (2019)
developed a Swedish version of the test and administered it to 45 adults aged between
22 and 83 years. The test was administered twice in Times New Roman and twice
in Times Sans Serif, a sans serif variant designed by Mundo da Lua. The average
reading speed was 168 words/min in both conditions, and the difference between
them was not statistically significant (p=0.54).
4.2 The “Stripiness” of Printed Words
Wilkins et al. (2007) suggested that the legibility of letters or words might depend
upon their shape and, in particular, upon the extent to which letters’ vertical strokes
were relatively evenly spaced, a phenomenon that typographers refer to as their
rhythm but which Wilkins et al. referred to less formally as their “stripiness” (i.e.,
the extent to which an image of a word approximated a pattern of vertical stripes).
They suggested that this could be measured by the height of the first peak of the
autocorrelation between an image of a word and a second, horizontally displaced
image of the same word. They explained this measure by asking readers to imagine
two identical transparencies containing a single word placed on top of one another
on an overhead projector.
When the transparencies are in register [i.e., exactly in line], a maximum amount of light will
be transmitted through the combined transparencies....Ifthetoptransparencyismoved
horizontally across the bottom transparency, the amount of light transmitted is initially
reduced because the letter strokes in one version of the word block the spaces in the other
version. As the displacement continues, however, and neighbouring letter strokes come into
register, so the amount of light transmitted increases. As the top transparency is displaced
still further, the amount of light transmitted once again decreases and then increases again.
The light transmitted varies with horizontal position according to a function with peaks and
troughs. This function is, in effect, the horizontal autocorrelation. (pp. 1788–1789).

30 4 The Legibility of Letters and Words
As examples, Wilkins et al. gave the words “mum” and “over”. (In academic texts,
these words would normally be rendered in an italic font. On this occasion, I have
presented the words in a regular font with inverted commas to help readers to appre-
ciate the differences in the words’ shape.) The former has fairly evenly spaced vertical
strokes, high periodicity, and a relatively high first peak (high stripiness), but the latter
has very few vertical line elements, low periodicity, and a relatively low first peak
(low stripiness).
Wilkins et al. asked ten students to rate each of 40 common words printed in the
serif typeface Times New Roman in terms of their stripiness on a scale from 0 (not
at all stripy) to 10 (very stripy). They found that their mean rating for each word was
highly correlated with the first peak in its horizontal autocorrelation (r=0.688).
In short, “words with a high first peak in the autocorrelation were rated as having a
striped appearance” (p. 1791). Wilkins et al. then asked 32 university students and
staff to read aloud 22 common monosyllabic words. The words were divided into
those with high and low first peaks and were printed either in a single column or
as a random paragraph of 18 lines in either Times New Roman or the sans serif
typeface Arial. There was a large effect of autocorrelation, such that words with a
high first peak were read more slowly than were words with a low first peak. Wilkins
et al. confirmed this finding in two experiments using words with no ascenders or
descenders that were printed in either Times New Roman or the sans serif typeface
Geneva. (This indicated that the difference in reading speed was not due to the
presence or absence of ascenders or descenders.) They also confirmed this finding in
two experiments where participants silently scanned passages of randomly ordered
words with the aim of finding pairs of target words.
In addition, Wilkins et al. compared the first peak in the horizontal autocorrelation
of 1,000 words printed in different typefaces of similar x-heights. The value of the
first peak in the Times New Roman was very highly correlated with its value in the
serif typeface Palatino (r=0.95), but it was less highly correlated with its value in
the sans serif typeface Arial (r=0.68). The first peak tended to be highest in Times
New Roman, somewhat less in the sans serif typeface Lucida Sans, and lowest in
the serif typeface Palatino and the sans serif typeface Arial, although the differences
were small in magnitude. Wilkins et al. used the same corpus of 1,000 words to
compare the horizontal autocorrelation in the serif typefaces Times New Roman
and Tahoma, the sans serif typefaces Arial and Verdana, and the slanting sans serif
typeface Sassoon Primary (discussed in Sect. 7.4). They did not report the detailed
findings, but Verdana had the lowest first peak.
In two of their experiments, Wilkins et al. directly compared the reading times for
different typefaces. Random paragraphs were read significantly more quickly in the
sans serif typeface Geneva than in the serif typeface Times New Roman. However,
there was no significant difference between the reading speeds in Times New Roman
and the sans serif typeface Arial, regardless of whether the words were presented in
a single column or in random paragraphs. In short:
•Different words printed in the same typeface vary in the first peak of their
horizontal autocorrelation (or vertical stripiness).
•The same words printed in different typefaces vary in the first peak of their
horizontal autocorrelation.

4.2 The “Stripiness” of Printed Words 31
•Words of low vertical stripiness are read more quickly than are words of high
vertical stripiness.
However, the results obtained by Wilkins et al. leave it uncertain whether these
phenomena lead to variations in how quickly words in different typefaces are read.
Subsequently, Wilkins and his colleagues carried out further research using words
presented on computer monitors, and this is described in Sect. 11.2.
4.3 Confusions Among Letters in Serif and Sans Serif
Typefaces
Many early studies found that errors in the tachistoscopic recognition of individual
letters and words were the result of confusions among visually similar letters (for
a review, see Vernon, 1931, pp. 114–120, 145–150, 158–159). In the light of such
evidence, Legros (1922, p. 11) claimed that serifs made letters easier to discriminate
and identify. However, Vernon (1929) noted that other studies had found that, in
reading connected text, words tended to be perceived in a holistic manner rather than
letter-by-letter, and hence confusions among individual letters should be much less
important. She presented adults with different kinds of material using a tachistoscope.
She found that the proportion of errors based upon similarity of appearance declined
from 82% for groups of unrelated words to 14% for longer sentences, whereas the
proportion of errors based upon similarity of meaning increased from 2% for groups
of unrelated words to 57% for longer sentences.
Vernon argued that, “when the meaning of the material read was fully compre-
hended, typographical errors were few in tachistoscopic reading, and would be negli-
gible in normal reading” (p. 35). Elsewhere, Vernon (1931, pp. 171–172) concluded
that young children beginning to read might be liable to confuse visually similar
letters but that this was of much less importance in normal adults’ reading. An
implication of this is that, even if the presence or absence of serifs influences the
discrimination or identification of individual letters, it should have little or no impact
upon the reading of connected text by literate adults.
Tinker (1963, p. 36) argued that in practice serifs might serve either to enhance
or impair the relative differentiation of individual lowercase letters. Harris (1973)
presented individual lowercase letters tachistoscopically either to the left or to the
right of the point of fixation in the sans serif typefaces Gill Medium and Univers
Medium or in the serif typeface Baskerville. He found that different letters were
more likely to be confused when presented in Baskerville. He suggested that serifs on
letters with a single vertical stroke (such as i,j, and l) rendered them more distinctive
and hence less likely to be confused with one another. On the other hand, he also
suggested that serifs on letters with more than one vertical stroke (such as h,n, and u)
rendered them less distinctive and hence more likely to be confused with one another.
Beier and Dyson (2014) obtained analogous results using artificial typefaces with a
version of the distance method. However, Vernon’s (1929) findings would imply that

32 4 The Legibility of Letters and Words
such confusions would be much less likely if letters were presented in the context of
meaningful text, as in normal reading.
4.4 Measuring Visual Acuity
Some of the earliest charts for measuring visual acuity were developed by Snellen
(1862) (see Fig. 1.4 in Sect. 1.3). These contained rows of uppercase letters and
single digits based on a 5 ×5 grid; this yielded a slab serif style akin to a typeface
that was then known as Egyptian Paragon, in which the width of the main strokes and
the width of the serifs were one fifth the height of a letter. (Both were the size of the
cells in the 5 ×5 grid.) Successive rows contained increasing numbers of symbols
of decreasing size, and visual acuity was scored according to the smallest row that
could be read accurately in each eye.
Over the next century, other researchers developed versions of these charts using
different layouts and sequences of letters; some followed Snellen in using a slab serif
style, whereas others adopted a sans serif style (see Bennett, 1965, for a review).
Cowan (1928) asserted that “Gothic” (sans serif) letters were more easily distin-
guished than “block” (slab serif) letters (p. 290), but he provided no reference or
any other source for this assertion. Hetherington (1954) tested the visual acuity of
100 boys aged 8–17 using an unspecified version of a Snellen chart; he noted that
different letters of the same size varied in their legibility, but he concluded that the
boys’ errors were generally the result of confusions among visually similar letters.
In fact, since the 1950s, charts with sans serif styles of lettering have been
widely adopted for measuring visual acuity. Examples include those devised by
Sloan (1959), the British Standards Institute (1968), Deederer (1968, 1970), and
Bailey and Lovie (1976). The British Standards Institute (1968) commented that
this development in measures of visual acuity was “in keeping with modern trends
in typography” (p. ii), while Deederer (1968) remarked that it was appropriate for
testing drivers, since they would frequently encounter sans serif lettering on traffic
signs.
Richards (1965) compared the visual acuity of 103 volunteers who were tested
using Sloan’s sans serif chart and a Snellen chart containing lettering with slab serifs;
people who had slight uncorrected astigmatism found the letters with slab serifs more
confusing under conditions of low luminance, but otherwise there was very little
overall difference between the results obtained using the two styles. Richards (1978)
subsequently replicated these findings with a sample of 175 volunteers stratified by
age between 16–25 years and 66–75 years (that is, the sample contained 25 volunteers
from each decade of the adult life span). Bailey and Lovie’s (1976) instrument is
known as the LogMAR chart (the acronym stands for Logarithm of the Minimum
Angle of Resolution), and nowadays it is generally regarded as the most accurate
measure of visual acuity.

4.5 Conclusions 33
4.5 Conclusions
The earliest research on the legibility of different typefaces was concerned with recog-
nising individual letters and words under different conditions. The vertical “stripi-
ness” of individual words can be defined in terms of their horizontal autocorrelation.
This seems to affect how quickly they can be read, but it is unclear whether this leads
to differences among typefaces. There is a separate line of research concerned with
evaluating visual acuity, going back to the construction of optical charts in the middle
of the nineteenth century. In both fields of research, the most common finding—the
modal finding—is that there are no differences in the legibility of letters and words
printed in serif and sans serif typefaces. Confusions among visually similar letters
were originally considered to be a primary determinant of legibility, but these appear
to be less important when skilled readers are presented with meaningful text.
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate
credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and
indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from
the copyright holder.

Chapter 5
Reading and Comprehending Text
5.1 Reading Text in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces
Ovink (1938) included a sans serif typeface (Futura) as well as a variety of serif
typefaces in experiments where participants read lines of text presented for a limited
exposure (pp. 84–88) or where their eye movements were monitored while they
were reading passages held in their hands in clear view (pp. 88–100). In the latter
case, Ovink used a mechanical apparatus in which a rubber pad rested on one of
the participants’ upper eyelids. He also included a sans serif typeface (Gill Sans) as
well as three serif typefaces in a further study where the short-exposure method was
used to present material in the form of dictionary entries and where the participants
subsequently rated the clarity of the typefaces that had been used (pp. 100–106).
There were no marked differences between their responses to the sans serif typefaces
and their responses to the serif typefaces.
Wendt (1969, 1994) carried out an investigation to compare the effects of typo-
graphic factors, including the legibility of a serif typeface (Bodoni) and a sans serif
typeface (Futura). He constructed 16 passages in German and presented each in five
columns across a sheet of paper. He asked roughly 2,000 students to read one of the
passages and recorded the number of words read in 3 min. There was a slight mean
advantage of 8.62 words for passages in the Futura typeface, but this did not achieve
statistical significance. Wendt argued that modern readers were equally familiar with
both styles of typeface. Indeed, in a subsequent survey of Australian students, the serif
typeface Press Roman was ranked only marginally higher in their overall preference
than the sans serif typeface Univers (Bell & Sullivan, 1981).
Taylor (1990) arranged for the instructors of four remedial reading classes at a US
high school to administer reading tests to groups of students aged 15–16. Over three
weeks, they were timed reading excerpts from their reading workbooks, one printed
in the sans serif typeface Helvetica, the other printed in the serif typeface Times
Roman. (As was mentioned in Sect. 1.2, this is a similar typeface to Times New
Roman that was developed by a rival printing company; it is sometimes known just
as “Times”.) Across 74 students, the median difference in their reading rate scores
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0_5
35

36 5 Reading and Comprehending Text
on the two typefaces was zero (p. 50). Over the next two weeks, they were given
sheets of paper containing other excerpts printed in both of the typefaces, and they
were asked to choose one version to read aloud. There was no significant difference
in their preferences in either week.
A major research issue is that actual examples of serif and sans serif typefaces tend
to differ on a variety of other characteristics (Beier & Larson, 2010). Arditi (2004) had
devised software to generate typefaces that differed only in the presence or absence
of slab serifs and in the size of the serifs. Arditi and Cho (2005) used this tool to
construct lowercase typefaces of uniform thickness with slab serifs that extended for
0% (sans serif), 5%, or 10% of their cap height. Two individuals with normal vision
and two with impaired vision were asked to read aloud three “passages” in which
400 words had been randomly ordered to yield “scrambled” text. Arditi and Cho
calculated each participant’s “reading speed” by dividing the number of characters
in the correctly read words by the time taken to read each passage. The participants
with normal vision obtained higher scores than those with impaired vision, but there
was no significant variation in their reading speed as a function of serif size and a
fortiori no significant effect of the presence or absence of the slab serifs. As Arditi
and Cho noted, the small number of participants was a major limitation of their study.
5.2 Comprehending Text in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces
In Sect. 2.2, it was noted that asking participants to read continuous meaningful text
provides less opportunity for researchers to impose experimental control over their
reading behaviour. To address this issue, some researchers have focused on their
participants’ comprehension of such material rather than upon its legibility per se.
This could be justified on the grounds that, in order to be comprehended, written
material must first be read; thus the legibility of a text places an upper limit on how
much of it can be comprehended. A different argument was put forward by Gasser
et al. (2005). They suggested that, insofar as a message was easy to read, fewer
attentional resources would need to be devoted to reading the message, leaving more
resources available for the processing of the information that it contained. However,
Reynolds (1979) argued that the value of comprehension tests in the measurement
of legibility was questionable, insofar as comprehension implicated cognitive skills
of a higher order than those that were required for the accurate perception of the
text. Wilkins et al. (1996) also claimed that conventional reading tests tended to
emphasise the linguistic and semantic aspects of reading rather than the purely visual
aspects (see Sect. 4.1). Thus, factors affecting comprehension might not be relevant
to measuring legibility.

5.2 Comprehending Text in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces 37
Fox (1963) compared two typefaces intended for use on typewriters: Standard
Elite, a conventional serif typeface; and Gothic Elite, a sans serif typeface in which
lowercase letters are replaced by small capitals. Both typefaces are monospaced
or non-proportional (each character occupies the same width), and small capitals in
Gothic Elite occupy the same width as lowercase letters in Standard Elite. The partici-
pants read two passages, one in each typeface, silently but as quickly as possible. After
reading each passage, they were required to recount the story that it contained, and
their comprehension was rated as “good” or “poor”. There was no significant differ-
ence in the time taken to read passages in the two typefaces or in their comprehension
of their content.
Poulton (1965) asked 375 adult volunteers to read two passages of about 450 words
in the same typeface. They were allowed 90s to read each passage and were given
a test of their comprehension of ten key points from the passage. The passages had
been printed in seven different typefaces: three serif typefaces (Baskerville, Bembo,
and Modern) and four sans serif typefaces (Gill Medium, Grotesque 215, and two
versions of Univers). On the first passage, Poulton found no significant differences
among the comprehension scores, which he ascribed to the participants becoming
familiar with the general procedure and the particular typeface that they had to read.
On the second, there was significant variation among the sans serif typefaces but not
among the serif typefaces; more important, none of the serif typefaces yielded scores
that were significantly different from those of any of the sans serif typefaces.
A fundamental question using this paradigm is whether a test on the content of a
passage administered immediately after its presentation is a test of comprehension
or simply a test of factual recall or verbatim memory (Hartley et al., 1975). Poulton
and Brown (1967) used the same procedure as in Poulton’s (1965) study, but they
remarked that their measure of “comprehension” was “more correctly described as
a measure of memory” (p. 219). They found that requiring the participants to read
a passage aloud led to poorer performance on the early key points in the passage
but to better performance on the last key point in comparison with requiring the
participants to read the passage silently. Unfortunately, Poulton and Brown had not
matched the key points and their associated questions for difficulty, and consequently
the theoretical interpretation of these results remains unclear.
Soleimani and Mohammadi (2012) evaluated different typefaces in Iranian
students who had been selected for having an intermediate proficiency in English.
This included a reading comprehension test based on a passage from a widely used
English-language textbook: it was presented in the sans serif typeface Arial for 42
students and in in the serif typeface Bookman Old Style for 47 students. There was no
significant difference between the two groups in their reading speed, in an immediate
test of their reading comprehension, or in a multiple-choice test of their memory for
ten key points from the passage that was administered 2 weeks later.
Serif and sans serif typefaces are also used in some non-Western alphabets.
Akhmadeeva et al. (2012) asked 238 Russian medical students to read a passage
about the history of neurology in Russia. The passage had been printed in Cyrillic
script using ParaType, a family of artificial typefaces: 108 students were shown the
passage in a serif typeface, and 130 students were shown the passage in a sans serif

38 5 Reading and Comprehending Text
typeface with the same x-height. The students were given 1 min to read the passage
and were then asked ten multiple-choice questions about its content. Akhmadeeva
et al. found no sign of any difference either in the mean number of words that the
two groups had read or in the mean number of questions that they had answered
correctly.
5.3 The Connotative Meaning of Typefaces
Some researchers argued that typefaces could serve as carriers of connotative
meaning (reflecting their associations with different attitudes, experiences, and
emotions) as well as carriers of denotative meaning (reflecting factual information).
Subjective impressions of the legibility of different typefaces can be regarded as just
one aspect of their connotative meaning. (German-speaking writers sometimes refer
to this quality as their Atmosphärenwert or “atmosphere value”. North American
writers sometimes talk about the “personality” of different typefaces.) This aspect
might in principle affect their legibility for different readers. In this kind of research,
participants are asked to report on their experiences and preferences when reading
material printed in different typefaces. Once again, examples can be presented either
individually or in groups of two or more for comparison, and the self-reports can be
collected either informally (for instance, through interviews) or more formally (for
instance, through the use of rankings or rating scales).
As an example of a formal approach, Tinker and Paterson (1942) asked different
groups of participants to arrange samples of ten different typefaces in order from the
most legible to the least legible and from the most pleasing to the least pleasing. They
found that their judgements of legibility and pleasantness demonstrated “remarkable
agreement” (p. 40), to the extent that they could be regarded as being equivalent to
one another. As Dreyfus (1985) pointed out, readers’ preferences may be irrelevant if
they have no choice in whether or not to read something (such as an airline schedule
or a railway timetable) but may be crucial if they can choose what they read (as in
product information or voting literature).
Another example of a formal approach is the semantic differential. This was
devised by Osgood et al. (1957) to measure participants’ attitudes to objects and
concepts. The participants provide evaluations of these using bipolar rating scales;
typically, these are 7-point scales in which the middle category is neutral between
the two poles. Their responses are subjected to factor analysis to yield higher-order
dimensions that are regarded as reflecting underlying aspects of connotative meaning.
Research studies in a wide variety of domains and cultures converged on three overar-
ching dimensions that reflected variations in peoples’ attitudes: evaluation (good vs.
bad), potency (strong vs. weak), and activity (active vs. passive) (Osgood et al., 1975).
Hofstätter (1966) devised a similar methodology for German-speaking countries,
which he described as a Polaritätsprofile (polarity profile).

5.4 Connotations of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces 39
5.4 Connotations of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces
Connotative meaning is potentially important in the world of advertising. Berliner
(1920) initiated this line of inquiry by asking students to rank order different hand-
lettered styles on different dimensions for advertising different products. She found
that their rankings of appropriateness were different for different products. Subse-
quent researchers confirmed this when using actual typefaces (Davis & Smith, 1933;
Poffenberger & Franken, 1923; Schiller, 1935). They found no clear difference
between the ratings given to serif and sans serif typefaces; other features seemed
to be more important in determining the appropriateness of different typefaces to
different products. Ovink (1938, pp. 127–177) noted that these studies had only used
typefaces that were in common use in advertising displays in the United States. He
chose 17 typefaces, including some that were more widely used in Europe. He asked
68 participants to rate the appropriateness of each of the typefaces for advertising
purposes on eight dimensions. The 17 typefaces varied on most dimensions, but there
was no clear difference overall between serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces.
Using the semantic differential methodology developed by Osgood et al. (1957),
Tannenbaum et al. (1964) presented participants with the English alphabet printed in
both uppercase and lowercase in both upright and italic fonts in two serif typefaces,
Bodoni and Garamond, and two sans serif typefaces, Spartan and Kabel. A total of
75 participants rated each display on 25 scales. There were no significant differences
between the ratings given to the serif typefaces and those given to the sans serif
typefaces.
Wendt (1968) asked 70 participants to rate 35 typefaces using an adapted version
of Hofstätter’s (1966) semantic differential. Eleven were sans serif typefaces (seven
variants of Folio and four variants of Futura). Each typeface was presented on a
printed card containing the alphabet in lowercase, the alphabet in uppercase, and the
ten single digits. Each was evaluated by ten participants on 63 7-point rating scales.
Factor analysis was used to reduce their ratings to four broad dimensions, but there
were no clear differences between the serif and the sans serif typefaces on these
dimensions. Cluster analysis of the ratings yielded three clusters, but each of these
contained both serif and sans serif typefaces. In other words, the participants’ ratings
differentiated among the 35 typefaces, but they did not differentiate systematically
between the serif typefaces and the sans serif typefaces.
Benton (1979; Rowe, 1982) asked 24 participants to evaluate ten typefaces on
26 bipolar 7-point scales. Five were general typefaces in general use, including one
sans serif typeface (Helvetica); five were novelty typefaces. Each was presented on a
printed sheet containing the alphabet in lowercase, the alphabet in uppercase, the ten
single digits, and common punctuation marks. Factor analysis was used to reduce
their ratings to five broad dimensions, which Benton labelled “potency”, “elegance”,
“novelty”, “antiquity”, and “evaluation”, and which she used to calculate scale scores
for the ten typefaces. The serif typefaces (Bodoni, Garamond, Palatino, and Times
Roman) did not differ significantly from each other on any of the five dimensions.

40 5 Reading and Comprehending Text
Moreover, Helvetica only differed from these typefaces on antiquity, where it was
seen as being relatively modern.
Bartram (1982) conducted a similar study in which 38 design students and 52
students of other disciplines were asked to rate 12 typefaces on 18 bipolar scales. A
factor analysis of the ratings provided by the design students yielded four dimensions:
the three hypothesised by Osgood et al. (1957) (evaluation, potency, and activity) and
a fourth dimension concerned with mood. Bartram then compared the scores on these
dimensions given to the 12 typefaces by the design students and the other students.
They included three regular upright typefaces: the serif typeface Times New Roman
and the sans serif typefaces Futura Medium and Univers 67. Bartram did not compare
the ratings of these typefaces directly, but their profiles were relatively similar.
Morrison (1986) obtained ratings of four serif typefaces (Egyptian, Modern, Old
Style, and Transitional) and one sans serif typeface (Contemporary) on 25 bipolar
dimensions taken from Tannenbaum et al. (1964). There were three groups, each
of 14 participants: typography students, technology students, and students of other
subjects. They were presented with “text” consisting of statistical approximations
to English in all five typefaces in three weights and in both upright and italic font.
There were no significant differences among the three groups in terms of their mean
ratings on seven scales that included the three primary factors identified by Osgood
et al. (1957). The only significant difference between the serif typefaces and the
sans serif typeface was that the latter received slightly higher ratings than the former
on the potency factor, which Morrison attributed to sans serif typefaces being used
on public signs that had an association with authority (such as freeway and airport
signage).
Tantillo et al. (1995) asked 250 students to evaluate examples of six typefaces
on 28 bipolar 7-point scales. There were three serif typefaces (Century Schoolbook,
Goudy Old Style, and Times New Roman) and three sans serif typefaces (Avant Garde
Gothic, Helvetica, and Univers). Significant differences emerged on 26 scales: “The
serif type styles... are rated as more elegant, charming, emotional, distinct, beautiful,
interesting, extraordinary, rich, happy, valuable, new, gentle, young, calm, and less
traditional than the sans serif type styles. Serif styles have more personality, freshness,
high quality, vitality, and legibility, but the sans serif group is more manly, powerful,
smart, upper-class, readable, and louder than the serif styles” (p. 452).
These results are anomalous when compared with the findings of earlier research.
A procedural difference is that Tantillo et al. only presented the nonsense word
“NRESTA” in uppercase as the example of each typeface to be evaluated, but other
studies had used longer examples involving both uppercase and lowercase letters.
The rating forms that Tantillo et al. employed often showed the more positive pole on
the left end of each scale, but it sometimes appeared on the right end, which may have
led to a degree of confusion on the students’ part. This might explain two curious
findings: first, sans serif typefaces are usually regarded as being more modern in their
appearance than serif typefaces, yet Tantillo et al.’s participants rated serif typefaces
as being younger and less traditional; second, the sans serif typefaces were rated
as being significantly more readable but as significantly less legible than the serif
typefaces.

5.5 Conclusions 41
5.5 Conclusions
A number of studies have evaluated the role of typographic variables (including
the presence or absence of serifs) in reading continuous text. Asking participants
to read continuous text allows less scope for experimental control, and so other
researchers have instead focused on participants’ comprehension of written material.
In both cases, the modal finding is that there are no significant differences between
text printed in serif typefaces and text printed in sans serif typefaces. Subjective
impressions of the legibility of different typefaces can be regarded as one aspect of
their connotative meaning, and other researchers have asked participants to evaluate
typefaces on different dimensions using single rating scales or semantic differentials.
The modal finding is that there are no significant differences in readers’ overall
preference between serif and sans serif typefaces, nor any significant differences in
the connotations of serif and sans serif typefaces.
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Chapter 6
Reading in Context
6.1 The Importance of Context
Whittemore (1948) argued that the legibility of different typefaces depended upon
the context in which they were used. Readers may develop expectations with regard
to the kinds of context in which particular typefaces are appropriate. A problem with
much of the research described thus far is that it did not provide readers with any
sensible context for their reading (Schriver, 1997, p. 277). Some researchers have
endeavoured to address this issue.
Zachrisson (1965, pp. 156–162) investigated the attitudes of experts and non-
experts to whether material was printed in serif or sans serif typefaces. Typography
experts and students from various subject areas were shown samples for each of six
themes. A serif typeface was preferred for a wedding invitation, a perfume adver-
tisement, and the title page for a book of lyrical verse, but a sans serif typeface was
preferred for an invitation to an art exhibition, the title page for a book on modern
architecture, and an advertisement for an oil stove. The rankings given by the experts
and the non-experts were relatively similar.
Hvistendahl and Kahl (1975) prepared four newspaper stories of 250–400 words
in four serif typefaces (Imperial, News #2, News Bold, and Royal) and four sans serif
typefaces (Futura, Helvetica, News Sans, and Sans Heavy). Each of 200 subjects was
asked to read at their normal reading pace two stories in serif typefaces and two stories
in sans serif typefaces; in each case, one story was printed in 10.5-point type, while
the other was printed in 14-point type. For two stories, the serif typefaces yielded
a significantly faster mean reading time than the sans serif typefaces; for the other
two stories, there was no significant difference in the reading times. Hvistendahl and
Kahl then showed each participant two out of eight stories set in both a serif typeface
and a sans serif typeface; in each case, one story was printed in 10.5-point type, and
the other was printed in 14-point type. The participants were asked to express their
preference between the two typefaces in which each story was printed. Overall, the
serif typefaces were preferred 68% of the time, while the sans serif typefaces were
preferred only 32% of the time. Nevertheless, it should be noted that Hvistendahl
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0_6
43

44 6 Reading in Context
and Kahl did not ask their participants to compare stories set in serif and sans serif
typefaces of the same size.
Moriarty and Scheiner (1984) asked 260 college students to read a page of text
from a sales brochure for stereo speakers. Half the students read the text in a serif
typeface (Times Roman), and half read it in a sans serif typeface (Helvetica). Inde-
pendent of this, half the students read the text in regular spacing, and half read it with
an 18% reduction in spacing. They were given 105 s to read the text and marked the
last word that they had read when the time limit was reached. The students given a
close-set type read significantly more than those given the regular type. However,
there was no significant difference between the students who read the text in a serif
typeface and those who read it in a sans serif typeface and no significant interac-
tion between the two variables. Moriarty and Scheiner concluded that there was no
difference in reading speed between the serif and sans serif typefaces in their study.
6.2 Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces in Newspaper Headlines
The headlines placed above articles in the body of a newspaper are usually presented
in a large typeface, often in a bold font, and they may extend over two or more
lines. They may be presented (a) all in capitals, (b) with initial capitals for the
principal words (“title case”), or (c) with initial capitals only for the first word and
any proper nouns (sometimes known as “sentence case”). Research in the first half
of the twentieth century showed that text presented in lowercase was read more
quickly than text presented in uppercase and more specifically that headlines in
title case were read more quickly than headlines all in capitals (see Tinker, 1963,
pp. 186–190). Newspaper headlines are sometimes presented in sans serif typefaces.
Arnold (1956) argued that “Sans Serif... is highly readable and, more than any other
typographic device, conveys an impression of a newspaper that is alert and up to
date” (p. 19).
English (1944) presented three-line headlines in title case tachistoscopically for
450 ms to 45 students of journalism and psychology. He used a serif typeface (Bodoni
bold), a slab serif typeface (Karnak bold), and a sans serif typeface (Tempo medium)
in three sizes, and he used the number of words reported correctly as a measure of
performance. Headlines presented in Bodoni and Tempo yielded significantly better
performance than those presented in Karnak but were not significantly different from
each other. Variations in type size had no effect upon the participants’ performance.
Another group of 50 students was shown pairs of headlines in different typefaces
and asked to choose which member of the pair seemed easier to read. There were no
significant differences among their preferences for the different typefaces.
Haskins (1958) presented 300 participants recruited through the Saturday Evening
Post with ten different magazine articles. The subtitles and text of the articles were
presented in their original form, but their headlines were presented to different partic-
ipants in one of ten different typefaces, including two sans serif typefaces (Futura
Light and Futura Bold). The participants were asked to judge how appropriate each

6.2 Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces in Newspaper Headlines 45
headline was for the article to which it was attached using a 6-point scale. The vari-
ation in their ratings across the ten typefaces was highly significant; in particular,
Futura Light was on average judged to be fairly appropriate, whereas Futura Bold
was judged on average to be very appropriate for eight of the articles. These results
imply that sans serif typefaces are at least as appropriate as serif typefaces for the
headlines of such articles.
Click and Stempel (1968) carried out an experiment in which college students
rated six newspaper front pages on 20 semantic differential scales (see Sect. 5.3).
However, they had carried out a pilot study in which six front pages had used sans
serif typefaces in their headlines and four had used serif typefaces. They found that
sans serif typefaces and serif typefaces yielded similar ratings if they were used with
similar front-page formats. As they noted, “The main source of variation in response
was the format and not the typeface” (p. 130). Because of this, they only used sans
serif headlines in their main experiment.
Haskins and Flynne (1974) investigated whether the choice of different typefaces
for newspaper headlines affected readers’ interest in the accompanying stories. They
carried out interviews with 150 female heads of household, of whom 100 were
asked to read through a genuine local newspaper in which a mock women’s page
had been inserted. This contained five articles drawn from various newspapers and
magazines in which the headlines had been printed either in a serif typeface judged
to be relatively “feminine” (Garamond Italic) or in a sans serif typeface judged to be
relatively “masculine” (Spartan Black). The remaining 50 female heads of household
read the newspaper without the women’s page, together with the headlines of the
five articles printed on individual white cards. The participants were asked to rate
the attractiveness and interest of each page of the newspaper on a scale from 0 to 100
and to rate their interest in each of the five articles. They were then shown the mock
women’s page printed in ten different typefaces and were asked to rate each version
using 12 semantic differential scales.
Consistent with the researchers’ assumptions, two typefaces often used on
women’s pages of newspapers, Garamond Italic and the cursive script Coronet Light,
were rated more highly on several supposedly feminine characteristics, whereas
Spartan Black, which was often used on sports pages, was rated more highly on
several supposedly masculine characteristics. The other typefaces were rated as
being relatively neutral on these characteristics. Nevertheless, there was no signifi-
cant difference in the ratings of overall reading interest given to the women’s pages
with headlines printed in Garamond Italic and in Spartan Black. Only one of the five
articles showed a significant difference in the ratings of reading interest, where the
version with a headline printed in Garamond Italic was rated more highly than the
version with a headline printed in Spartan Black. Haskins and Flynne concluded that,
while some typefaces used in headlines were perceived as more feminine or more
masculine, this had no effect on a woman’s interest in reading a women’s page.
In a study described in more detail in Sect. 6.3, Wheildon (1990, pp. 18–22; 2005,
pp. 61–73) presented the same participants with articles containing headlines in
different typefaces and evaluated their perceived legibility by asking the participants
to say simply whether the headlines were easy to read or not. When the headline was

46 6 Reading in Context
presented in a lowercase serif typeface, 92% said that it was easy to read; when it was
presented in a lowercase sans serif typeface, 90% said that it was easy to read. (He
did not specify the exact typefaces that he had used, and he did not explain whether
“lowercase” meant title case or sentence case.) Wheildon (1990, p. 22; 2005, p. 72)
concluded that there was little to choose between serif and sans serif typefaces in
headlines.
6.3 Wheildon’s Research
Colin Wheildon (1984) carried out a study of the impact of various typographical
factors on the comprehension of newspaper copy that incorporated a comparison
between serif and sans serif typefaces. He prepared revised versions of his orig-
inal report in 1986 and 1990, and he also incorporated his account into a book on
typography and design (Wheildon, 1995). This in turn went through several editions
and revisions, and the final version was published in 2005. Wheildon’s research has
been cited in support of the idea that serif typefaces are more legible than sans serif
typefaces in continuous text (Kempson & Moore, 1994, pp. 52, 284; Schriver, 1997,
p. 274). It has, however, proved to be extremely controversial (Poole, 2012).
Wheildon recruited 300 volunteers from among the inhabitants of Sydney,
Australia, and he visited them in their homes on several occasions. Their educational
level tended to be higher than that of the general population (79% had graduated
from high school and 23% had obtained a university degree or a comparable qual-
ification), but none was professionally involved in printing or publishing. On each
visit, they were asked to read a mock newspaper article to a time limit and were
then asked ten questions to test their comprehension of its content. For each visit,
the participants were randomly divided into two equal subsamples who read the
article in different forms, and they were classified into three groups depending on
the number of questions that they had answered correctly: between seven and ten
questions, good comprehension; between four and six questions, fair comprehen-
sion; and between zero and three questions, poor comprehension (Wheildon, 1990,
p. 9; 2005, pp. 134–138).
At two of the visits, the bodies of the relevant articles were presented in either a
serif typeface (Corona) or a sans serif typeface (Helvetica). The sequence of adminis-
tration of the two typefaces was counterbalanced across different participants, and so
the comprehension of the two typefaces was compared within the same individuals.
The results were analysed for the 224 participants who had participated at all of the
visits. When reading an article in serif typeface, comprehension was scored as good
for 67%, fair for 19%, and poor for only 14%; however, when reading an article in
sans serif typeface, comprehension was scored as good for only 12%, fair for 23%,
and poor for 65% (Wheildon, 2005, p. 47).
Wheildon also asked the participants who had shown either poor comprehension
or good comprehension “leading questions” about their attitudes to the articles and the
layout of the pages. He commented that “these responses were collected for anecdotal

6.3 Wheildon’s Research 47
rather than scientific value” (Wheildon, 1990, p. 9), but he felt that they helped to
explain some of the objective results (Wheildon, 2005, p. 138). He summarised the
comments made by the 112 participants who had read an article intended to be
of direct interest that had been presented in the sans serif typeface. Many of their
comments referred to their difficulty in concentrating on the reading task. However,
when they were then asked to read another article presented in the serif typeface,
they reported no physical difficulties (Wheildon, 1990, p. 17; 2005, p. 48),
In introducing his research, Wheildon (1990, p. 16; 2005, p. 46) had mentioned
only one previous study on the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces (Pyke,
1926), and he did not acknowledge that the sheer size of the effect that he had found
linking serif typefaces to better comprehension was clearly anomalous when taken
in the context of the findings of all other research carried out up to that point. Nor
did he comment on the apparent disparity between these results and his findings
regarding the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces when used in newspaper
headlines (described in the previous section). Instead, he argued: “The conclusion
must be that body type must be set in serif type if the designer intends it to be read
and understood” (Wheildon, 1990, p, 17; 2005, p. 48).
Poole (2012) argued that Wheildon’s account of his research lacked key infor-
mation that would enable a sceptical reader to evaluate the study. The introduction
to the expanded version of Wheildon’s (1990, pp. 9–10) report and an appendix to
Wheildon’s (2005, pp. 133–140) book do provide additional information about his
research methods, but some important details are unclear. For instance, the report
states that each of the articles extended over several pages (Wheildon, 1990, p. 9).
However, the book states that they were designed to fit in four columns 5 cm wide
and 30 cm deep on a single page, while the examples that are provided in the book
indicate that some space on the page was taken up by a headline, a by-line, and
two illustrations (Wheildon, 2005, pp. 34–35). Neither account mentioned either the
final number of words in each of the articles or the time allowed to read the articles
and to answer the comprehension questions (Wheildon, 1990, p. 9; 2005, pp. 33–48,
137–138).
There are some additional issues with Wheildon’s research. First, his general
account of the research methodology suggested that each participant was asked to
read one article at each visit, and that comparisons were made between their compre-
hension of different articles at different visits (Wheildon, 2005, p. 137). Neverthe-
less, he also mentioned a group of 112 participants who were tested on an article of
direct interest in a sans serif typeface but who were tested on “another article with a
domestic theme” in a serif typeface immediately afterwards (Wheildon, 1990, p. 17;
2005, p. 48). The latter arrangement is clearly more vulnerable to transfer or carry-
over effects (for instance, due to practice or fatigue) than repeated testing separated
by an interval of weeks or months.
Wheildon (1990, p. 9; 2005, p. 136) had designed his materials to measure the
effects of several different variables simultaneously. For example, half the mock
newspaper articles were designed to be of direct or broad interest to the partici-
pants, whereas the other half were designed to be of limited or specific interest. This
manipulation produced a difference of 10 percentage points in the participants’ level

48 6 Reading in Context
of comprehension (Wheildon, 2005, p. 36). Other variables included the use of capital
letters in the headlines, the use of colour in the headlines or in the text, the use of
justified versus unjustified text, and the use of italic font in the text. Wheildon (2005,
p. 136) explained this by arguing that the different manipulations were logically
separate from one another, and hence there was no need to change the samples of
participants to measure their effects. However, this ignores the possibility that these
effects were not empirically separate from one another. In other words, the apparent
difference in comprehension between material printed in serif and sans serif type-
faces might simply have been an artefact due to a confounding of this manipulation
with one or more of the other variables.
One further possibility is that of researcher bias. Wheildon’s (2005, pp. 24, 103)
own comments make it clear that he had always had a deep antipathy towards sans
serif typefaces. He himself had interviewed and tested all the participants in their
own homes (p. 137), and so it is possible that his underlying attitudes to serif and sans
serif typefaces might have (either intentionally or unintentionally) influenced how
they had set about their task and thus might have influenced their comprehension.
This issue should have been addressed by employing assistants to test the participants
who were blind (i.e., uninformed) as to the specific research hypotheses.
6.4 More Recent Research
Schriver (1997, pp. 289–303) obtained examples of texts that might be read for each
of four common purposes and presented each in both a serif typeface and a sans serif
typeface with similar x-heights. The four purposes or “genres” were: (a) reading to
enjoy (a two-page spread from a short story, presented in Bauer Bodoni and Univers);
(b) reading to assess (a one-page business letter from a bank, presented in Palatino
and Futura); (c) reading to do (a two-page spread from an instruction manual, printed
in Times Roman and Helvetica); and (d) reading to learn to do (a two-page spread
from a manual to help people estimate their taxes, printed in Garamond Light and
Optima). Schriver presented these texts to 67 volunteers using a within-subjects
design that counterbalanced the order of the texts and the order of the typefaces. The
participants were asked to say which version of each text they preferred and also to
say why.
Similar proportions of participants chose the serif and the sans serif typefaces.
More detailed examination showed that on balance participants tended to prefer the
serif typefaces for the short story and the tax manual, but they tended to prefer the sans
serif typefaces for the instruction manual and the business letter. Their preferences
were influenced by various factors related to the rhetorical context of each text: the
mood or tone of the text; the density of the text; the contrast among the parts of the
text; the legibility of the text; and the quality of printing. Schriver concluded: “This
study suggests that people find serif and sans serif typefaces equally pleasing but
that the situation in which they are reading may lead them to prefer one style over
the other” (p. 302).

6.4 More Recent Research 49
McCarthy and Mothersbaugh (2002) showed a fictious advertisement about
Ontario to 265 business students in their regular classes. Three aspects were varied
independently and at random: serif versus sans serif typefaces taken from a family
of artificial typefaces; 8-point type versus 10-point type; and types with x-heights of
50% or 70% of the associated capital letters. The participants were asked to read the
material to themselves for 1 min and to circle the word that they were reading when
the time limit was reached. They were then asked to read a control advertisement
following the same procedure and were classified into fast or slow readers using a
median split on the number of words that they had read.
The number of words that they had read from the first advertisement was analysed
by a between-subjects analysis of variance with the independent variables of type-
face, type size, x-height, and reading skill. The use of a serif typeface led to better
performance than the use of a sans serif typeface, but only for fast readers reading
small typefaces and only for fast readers reading typefaces with a large x-height.
The contrast between serif and sans serif typefaces had no significant effect for slow
readers, for fast readers reading large typefaces, or for fast readers reading typefaces
with a small x-height. These results suggest that any differences in the legibility of
serif and sans serif typefaces will only arise as a result of very specific interactions
with the effects of other features of the typeface and of the readers themselves.
In the studies mentioned in Sect. 5.4, Bartram (1982) and Rowe (1982) had only
studied the connotations of typefaces when used for individual words. Even so, both
maintained that these connotations would influence readers’ interpretations when
the typefaces were used for regular narrative. E. R. Brumberger (2003b) set out
to test this idea by comparing the connotations of typefaces and the connotations
of texts in which they were used. In her first study, she asked 80 students to rate
how much each of 15 descriptors applied to each of 15 typefaces. A factor analysis
of their responses yielded three broad dimensions, which she labelled “elegance,”
“directness,” and “friendliness.” Multidimensional scaling yielded a similar grouping
of the 15 typefaces. Brumberger noted that the resulting categories were based on the
semantic qualities of the typefaces, not their physical characteristics. In particular,
each category subsumed both serif and sans serif typefaces (see also E. Brumberger,
2004; Mackiewicz & Moeller, 2004).
In her second study, Brumberger (2003b) presented another 80 students with
15 different texts, each containing 375 words, drawn from a variety of published
sources. The participants were asked to read each text and to rate it on the same 15
scales. A factor analysis yielded three broad dimensions that were very different from
those found in the first study. She labelled these new dimensions “professionalism”,
“violence”, and “friendliness”. Brumberger argued that she had demonstrated that
readers consistently ascribe particular personality attributes to particular typefaces
and text passages. However, the lack of concordance between the results of the
two studies contradicts the idea that the connotations of typefaces affect readers’
interpretation of the texts in which they appear.
Brumberger (2003a) selected one typeface that represented each of the dimen-
sions in her first study: the cursive typeface CounselorScript for elegance, the serif
typeface Times New Roman for directness, and the sans serif typeface Bauhaus Md

50 6 Reading in Context
BT for friendliness. She also selected one text that represented each of the dimensions
in her second study: a passage from a psychology textbook for professionalism, an
excerpt from a novel for violence, and an excerpt from an article on snowboarding for
friendliness. Different groups of students were presented with the texts in different
typefaces in a between-subjects counterbalanced design and were asked to rate the
relevant text on the 15 scales used in her earlier study. There were significant differ-
ences in the ratings given to the three texts, but no significant difference in the ratings
given to texts in different typefaces. Brumberger suggested that the “persona” of the
texts might have overridden that of the typefaces (p. 230).
Gasser et al. (2005) asked 149 psychology students to read an information sheet
about tuberculosis that was being used at a local health-care facility. They were
presented with the information sheet in one of four typefaces: a slab serif typeface
with monospacing (Courier), a serif typeface with proportional spacing (Palatino), a
sans serif typeface with monospacing (Monaco), or a sans serif typeface with propor-
tional spacing (Helvetica). (With monospacing, each character occupies the same
width, but with proportional spacing different characters take up different amounts
of horizontal space.) They read the material silently at their own pace and were then
given a short attitudinal questionnaire as a distractor task. Finally, they answered six
open-ended questions on key points in the material. The students who read the mate-
rial in serif typefaces answered more of the questions correctly than did those who
read it in sans serif typefaces, although the difference only just attained statistical
significance. Gasser et al. suggested that the students had found information printed
in serif typefaces easier to read (and thus easier to remember) because they were
more familiar with such typefaces in their regular educational material.
Juni and Gross (2008) asked 102 university students to read two satirical articles
from the New York Times; one was concerned with government issues and the other
with education policy. They then rated each article on 12 qualities. One of the articles
was presented in the serif typeface Times New Roman, and the other in the sans
serif typeface Arial. For the government article, the version presented in Times
New Roman was rated as significantly more angry and as significantly less cheerful
than the version presented in Arial. For the education article, the version presented
in Times New Roman was rated as significantly more frivolous than the version
presented in Arial. It should however be noted that Juni and Gross found just three
significant differences out of a total of 24 comparisons between the two typefaces
without controlling for the possibility of spurious results due to chance variation (i.e.,
Type I errors), suggesting that the choice of typeface generally made little difference
to their participants’ perceptions of the two articles.

6.5 Conclusions 51
6.5 Conclusions
It has been argued that the context of reading is a primary determinant of the legi-
bility of different typefaces and the readers’ expectations of the legibility of what
they are reading. Newspaper headlines have been used as a specific context in which
researchers have studied the legibility and connotations of different kinds of text.
Wheildon (1990, 2005) presented an extensive programme of research on the legi-
bility of different kinds of text. However, his research has come under extensive crit-
icism and suffers from further issues that have not been noted in previous research.
Several researchers have subsequently considered the effect of variations in type-
faces and the expectations of readers in different kinds of situations. In general,
research on reading in context provides no convincing evidence for any difference
in the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces. Nevertheless, there is a suggestion
that readers’ preferences and the connotations of serif and sans serif typefaces might
well vary between different contexts.
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Chapter 7
Younger and Older Readers
7.1 Younger Readers
Research with young children is of interest in the present connection. First, as novice
readers, young children may be disproportionately sensitive to variations in typo-
graphic variables such as the presence or absence of serifs. Second, the preparation
of educational material in either serif typefaces or sans serif typefaces might affect
the facility with which children acquire the ability to read using such material.
Children’s books were generally printed in serif typefaces until the 1930s
(Walker & Reynolds, 2003). A notable exception was the educational material
published by Nellie (Ellen) Dale in collaboration with the artist Walter Crane in
the United Kingdom in the 1890s and early 1900s (Dale, 1902b, 1903; for discus-
sion, see Brockington, 2012). Young children were introduced to individual letters
and combinations of letters printed in a sans serif typeface and carried out various
exercises that involved writing on blackboards or slates using coloured chalk as well
as reading letters aloud (Dale, 1903, pp. 15–18). They were next introduced to a series
of readers or “primers” containing groups of new words of increasing phonological
complexity that were once again presented in a sans serif typeface. Each group of
new words was then used in a short narrative that was printed in a serif typeface
and accompanied by a relevant illustration. Examples are shown in Fig. 7.1 (see also
Dale, 1902a; Walker, 2013, pp. 88–89). Dale’s work was mentioned by Burt (1959,
p. 8; 1960) in reviews of the literature, but her work now seems to have been almost
completely forgotten.
Subsequently, many educational publishers produced their own typefaces
consisting of “infant characters” modified for novice readers. For instance, the loops
in characters such as aand gare only partially circular in sans serif typefaces (see
the right-hand panel of Fig. 1.1 in Sect. 1.2) but are often more completely circular
when rendered as infant characters. The assumption appears to have been that chil-
dren should learn the simpler shapes of letters printed in a sans serif typeface in
developing their handwriting before learning more complex shapes printed in a serif
typeface (Coghill, 1980; Walker, 2013, pp. 31–35 et passim; Watts & Nisbet, 1974,
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0_7
53

54 7 Younger and Older Readers
Fig. 7.1 Two pages from one of Dale’s Readers.FromThe Dale readers: Infant reader (new ed.),
by N. Dale. 1902. George Philip & Son. In the original, the illustrations and some letters in the sans
serif headings were rendered in colour. Reproduced by kind permission of the Philip’s Division
of Octopus Publishing Group and Sue Walker from http://www.bookdata.kidstype.org/database/dat
abase/getImage?id=1018
p. 33). (This is, of course, exactly the pedagogical approach that had been promoted
by Dale.) As a result, teachers nowadays tend to prefer sans serif typefaces over serif
typefaces (Raban, 1984; Walker & Reynolds, 2003), and many books for younger
readers are printed in sans serif typefaces (Bluhm, 1991; Walker, 2013, pp. 33–35).
7.2 Burt and Kerr’s Research
One study often cited in support of the idea that serif typefaces are more legible than
sans serif typefaces (e.g., Gallagher & Jacobson, 1993; Schriver, 1997, p. 274) was
described by a psychologist, Cyril Burt, who collaborated with a physician, James
Kerr. The research involved ten groups of children, each consisting of 15 boys and
15 girls aged 10–11 years. It was apparently carried out between 1913 and 1917,
but the findings were not reported until after Burt’s retirement in the 1950s (Burt,
1959; Burt et al., 1955). The final experiments used ten different serif typefaces. Burt
et al. (1955) mentioned that they had carried out initial experiments with four other

7.2 Burt and Kerr’s Research 55
typefaces, including a sans serif typeface, but that these had proved “much inferior”
to those that had been selected (p. 32). Burt (1959) explained that “in our own early
experiments Dr Kerr and I [7] found almost at once that, for word recognition, a sans
serif type face was the worst of all” (p. 9).
The reference in square brackets was to Kerr’s (1926) account of his own findings.
Kerr mentioned the possibility of using letters in a sans serif typeface, but he simply
asserted, without argument or evidence, that “owing to irradiation they are not as
legible as letters with thicker ends” (p. 552). (On the topic of irradiation, see Sect. 1.2.)
No further information was provided regarding experimental comparisons between
serif and sans serif typefaces in either Burt’s account or Kerr’s. Moreover, Hearnshaw
(1979, pp. 227–261) concluded that there were serious doubts about the validity and
authenticity of the data presented in Burt’s publications, while Hartley and Rooum
(1983) argued that this was true in particular of his work on typography. In fact, Burt
et al. (1955, p. 32) claimed that the sans serif typeface which they had used was Gill
Sans (see also Burt, 1959, p. 9), but this was not made available until 1928 (Kinross,
1992, pp. 62–63), which was more than a decade after Burt and Kerr had supposedly
carried out their research.
7.3 Zachrisson’s Research
The first systematic analysis of the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces among
children was carried out by Zachrisson (1965, pp. 97–108). Groups of 36 boys in
Grade 1 (aged 7–8 years) were drawn from two Swedish schools. At one school,
reading instruction was based on material printed in a serif typeface; at the other
school, it was based on material printed in a sans serif typeface. The boys were tested
individually and were asked to read aloud two pages of text. They were randomly
assigned to receive text that was printed in one of two serif typefaces (Bembo or
Nordisk Antikva) or one of two sans serif typefaces (Gill Sans or Mager Konsul).
Zachrisson analysed the number of errors made when reading the text. There was
a significant variation among the four typefaces, but the overall difference between
the serif typefaces and the sans serif typefaces was not significant, and the difference
between the two schools (and hence the typefaces used for reading instruction) was
not significant.
In a subsequent experiment (pp. 109–115), Zachrisson drew a sample of 24 boys
and 24 girls from Grade 4 (aged 10–11 years) of the school where instructional
material was printed in a sans serif typeface. They were asked to read silently two
different passages, but their reading was interrupted from time to time by comprehen-
sion questions. Once again, the passages were printed in one of two serif typefaces
(Bembo or Fairfield) or one of two sans serif typefaces (Fin Grotesk or Gill Sans).
Each participant read one passage in a serif typeface and the other in a sans serif
typeface. There was no overall difference in the time taken to read each passage
between the serif typefaces and the sans serif typefaces, and there was no significant
variation among the four typefaces.

56 7 Younger and Older Readers
For his next experiment (pp. 115–121), Zachrisson presented individual words in
isolation by means of a tachistoscope; alternate words were presented in a serif type-
face (Mediaeval) and in a sans serif typeface (Mager Futura). The sample consisted
of 12 boys in Grade 1 at each of the schools involved in the first experiment, together
with six boys and six girls in Grade 4 at the school involved in the second experi-
ment. The words were presented for 40 ms to the younger children and for 20 ms
to the older children. Zachrisson analysed the number of words correctly reported,
with partial credit for words that were incorrectly reported. There was no significant
difference between the two typefaces for either the younger children or the older
children, and no significant difference between the two schools.
Zachrisson employed the same research design and materials in a further study
that employed Weiss’s (1917) focal variator (pp. 121–124), which was described
in Sect. 1.2. In this case, he analysed the threshold at which the blurred image of
a word was correctly recognised. The difference between the two typefaces was
not significant for either the younger children or the older children. The difference
between the two schools for the children in Grade 1 was highly significant, but
Zachrisson did not report the direction of the difference. Zachrisson also adopted
the same research design using a perimeter, which is a device for presenting visual
material in peripheral vision (pp. 124–128). This study failed to yield any significant
results, and he inferred that this was not a useful way to measure the legibility of
typefaces.
Zachrisson had also asked the children who participated in his first two exper-
iments to rank order the four typefaces in which the passages had been presented
(pp. 131–132). They were instructed as follows: “The point is to say which of these
you find most legible—inviting, pleasant, easy, to read, and in which order you want
to put them according to their legibility. Which one do you like best, next best, third
and least?” (p. 131). There was no significant difference in the ranks assigned to
the four typefaces, no significant difference between the children in Grade 1 and
the children in Grade 4, and no significant difference between children in Grade 1
at the two schools (and hence between the typefaces used for reading instruction).
Zachrisson concluded on the basis of all his findings that “there is no significant
difference, in objectively measured legibility, or subjective opinion regarding ease
of reading between the OF [serif] and SS [sans serif] type faces” (p. 132, italics in
original).
7.4 Other Research with Children
Weiss (1978, 1982) asked 145 boys and girls in Grades 3 and 6 (aged 8–9 and
11–12) at two public schools in New York City to express their preferences among
printed material that differed in page size, type size, and typeface. Each example
was printed as a two-page spread of text but consisted simply of familiar words
in a random sequence together with an arbitrary illustration presented in the top,
middle, or bottom of the right-hand page. Weiss chose three typefaces that were easily

7.4 Other Research with Children 57
discriminable: a sans serif typeface (Futura) and two serif typefaces (Paladium and
Parinesy). The children were divided into three ability groups based on their scores
in an achievement test and were interviewed individually about their perceptions
and preferences regarding the different page sizes, the different typefaces, and the
different positions of the illustrations.
Of the three factors, the typeface was regarded as important by children in Grade
3 but not by children in Grade 6, by boys but not by girls, and by children of medium
ability but not by children of low or high ability. Children of low and middle ability
tended to prefer the Futura sans serif typeface, whereas children of high ability
tended to prefer the Paladium serif typeface. There was no significant difference
in preferences between boys and girls or between the children in different grades.
When asked to give reasons for their preferences, the children mainly referred to the
legibility and the attractiveness of the printed material. As Weiss noted, this pattern
is consistent with the results obtained by Tinker and Paterson (1942) in the case of
adult readers.
Coghill (1980) carried out an informal study in which 38 children aged about
5 years who were being taught to read using materials printed in a sans serif typeface
(Gill Sans) were asked to read aloud sentences printed in that typeface or in a number
of serif typefaces: “In almost every case the children found little difficulty in reading
alternative typefaces” (p. 257), and any reading errors tended to be repeated across
the different typefaces.
Sassoon (1993) described a study in which 50 8-year-old children were shown a
short passage in four different typefaces and four different settings and were asked
to choose the typeface that they liked best and found easiest to read. There were
two serif typefaces, Times Roman and Times Italic, and two sans serif typefaces,
Helvetica and a slanting sans serif typeface that Sassoon herself had developed.
Their preferences were fairly evenly distributed, and Sassoon argued that children
were able to assimilate different typefaces as a result of their exposure to television
graphics and other kinds of advertising. These findings led her to promote her own
typeface, Sassoon Primary, in material for young readers (Bluhm, 1991). However,
using two different procedures, Wilkins et al. (2009) found that children read words
in this typeface less quickly (both aloud and silently) than they read words of the
same x-height in the sans serif typeface Verdana. Wilkins et al. suggested that this
was because, with Sassoon, neighbouring letters tended to use strokes that were more
similar in shape.
De Lange et al. (1993) asked 160 schoolchildren to read two pages of text and to
mark all occurrences of a particular word. Half received two pages in the same serif
typeface (Times Roman), but the other half received the first page in Times Roman
and the second page in a sans serif typeface (Helvetica). Each group contained equal
numbers of children from each of four schools, equal numbers of children from Years
4 and 6, and equal numbers of children with high and low academic performance. De
Lange et al. calculated the scanning speed on each page by dividing the number of
marked targets by the scanning time and then calculated the gain in scanning speed
from the first page to the second. There was no sign of any significant difference
between the two conditions in the gain scores obtained by the children in either

58 7 Younger and Older Readers
year. De Lange et al. concluded that there was no significant difference between the
legibility of Times Roman and Helvetica as measured by a scanning process.
Walker and Reynolds (2003) presented excerpts from a children’s reading book
to 24 children aged 5–7 years in either a serif typeface (Century) or a sans serif
typeface (Gill Sans) with or without infant characters. The typefaces were balanced
across the four excerpts in different children. Walker and Reynolds measured the time
taken to read each excerpt aloud as well as the errors that the children made in doing
so. There was no significant variation in the time taken or in the number of errors
made across the four typefaces. Walker and Reynolds took these results to confirm
Coghill’s (1980) view that children do not find non-infant characters problematic.
The children were also asked to express their preferences among the typefaces: eight
expressed no preference, but eight expressed a preference for Gill Sans without infant
characters, and five expressed a preference for Gill Sans with infant characters.
Ripoli (2015) noted that in many Spanish-speaking countries children are taught
to read using material printed in a cursive typeface before moving on to serif and
sans serif typefaces. He tested 115 children who had been taught to read using a
cursive typeface in the final year of preschool. They were asked to read aloud six
short texts taken from a children’s book in Spanish, each in one of six typefaces: a
cursive typeface (Escolar 1), two serif typefaces (Sylfaen and Times New Roman),
and three sans serif typefaces (Arial, Lexia Readable, and Comic Sans). Assignment
of the six typefaces to the six texts was counterbalanced across different children,
and the x-height of the lowercase letters in each typeface was matched to that of Arial
14-point type. There was significant variation across the six typefaces in the number
of incorrect line breaks made by the children, but no significant variation in the
number of words read correctly per minute or in the number of errors that they made.
Ripoli observed that, despite having been taught to read using a cursive typeface,
the children had no difficulty reading using non-cursive typefaces, even using Lexia
Readable (which they had not previously encountered). There was also no difference
in their performance on the serif typefaces and on the sans serif typefaces.
Griffiths (2020) devised the Comparative Rate of Reading Speed Test. This
involved two displays, each consisting of 13 lines with 60 characters in each line.
The characters were random groups of between one and seven lowercase letters. The
first display was printed in black in the serif typeface Times, and the second display
was printed in teal in the sans serif typeface Gill Sans. A total of 92 children aged
11–12 years were asked to read the characters aloud and were timed on their reading
of the fifth line in each display. The mean times were 40.53 s for the Times display
and 34.81 s for the Gill Sans display. The difference between these mean times was
highly significant. Griffiths commented that the use of teal for the Gill Sans display
had been “a concession to light sensitive subjects” (p. 11). He suggested that the
result was due to binocular deficiency (i.e., unstable co-ordination of the eyes), but
this only affects 15% of the general population (Hargreaves, 2008). He acknowl-
edged that the effect of typeface had been confounded with that of colour, and he
argued that the latter was the more important variable, possibly due to a reduction in
contrast. However, since all of the children saw the displays in the same order, the
result might simply have represented a practice effect.

7.5 Letter Reversals 59
7.5 Letter Reversals
It has been known for more than a century that children who are learning to read tend
to confuse pairs of lowercase letters that are mirror images of each other (e.g., band
d;pand q) (Mach, 1897, p. 50). This appears to be true in all cultures that use the
Western alphabet in reading and writing (Goikoetxea, 2006). It is mainly apparent
in the final year of kindergarten and the early years of compulsory education, and
it is apparent in a variety of tasks extending beyond reading aloud and writing to
dictation (Thompson, 2009). Such errors are found in normal readers as well as in
children with learning disabilities and children who are dyslexic; nevertheless, they
become less common in older children as their reading develops (Cossu et al., 1995;
Davidson, 1936; Kennedy, 1954). (They are sometimes seen in older neurological
patients and occasionally in healthy older adults: Balfour et al., 2007.)
In the regular forms of most sans serif typefaces, the relevant letter pairs are
exact mirror images of one another (see Fig. 1.1 in Sect. 1.2). Some authors have
argued that the addition of serifs enhances legibility by making individual letters
more discriminable from one another (e.g., Legros, 1922, p. 11; McLean, 1980,
pp. 42–44). Yule (1988) and Wiebelt (2004) argued in particular that serifs help to
differentiate between confusable letter pairs because they are no longer exact mirror
images of each other. (For instance, the left-hand panel of Fig. 1.1 shows that, in both
the letters band d, the serifs are on the left-hand side of the ascenders.) However,
other authors have argued that, even with the addition of serifs, the relevant pairs of
lowercase letters do not differ appreciably from each other (e.g., Potter, 1949, p. 11).
Indeed, Lockhead and Crist (1980) found that more explicit cues were needed to
enable children to discriminate between such letter pairs.
Evaluating the two positions is difficult, because most researchers who have
described letter reversals in young children have not specified the typeface used
in their reading tests. It is therefore impossible to say whether the children had been
asked to read letters printed in serif or sans serif typefaces. Popp (1964) did specify
the use of a serif typeface (Century) to present lowercase letters in a two-alternative
forced-choice experiment where children had to match letters presented on a touch-
sensitive projection screen. Their error rate was highest on the pairs b–dand p–q,
thus confirming that mirror reversals still occur with letters that are presented in a
serif typeface.
In the study mentioned in Sect. 7.4, Ripoli (2015) examined the number of letter
reversals made by 115 children when reading six texts printed in six different type-
faces. The number of letter reversals was least for texts printed in the cursive typeface
Escobar 1 and the sans serif typeface Lexia Readable, where there are additional cues
that serve to differentiate the critical pairs of lowercase letters. However, there was
no significant variation in the number of letter reversals for texts printed in the other
four typefaces: two serif typefaces (Sylfaen and Times New Roman) and two sans
serif typefaces (Arial and Comic Sans). These results imply that, in the absence of
additional cues, the presence of serifs does not in itself help children to discriminate
between pairs of letters that are otherwise mirror images of each other. In general,

60 7 Younger and Older Readers
mirror reversals in children’s reading and writing relate to structural properties of
the relevant alphabet and not to the particular typeface used to render that alphabet
(Treiman et al., 2014).
7.6 Older Readers
Vanderplas and Vanderplas (1980) suggested on the basis of interviews carried out
with older people that many did not read as much as they would have liked because
of difficulties with illegible type, although some publishers do produce large-type
versions of newspapers and books intended for older readers. The researchers asked
28 volunteers aged between 60 and 83 to read 30 passages of 30–33 lines taken from
Samuel Butler’s novel, Erewhon. The 30 passages were presented in one of five type
sizes from 10 to 18 points and in one of six typefaces. Three were serif typefaces
(Century Schoolbook, Times Roman, and Bodoni), and three were sans serif type-
faces (Helvetica, Spartan, and Trade Gothic). The type sizes and the typefaces were
counterbalanced, but the order of the passages reflected the narrative structure of the
novel. After reading each passage, the participants were given a short test of their
comprehension to ensure that they had actually read the material, and they then rated
the passage on six aspects of its presentation using a 7-point scale.
Their reading speed was significantly faster for passages with serif typefaces
than for passages with sans serif typefaces, but there was also significant variation
in reading speed across the six typefaces: Century Schoolbook yielded the fastest
reading speed, but Spartan yielded the slowest. Their reading speed generally tended
to increase with the type size. The participants also rated passages with serif typefaces
more positively than passages with sans serif typefaces on their apparent size, how
easily they could be read, and how easily they could be understood. They also rated
12-point typefaces as being the easiest to read.
One situation in which older readers encounter problems is in reading labels
on their medication, regardless of whether the labels are prepared using dot-matrix
printers (Zuccollo & Liddell, 1985) or more advanced laser printers (Watanabe et al.,
1994). Smither and Braun (1994) asked 19 younger adults (mean age 25.48 years)
and 20 older adults (mean age 71.05 years) to read the labels on 18 prescription
bottles printed in a serif typeface with proportional spacing (Century Schoolbook),
a monospaced slab serif typeface (Courier), or a sans serif typeface with propor-
tional spacing (Helvetica). They read more slowly and made more errors on the
labels printed in Courier than on the labels printed in either Century Schoolbook or
Helvetica. The older adults also read more slowly and made more errors than the
young adults when reading labels printed in Courier.
Smither and Braun suggested that the participants might have had problems
because of the curvature of medication bottles. They repeated their experiment with
new participants and with the 18 labels placed on a flat surface. These participants
once again read the labels printed in Courier more slowly, but they did not make
more errors than on the labels printed in Century Schoolbook or Helvetica. The

7.6 Older Readers 61
older adults read more slowly than the young adults across the board, but they did
not make more errors. Smither and Braun inferred that reading medication labels was
more effective if they were printed with proportional spacing (Century Schoolbook
or Helvetica) than if they were printed with monospacing (Courier). However, the
presence or absence of serifs seemed to have little or no effect on the legibility of
medication labels.
7.7 Conclusions
As novice readers, young children may be disproportionately affected by different
typefaces. The use of different typefaces may also affect how readily children acquire
the ability to read. Research by Burt (1959), Burt et al. (1955) and Kerr (1926) is
often cited in support of the idea that serif typefaces are more legible. However,
their accounts are inadequate and contain many contradictions. Zachrisson (1965)
provided a more thorough account of the role of typographic variables in reading
among children of different ages using various research methods and found no
evidence for any difference in legibility between serif and sans serif typefaces. Subse-
quent research by other investigators has tended to confirm Zachrisson’s conclusions.
It has been known for more than 100 years that children tend to confuse letters that
are mirror images of each other (such as pand q). This phenomenon occurs with
both sans serif letters (which are true mirror images) and serif letters (which are not).
Older readers tend to suffer from visual problems which may depend on typograph-
ical factors. This is of practical importance, as in the design of labels for medication
containers. Nevertheless, there are no differences in the reading capability of older
readers when presented with material printed in serif and sans serif typefaces.
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included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from
the copyright holder.

Chapter 8
Readers with Disabilities
8.1 Readers with Visual Impairment
Nolan (1959) tested 264 children with visual impairment aged between 8 and 20. Half
of the children counted as legally blind, but the others did not. Within each group, the
children were randomly assigned to different subgroups to read material presented
in either 18-point type or 24-point type in either a serif typeface (Antique with Old
Style) or a sans serif typeface (Metrolite Medium). The material itself consisted of 72
paragraphs, each of about 90 words; after reading each paragraph, the children had
to answer a short comprehension question by choosing one of five alternative words.
Nolan measured the number of paragraphs that they had read in 30 min, statistically
adjusted for variations in their reading comprehension.
The results showed that the children with better vision read faster than the children
with poorer vision, and that the material presented in Antique with Old Style was
read more quickly than the material presented in Metrolite Medium There was no
significant difference in reading speed between the two type sizes, and there were
no significant interactions among the effects of reading ability, type size, and type-
face. Nolan commented that Metrolite Medium had needed a greater line length than
Antique with Old Style, and she suggested that it was this feature rather than the
absence of serifs that explained the slower reading time. In fact, Nolan had standard-
ised the line length at 8.5 in. (21.6 cm) in all four sets of material. Consequently,
the material that was presented in Metrolite Medium would have needed more lines,
which suggests that it was the number of lines rather than the presence or absence
of serifs that had given rise to differences in reading performance between the two
typefaces.
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0_8
63

64 8 Readers with Disabilities
8.2 Shaw’s Research
During the 1960s, Alison Shaw was commissioned by the UK Library Association
(now the Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals) to study the
reading capabilities of people designated as partially sighted, defined as those who
had difficulty reading normal sized book print but whose sight could not be fully
corrected by the use of spectacles. The findings of the research were published as a
formal report (Shaw, 1969). Shaw also published three short journal articles about the
study, but these omit key information about her research methods and data analyses,
and so this account is based on her formal report.
Shaw decided to investigate her participants’ capacity for reading continuous
printed text at a close reading distance (p. 9). She chose to investigate separate
samples of adults and children, with a primary focus on the former (p. 17). She
identified four aspects of the text which might be important: typeface, type weight,
type size, and type spacing. With regard to typeface, she compared Plantin, a serif
typeface which had been developed in 1913 by the Monotype Corporation, and Gill
Sans, the sans serif typeface developed in 1928 by Eric Gill. She argued that these
were representative examples of serif and sans serif typefaces that were relatively
similar in terms of their x-height and their width (p. 23). With regard to weight,
she compared the medium and bold versions of these two typefaces. With regard
to size, she used 12-, 14-, 16-, 18-, 20-, and 24-point sizes. Each participant was
tested to determine their visual acuity, and they received material in two successive
point sizes that were just below and just above their acuity threshold (e.g., 16-point
and 18-point sizes) (p. 24). With regard to spacing, she used four combinations of
inter-letter, inter-word, and inter-line spacing (pp. 24–25), which yielded 32 different
combinations of typeface, weight, size, and spacing.
Each participant received four of these 32 combinations. The materials consisted
of short passages of common words that were combined to yield grammatical but
semantically anomalous sentences (e.g., “Hungry bridges describe expensive farm-
ers”: p. 32). Each of the passages consisted of six sentences printed in five lines
containing 38–41 characters. One passage was assigned to each of the 32 condi-
tions, but a pre-test was carried out using ten readers with normal vision to ensure
that the 32 passages were of comparable difficulty (p. 33). The conditions assigned
to different participants and the order of their administration were counterbalanced
using Graeco-Latin squares (p. 29).
Shaw measured the number of words in each passage that were read aloud correctly
and the time taken to read them. She used this information to calculate the average
time per correct word and normalised the latter by dividing it by the average time
per word taken by the normal readers to read each passage. There was a positive
correlation between the mean and the variability of the normalised data, and so
the logarithms of these data were used. Finally, the four transformed values for
each participant were expressed as deviations about their mean value in order to
eliminate differences among the participants (p. 37). Multiple regression analyses

8.2 Shaw’s Research 65
were then used to identify the factors that were responsible for significant variations
in performance.
A total of 288 adults with visual impairment were recruited through government
agencies and voluntary associations. Shaw compared their characteristics with those
of the population according to national statistics, and she concluded that the sample
was broadly representative of the national population of adults with partial sight
(p. 53). The multiple regression analysis found that an increase in type size from
the smaller size to the larger size led to an improvement of reading performance of
16%; an increase in the type weight from medium to bold led to an improvement
of 9%; changing the typeface from serif to sans serif led to an improvement of 4%;
and variations in spacing did not lead to a significant change in reading performance
(p. 50). Shaw noted that her findings contradicted “traditionalist views that a serif
face is always more legible than a sans serif” (p. 61), and she concluded that the
effect of differences between the two typefaces was of minor importance compared
with the effects of size and weight (p. 65).
Shaw compared various subgroups in the sample of adults with visual impairment.
The most common causes of visual impairment (some adults had more than one
cause) were:
•Cataract. This condition involves progressive cloudiness in the lens of the eye.
•Glaucoma. This condition involves damage to the retina or optic nerve.
•Macular degeneration (often known as age-related macular degeneration). This
causes impaired vision in the centre of the visual field.
•Myopia (short-sightedness). In its severe form, this may be due to glaucoma or
retinal detachments.
Comparing these subgroups, changing the typeface from serif to sans serif had
significantly benefited participants with macular degeneration but not the other three
subgroups (p. 50). Independent of this, 72 exhibited a congenital impairment, having
been affected since birth or early childhood, whereas 112 exhibited an acquired
impairment, having been affected since the age of 50 (p. 43). Changing the typeface
from serif to sans serif had benefited the latter but not the former.
Shaw also recruited 48 children with visual impairment who had a reading age of
at least 11 from schools for partially sighted children. Once again, Shaw compared
their characteristics with those of the national population, and she concluded that
they were representative of older, brighter children in schools for partially sighted
children (p. 56). The multiple regression analysis found that an increase in type
weight from medium to bold led to an improvement of reading performance of 7%,
but that variations in type size, typeface, or spacing did not lead to a significant change
in reading performance (p. 50). The most common causes of visual impairment were
myopia, cataract, and nystagmus (which causes visual impairment by disrupting the
normal pattern of eye movements), but these subgroups were too small for any further
statistical analysis. After they had read the passages, the children were asked which
of the four examples they thought was the clearest. There was no correlation between
the children’s personal subjective judgement and their objective reading performance
(p. 49).

66 8 Readers with Disabilities
Shaw concluded that the sans serif typeface was slightly more legible than the
serif typeface for her adult readers, but that there was no measurable difference for
the children (p. 65). This might be taken to suggest that the advantage of the sans
serif typeface was due to the adults’ increased familiarity and experience in reading
such typefaces. However, there are two problems with Shaw’s study. First, although
she carried out a large number of statistical tests on her data, she did not control
for the possibility of Type I errors. As a result, some of the statistically significant
differences which she found might have been spurious results due to chance variation.
Second, and more fundamentally, Shaw’s focus on readers with visual impair-
ment meant that she ignored the performance of the normal readers in her study. In
normalising the performance of her participants on each passage against the perfor-
mance of normal readers on the same passage, she ignored the possibility that the
normal readers themselves might have shownsignificant differences between the serif
and sans serif typefaces. Suppose that the readers with visual impairment produced
reading speeds of 50 words/min on a passage printed in Plantin and 60 words/min on
a passage printed in Gill Sans, and that the normal readers produced reading speeds
of 100 words/min and 120 words/min on these passages. Normalising the former
data would have yielded scores of 0.5 for both typefaces. (Taking logarithms and
deviations about the mean value would not have changed this situation.) In other
words, the normalisation process might well have obscured differences in legibility
in both normal readers and those with visual impairment. Unfortunately, Shaw did
not present the descriptive statistics to enable readers to establish whether or not this
was a possibility.
8.3 Children in Special Education
Pittman (1976) compared 48 children with learning disabilities and 48 nondisabled
children in their reading comprehension. She showed them stories consisting of five
paragraphs and then administered ten sentence-completion questions. Each story
was presented over four trials. The children in each group received stories in one of
four typefaces: one was in a serif typeface (Pica), two were in sans serif typefaces
(Gothic and Primary), and one was in a cursive typeface (Script). Not surprisingly,
the children’s performance increased over the four trials. The nondisabled children
obtained higher scores than did the children with learning disabilities. However,
there was no significant difference among the children’ scores on the four typefaces.
Pittman concluded “that the style of type is not an important variable in the reading
comprehension of LD [learning-disabled] and normal children” (p. 115). It might
be noted that the results obtained by the comparison group of nondisabled children
confirm the conclusion of Chap. 7that there is no difference in the legibility of serif
and sans serif typefaces among normal young readers.
Section 7.4 mentioned a study by Sassoon (1993) in which nondisabled children
were shown a short passage in four different typefaces and were asked to choose
the typeface that they liked best. Sassoon repeated this study with 50 children who

8.3 Children in Special Education 67
were in special education and aged between 8 and 13. Apart from describing them as
having “learning difficulties” (p. 158), she did not mention what their special needs
actually were. In this case, there were clear differences: 44% chose the slanting sans
serif typeface, 28% chose the serif Times Italic, 18% chose the sans serif Helvetica,
and 10% chose the serif Times Roman. Sassoon attributed the low preference for
Times Roman to the fact that its pronounced serifs and short descenders affected
the identification of certain letters. However, in Sect. 7.4 it was noted that Sassoon
had developed the slanting sans serif typeface herself and had been promoting it
for use in material for young readers. It would have been better if Sassoon had
employed assistants who were blind as to the specific research hypotheses to avoid
the possibility of researcher bias.
Haugen (2010) tested 14 children in special education in Grades 3–6 (aged 8–11).
Once again, apart from describing them as having “mild special education needs”
(p. 17), she did not discuss what their special needs actually were. She asked them to
read aloud four passages of between 260 and 440 words printed in different typefaces:
Bookman, a serif typeface; Comic Sans, a sans serif typeface based on comic-book
lettering; Helvetica, a more regular sans serif typeface; and Times, another serif
typeface. Each passage took about 5–10 min to read. However, Haugen did not time
the children exactly but instead monitored their behaviour. Finally, she showed them
all four of the passages that they had read and asked them to say which style of letters
they had found the easiest to read and which they liked the best (pp. 83–93).
All the children completed all four passages, but they appeared more restless when
reading the passages in Comic Sans and Times than when reading the passages in
Bookman and Helvetica. Haugen commented that the issue was not the difference
between serif and sans serif typefaces but the design of each typeface when compared
with that of the others. The number of words read incorrectly was similar across the
four typefaces, although Times yielded the fewest while Comic Sans yielded the most.
The children were more likely to skip words printed in the two serif typefaces than
those printed in the two sans serif typefaces, whereas they were more likely to pause
when reading words printed in the two sans serif typefaces than when reading words
printed in the two serif typefaces. Finally, they were more likely to run together two
successive sentences printed in Comic Sans than those printed in the other typefaces
(pp. 121–128).
Nine of the 14 participants thought that one of the serif typefaces was the easiest
to read, and five thought that one of the sans serif typefaces was the easiest to read,
four of whom chose Comic Sans. However, their choice did not seem to bear any
relationship to their actual reading performance. Moreover, 12 of the 14 participants
chose a sans serif typeface as the one they liked the best (of whom eight chose
Comic Sans), one chose a serif typeface, and one insisted on choosing a serif typeface
and a sans serif typeface (pp. 129–139). Haugen argued that their preferences had
been influenced by their prior experience of sans serif typefaces on game systems,
computers, cellular phones, and other electronic devices (pp. 164–165).

68 8 Readers with Disabilities
8.4 Readers with Congenital Visual Impairment
Uysal and Düger (2012) evaluated the effects of a 3-month training programme in 35
children with visual impairment at a Turkish primary school. Their preferences for
different typefaces were assessed before and after the programme by showing them a
20-word sentence in Turkish in five different typefaces (Arial, Comic Sans, Tahoma,
Times New Roman, and Verdana) and ten different type sizes. Their reading speed
was averaged across all the typefaces and sizes. Before the programme, they preferred
the sans serif typefaces such as Verdana (11 children) or Arial (8 children) as opposed
to the serif typeface Times New Roman (3 children). The programme initially adopted
their preferred typeface but gradually incorporated the other typefaces. It led to a
significant increase in both their reading speed and their writing speed, but not in the
judged legibility of their handwriting. After the programme, most children indicated
that they were comfortable with any of the typefaces except for the sans serif Tahoma.
Skilton et al. (2018) conducted a focus group that involved eight people with
deaf-blindness. Such individuals are born with a hearing loss and develop visual
impairment during their early childhood. The aim of the focus group was to identify
the participants’ accessibility needs for their involvement in future research. Their
recommendations included the provision of printed materials in a large size (18-point
or higher) and in a sans serif typeface such as Arial. However, Skilton et al. acknowl-
edged that these were among the recommendations that were typically provided for
improving the accessibility of information of deaf-blind people. Their account left
it unclear whether these recommendations were based on their own negative expe-
riences with serif typefaces or whether they were just repeating back conventional
attitudes that they had previously acquired from figures in authority.
8.5 Readers with Acquired Visual Impairment
Prince (1967) suggested that the impact of typographical variables might be different
in older people with acquired visual disorders. As mentioned in Sect. 8.2, Shaw
(1969) had found an advantage for a sans serif typeface over a serif typeface for those
with acquired visual impairment but not for those with congenital visual impairment.
Estey et al. (1990) showed 52 patients with an average age of 69.4 years admitted
for cataract surgery a page of text printed in a 12-point sans serif typeface, Univers
Medium. Only 65% of the patients said that they could read the text, while 35% found
it blurry. Estey et al. then showed the patients two pages of text: One was printed
in 14-point Univers Medium, and the other was printed in a 14-point serif typeface,
Century Schoolbook. Only 2% of the patients said that they could not read these
texts. Of the 52 patients, 65% said that they preferred Univers Medium, 33% said
that they preferred Century Schoolbook, while 2% had no preference. Estey et al.
argued that material for patients with visual deficits should be printed in 14-point
sans serif typefaces.

8.5 Readers with Acquired Visual Impairment 69
Campbell et al. (2006) carried out two studies in people with age-related macular
degeneration (AMD). Participants were recruited from the members of the Cana-
dian National Institute for the Blind (now the CNIB Foundation). They were asked
to compare samples of text printed in six different typefaces using reading aids if
necessary. Two were serif typefaces (Times Roman and Lucida), while four were sans
serif typefaces (Adsans, Arial, Clearview, and Verdana). Adsans had been devised in
1959 to be used in a small (4.75 point) size in newspaper classified advertisements.
It is not available in common computer applications, but it was used as the basis for
Verdana. Clearview was devised in the 2000s for use on road signs. In both studies,
the participants rated how easy it was to read each typeface on a 7-point scale from
“impossible to read” to “very easy to read.” In the first study, they also ranked the
samples from the easiest to the hardest to read. However, this proved to be rather
demanding, and so ranking was not used in the second study.
In the first study, 241 participants aged 50 or older were shown excerpts from
Robert Louis Stevenson’s novel, Treasure Island, all printed in 16-point type. The
passage printed in Adsans was given significantly higher ratings than any of the other
samples, and it was ranked the easiest to read by more than 50% of the participants.
In the second study, 157 participants were shown information leaflets for over-the-
counter medicines amended to refer to unfamiliar products and printed in 7-point
type. The leaflet that was printed in Adsans was once again given significantly higher
ratings than any of the other samples. Campbell et al. remarked that in both studies
Times Roman had been given low ratings despite being a relatively familiar typeface,
which suggested that the participants were not simply rating the typefaces on the basis
of their familiarity. These findings show that people with AMD have a preference
for Adsans, but they do not constitute evidence with regard to its objective legibility.
Rubin et al. (2006) asked 43 patients with mild cataract or glaucoma to read texts
printed in four different typefaces. One was Tiresias, a sans serif typeface developed
for people with impaired vision by the Royal National Institute of Blind People in the
United Kingdom. This was compared with the serif typeface, Times New Roman,
and two other sans serif typefaces, Foundry Form Sans and Helvetica. Their reading
speed was found to be significantly faster with Tiresias than with the other three
typefaces. However, although nominally of the same point size, the four typefaces
occupied different amounts of horizontal and vertical space. When this factor was
statistically controlled, the advantage of Tiresias disappeared. Rubin et al. concluded
that variations in typeface had little influence on the reading speed of people with
mild to moderate sight problems.
Tarita-Nistor et al. (2013) tested 24 patients with AMD using reading charts
printed in Times New Roman, Courier, Arial, and a version of Andale Mono. These
required them to read individual sentences presented at progressively smaller sizes.
Times New Roman is a serif typeface, and Courier is a slab serif typeface, whereas
Arial and Andale Mono are both sans serif typefaces. Times New Roman and Arial are
both proportionally spaced, whereas Courier and Andale Mono are both monospaced.
Tarita-Nistor et al. measured three aspects of their participants’ performance: their
reading acuity, which was the smallest print size that could be read without significant
errors; the maximum reading speed, which was the highest speed at which text could

70 8 Readers with Disabilities
be read without regard to print size; and the critical print size, which was the smallest
print size that could be read with maximum speed. There was no significant variation
among the typefaces in either critical print size or maximum reading speed, but there
was significant variation in reading acuity: surprisingly, and—contrary to the results
of the study by Smither and Braun (1994) that was mentioned in Sect. 7.6—text
printed in Courier yielded significantly better reading acuity than text printed in the
other three typefaces, but text printed in Arial yielded significantly worse reading
acuity than text printed in the other three typefaces.
Hedlich et al. (2018) administered reading charts containing sentences printed in
the slab serif typeface Courier New or the sans serif typeface Arial to 16 patients
with visual impairment before or after cataract surgery. They found no significant
difference between the two typefaces in their reading acuity, in their critical print
size, or in their maximum reading speed. One limitation of this study, apart from the
small sample size, was that the reading chart printed in Arial was always presented
before the reading chart printed in Courier New, so that the researchers had no control
over the effects of fatigue or practice. They also asked the participants about their
preference between the two typefaces: eight of the participants preferred Arial, four
preferred Courier New, and four had no preference.
Nersveen et al. (2018) carried out a postal survey of adults with a wide variety
of visual impairments. They identified ten typefaces for consideration. Seven were
printed in regular font, including two serif typefaces (Scala and Times Roman) and
five sans serif typefaces (Frutiger, Helvetica, Scala Sans, Tiresias, and Verdana).
Three were printed in bold font, including one serif typeface (Scala Bold) and two
sans serif typefaces (Scala Sans Bold and Tiresias Bold). The participants were a
random sample of 5,000 members of the Norwegian Association of the Blind and
Partially Sighted. Each typeface was presented in five different body sizes (8, 10, 12,
14, and 16 points, but scaled so that their x-heights matched those of Times Roman),
and in ten variations in contrast (from black type on white background to white type
on black background), yielding 500 conditions. Each was presented as three or more
lines of text, together with a 4-point rating scale in which the response categories
were “Easily readable”, “Readable with some difficulty”, “Difficult to read”, and
“Unreadable”. This yielded a booklet consisting of 50 printed pages.
The participants were instructed to carry out the task only if they were partially
sighted and able to read printed text (with a magnifying glass or with supplementary
lights if necessary). Completed booklets were returned by 830 participants. Repeated-
measures tests were employed to compare the ratings given to the serif typefaces and
the sans serif typefaces. For typefaces at 12 and 14 points, the difference was not
statistically significant. For those at 8, 10, and 16 points, sans serif typefaces received
significantly higher ratings than did serif typefaces. Nevertheless, the differences
were small in magnitude and only achieved significance because of the very large
sample size. A similar pattern emerged when comparing the ratings given to the Scala
typefaces and the Scala Sans typefaces (J. Nersveen, personal communication, June
22, 2020).

8.5 Readers with Acquired Visual Impairment 71
Although Nersveen et al. described their experiment as a study of the legibility of
printed text, their data actually consisted of the participants’ ratings of the subjective
acceptability of the different typefaces rather than any measure of their objective
legibility. The apparent preference for sans serif typefaces is thus consistent with the
findings of Estey et al. (1990) and Campbell et al. (2006), although the effect was
far less pronounced. One problem is the response rate of only 16.6%. This might be
partly explained by the fact that the participants did not receive any personal reward
for carrying out the task, although two respondents chosen at random were given a
“prize” of a Digital Audio Broadcasting radio worth 1,000 Norwegian kroner. As a
result, most of the participants may not have been willing to devote time and effort to
a rather burdensome task. Whatever the cause, it does suggest that the study suffered
from sampling bias, in that the respondents might not have been representative of
the target population.
8.6 Readers with Aphasia
The term aphasia covers a wide variety of disorders of spoken language, but a
majority of people with aphasia also exhibit impairment of reading (Brookshire et al.,
2014). Wilson and Read (2016) tested nine participants who had been diagnosed with
mild-to-moderate aphasia as the result of cerebrovascular accidents. They were given
a standardised test of reading comprehension that consisted of 35 short paragraphs.
In each case, the participants had to choose one of four alternative words or phrases
to complete the final sentence. For each participant, the paragraphs were randomly
assigned to one of seven conditions. One involved the presentation of the original
paragraph in a serif typeface (Times New Roman), and the other six involved different
manipulations. For two manipulations, the typeface was amended either to a sans serif
typeface (Verdana) or to an ornate cursive typeface (Harrington). The participants
achieved significantly higher scores with the sans serif typeface than with either
of the other two typefaces. Wilson and Read did not speculate as to why patients
with aphasia might find serif typefaces less legible. Some researchers have found
that people with aphasia prefer material printed in a sans serif typeface (Rose et al.,
2011), but other researchers have not (Haw, 2017, p. 129; Herbert et al., 2019).
8.7 Readers with Dyslexia
The term dyslexia refers to a specific disorder of reading that may result from a
wide variety of causes (and may be either congenital or acquired). For many years,
the British Dyslexia Association (2018) has recommended that documents printed
for people with dyslexia should use sans serif typefaces, and this has been taken
to encompass teaching materials for students (Shaw & Anderson, 2017). However,
the Association did not cite any evidence to support this recommendation. In fact,

72 8 Readers with Disabilities
relevant evidence has been obtained in attempting to evaluate Dyslexie, a typeface
that was developed by Christian Boer in 2008 to try to facilitate reading among
children and adults with dyslexia (http://www.dyslexiefont.com). It is a sans serif
typeface characterised by a relatively large x-height and relatively wide vertical and
horizontal spacing between the letters. It is available under licence for both Microsoft
Windows and Apple computer systems.
Marinus et al. (2016) recruited 39 children who were undergoing remediation for
low progress in reading. They were asked to read aloud four passages, each of 200
words. One passage was presented in a 14-point Dyslexie typeface. A second was
presented in 16-point Arial, a sans serif typeface which matched the x-height of the
letters in the first passage. A third passage was presented in 16-point Arial with an
overall increase in spacing. The fourth passage was presented in 16-point Arial with
increased spacing both between words and between letters within words to match
the spacing used in the first passage. The order of the conditions and the assignment
of the passages to the conditions was counterbalanced across different participants.
The children were scored on the number of words that they had read correctly per
minute in each of the four conditions. Marinus et al. found that their reading speed
in the first condition was significantly faster than in either the second or third, but
that it was not significantly different in the fourth condition.
Kuster et al. (2018) carried out two experiments to evaluate the Dyslexie type-
face. In the first experiment, 170 children with dyslexia were asked to read aloud
two passages at separate sessions. One passage was presented in 12-point Dyslexie;
the other was presented in 13-point Arial, adjusted to match the vertical spacing of
Dyslexie. The order of the two conditions was counterbalanced across the partici-
pants. The children read significantly more quickly and made fewer errors on the
second passage than on the first. However, there was no significant difference in
either reading time or the number of errors between the typefaces.
In their second experiment, Kuster et al. tested 102 children with dyslexia and 45
children without dyslexia. They were each asked to read aloud three lists of words of
varying complexity at three separate sessions. At each session, one list was presented
in Dyslexie, whereas the other two lists were presented in the serif typeface Times
New Roman and the sans serif typeface Arial, in both cases adjusted to match the
x-height and the vertical spacing of Dyslexie. The order of the three conditions and
the assignment of word lists to conditions was counterbalanced, and the children
were scored on the number of words that they read correctly in one minute. Not
surprisingly, the children without dyslexia obtained higher scores than the children
with dyslexia, and performance varied inversely with the complexity of the words.
However, there was no significant difference in the performance of either the children
with dyslexia or the children without dyslexia across the three typefaces.
Finally, Powell and Trice (2020) recruited 36 children with dyslexia. They were
each asked to read aloud three stories; each story contained 200 words and was
followed by three factual questions to test the children’s comprehension. One story
was presented in 12-point Dyslexie; the others were presented in 14-point Arial
and 14-point Times New Roman, both adjusted to match the horizontal and vertical
spacing of Dyslexie. The order of the three stories and the assignment of the stories

8.7 Readers with Dyslexia 73
to the three typefaces was counterbalanced across different children. There was no
significant variation across the three typefaces in terms of the mean time that the
children took to read the stories, no significant variation in terms of the number of
errors that they made, and no significant variation in their comprehension scores.
All three of these studies indicated that the effectiveness of the Dyslexie type-
face is due to its increased spacing and not to its different letter shapes. If other
typefaces are adjusted to match the spacing used for the Dyslexie typeface, the
reading performance of children with dyslexia does not differ across the different
typefaces. However, both Kuster et al.’s (2018) second experiment and Powell and
Trice’s (2020) study show in addition that the reading performance of children with
dyslexia does not differ between serif and sans serif typefaces if they are matched
in terms of their spacing. This contradicts the recommendation made by the British
Dyslexia Association (2018) that documents printed for people with dyslexia should
use sans serif typefaces.
8.8 Conclusions
Any differences in the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces might become more
apparent in readers whose visual systems are challenged as the result of disablement.
In fact, the modal finding is that there are no differences in the reading capability of
readers with a variety of disabilities when they are presented with material printed
in serif and sans serif typefaces. It might be thought that children with congenital
visual impairment would be more sensitive to typographical factors, but in fact such
children rapidly adapt to reading both serif and sans serif typefaces. It has been
suggested that the effects of acquired visual impairment might be different from
the effects of congenital visual impairment, but both groups appear to be equally
proficient in reading serif and sans serif typefaces. A majority of people with aphasia
exhibit impairment of reading. In this field, it is often taken for granted that people
with aphasia will find sans serif typefaces more legible, but there is only one study
with a very small sample of participants that supports this position. Certainly, there
is now good evidence that the reading performance of children with dyslexia does
not differ between serif and sans serif typefaces when they are matched in terms of
their spacing.

74 8 Readers with Disabilities
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Chapter 9
General Conclusions to Part I
9.1 Key Findings from Part I
As was mentioned in Sect. 1.4, Part I has reviewed diverse studies using diverse
methods of data collection, and this precludes any formal meta-analysis to inte-
grate the findings. One must instead focus on the most common finding—the modal
finding—regarding the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces: superiority of serif
typefaces; superiority of sans serif typefaces; or no difference.
The research question is whether there are differences in the legibility of serif
and sans serif typefaces when they are used to generate printed material. The modal
finding from the research studies that have been reviewed is that there are not. This
applies to four out of six experiments on reading letters and words (Sects. 4.1 and
4.3); the two Korean studies yielded contradictory results. It applies to five out of six
experiments on reading sentences (Sect. 5.1; see also Sects. 6.1 and 6.2) and to all
four experiments on the comprehension of text, whether using measures of speed or
accuracy (Sect. 5.2). It also applies to all eight experiments on the reading capability
of younger readers and to two of the three experiments on the reading capability
of older readers (Chap. 7). Two studies have been cited in support of the supposed
superiority of serif typefaces, but these can be discounted: one failed to report any
empirical data on the issue (Burt, 1959; Burt et al., 1955), and the other suffered
from irredeemable methodological problems (Wheildon, 1990, 2005).
It is unfortunate that there has been relatively little work on the legibility of serif
and sans serif typefaces in readers with disabilities as opposed to their subjective
preferences for different kinds of typeface (Chap. 8). Two studies found no difference
in legibility between serif and sans serif typefaces (Pittman, 1976; Rubin et al., 2006).
One found a superiority for serif typefaces among children with congenital visual
impairment (Nolan, 1959), but this study seems to have suffered from methodological
problems. A fourth study found a superiority for sans serif typefaces among patients
with aphasia (Wilson & Read, 2016). It is generally assumed that sans serif typefaces
are more appropriate for people with aphasia, and there is an urgent need for more
research to evaluate this assumption. Finally, two studies have found that the reading
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0_9
75

76 9 General Conclusions to Part I
performance of children with dyslexia does not differ between serif and sans serif
typefaces when they are matched in terms of the spacing of the letters.
9.2 Preferences and Connotations
With regard to research studies concerned with readers’ preferences between serif
and sans serif typefaces and the connotations of the two kinds of typeface, the modal
finding is that among adult readers there is no overall preference between serif and
sans serif typefaces, nor any overall difference in the connotations of serif and sans
serif typefaces (Sect. 5.4). Even so, there is a suggestion that readers’ preferences
and the connotations of serif and sans serif typefaces may vary between different
contexts (see Schriver, 1997, pp. 289–303; Zachrisson, 1965, pp. 156–62). This has
major implications for educational publishing and educational assessment:
•For authors, editors, and publishers of books in many fields, any such differences
will be mainly of commercial relevance. However, authors and editors of academic
articles (and of books, too, in the humanities) will want to be assured that their work
is evaluated in terms of its content rather in terms of its typographical appearance.
This provides a far more logical reason for requiring that manuscripts should
be submitted for publication to academic journals and publishers in a standard
typeface than simply asserting that one kind of typeface is more legible than
another.
•The issue of fairness is especially relevant in the context of academic assessment.
It is possible that teachers and other assessors will give more positive evaluations
of students’ assignments if the teachers and students share the same typographical
preferences than if they differ in those preferences (although there seems to be
no empirical evidence on this matter). It would be useful if teachers who are
responsible for particular course units (and, ideally, for entire degree programmes)
could agree on their typographical preferences and make these known to their
students.
There is a need for research on whether reviewers’ evaluations of academic
manuscripts and teachers’ evaluations of students’ assignments are affected by their
own preferences and expectations. Nevertheless, the available evidence suggests that
these variations in readers’ expectations and preferences depend on their prior expe-
rience and familiarity with different typefaces and not on any intrinsic properties of
the typefaces themselves. Indeed, the results that were obtained by Uysal and Düger
(2012) indicate that even readers who are visually impaired will find most typefaces
relatively congenial after a gradual period of exposure.

9.3 Implications for Previous Assumptions 77
9.3 Implications for Previous Assumptions
Where does this leave previous assumptions about the legibility of serif and sans
serif typefaces? There is no support for traditional beliefs that serif typefaces are
superior to sans serif typefaces and certainly no support for Morison’s (1959) asser-
tion that “the serif is essential to the reading of alphabetical composition” (p. xi).
Regarding the American Psychological Association’s (2010) insistence that a serif
typeface “improves readability and reduces eye fatigue” (pp. 228–229), Perea (2013)
remarked: “There are no well-founded theoretical reasons to use of [sic] a serif font
over a sans serif font—beyond subjective preferences” (p. 16). To this one might
add: and there is no convincing empirical support, either.
The assertion contained in Merriam-Webster’s Manual for Writers and Editors
(1998) that “studies of typeface legibility have tended to demonstrate that standard
serif typefaces can be read somewhat more easily and quickly than standard sans-
serif typefaces” (p. 330) is factually incorrect. Finally, the length of the reference
list at the end of this book contradicts Kullmann’s (2015) statement that there have
only been “sporadic” studies on this issue (p. 1), and one can certainly dismiss his
assertion that previous research has not led to any clear conclusion. On the contrary,
based on the wealth of evidence that has accumulated over the last 140 years, the
clear conclusion is that there is no difference in the legibility of serif typefaces and
sans serif typefaces when they are used to produce printed material.
9.4 The American Psychological Association’s Current
Position
The guidelines in the sixth edition of the Association’s Publication Manual followed
those in previous editions. However, a seventh edition was published while this
monograph was being written; the new guidelines have already been adopted by the
American Educational Research Association and are likely to be adopted by other
organisations in the future. This seventh edition takes a rather different approach
(American Psychological Association, 2020):
APA [American Psychological Association] Style papers should be written in a font that is
accessible to all users. Historically, sans serif fonts have been preferred for online works and
serif fonts for print works; however, modern screen resolutions can typically accommodate
either type of font, and people who use assistive technologies can adjust font settings to their
preferences. Thus, a variety of font choices are permitted in APA style. . . .
Use the same font throughout the text of the paper. Options include
•a sans serif font such as 11-point Calibri, 11-point Arial, or 10-point Lucida Sans Unicode
or
•a serif font such as 12-point Times New Roman, 11-point Georgia, or normal (10-point)
Computer Modern....

78 9 General Conclusions to Part I
We recommend these fonts because they are legible and widely available and because they
include special characters such as math symbols and Greek letters. (p. 44)
An accompanying background paper confirms that the focus of the new guidelines
is on the accessibility of typefaces for users with disabilities rather than on their
legibility per se (Accessibility, 2020). The paper also refers to the Web Content and
Accessibility Guidelines produced by the World Wide Web Consortium, suggesting
that it is concerned with reading from screens rather than reading from paper, although
this is not made explicit. With regard to the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces,
the paper makes the following statement:
It is a common misconception that serif fonts (e.g., Times New Roman) should be avoided
because they are hard to read and that sans serif fonts (e.g., Calibri or Arial) are preferred.
Historically, sans serif fonts have been preferred for online works and serif fonts for print
works; however, modern screen resolutions can typically accommodate either type of font,
and people who use assistive technologies can adjust font settings to their preferences.
Research supports the use of various fonts for different contexts. For example, there are
studies that demonstrate how serif fonts are actually superior to sans serif in many long texts
(Arditi & Cho, 2005; Tinker, 1963). And there are studies that support sans serif typefaces
as superior for people living with certain disabilities (such as certain visual challenges and
those who learn differently; Russell-Minda et al., 2007). (“Myth 1,” paras. 1–2)
The choice of reference citations in this statement is rather odd. First, in discussing
different styles of typeface, Tinker (1963, pp. 46–48) referred to the study by Paterson
and Tinker (1932), who used a speed-of-reading test to measure the legibility of each
of ten typefaces. Seven were serif typefaces that had been nominated by a large
number of editors and publishers as being worthy of study, of which Scotch Roman
was used as a benchmark. The results showed that “type faces in common use do not
differ significantly” (Tinker, 1963, p. 48). The other three were chosen in order to be
“radically different” (p. 46): Kabel Light, a sans serif typeface; American Typewriter,
a slab serif typeface that imitated typewriting; and Cloister Black, an elaborate serif
typeface. Both American Typewriter and Cloister Black were read significantly more
slowly than Scotch Roman, but Kabel Light was not. Tinker concluded: “Type faces
in common use are equally legible.... A serifless type, Kabel Light, is read as rapidly
as ordinary type” (p. 64). In other words, Tinker (1963) did not show that serif
typefaces were superior to sans serif typefaces. Indeed, in a subsequent annotated
bibliography, Tinker (1966, p. 84) strengthened his conclusion in the light of research
findings since the study by Paterson and Tinker (1932): “Typefaces in common use
are equally legible. This includes the typefaces with serifs and those without serifs.”
Second, in addition to the study by Arditi and Cho (2005) that was mentioned in
Sect. 5.1 and involved the presentation of “scrambled” text, these researchers carried
out an experiment where they asked just four participants to read aloud individual
sentences. The sentences were presented one word at a time on a computer screen.
Arditi and Cho found no difference in performance between sentences in a slab serif
typeface and sentences in a sans serif typeface. It should be noted that they did not
make use of “long texts”. However, the main point is that, once again, Arditi and
Cho did not show that serif typefaces were superior to sans serif typefaces.

9.4 The American Psychological Association’s Current Position 79
Third, the review by Russell-Minda et al. (2007) on the legibility of typefaces
for readers with visual impairment covered both research on reading from paper and
research on reading from screens. They did indeed conclude: “Sans serif typefaces,
such as Arial, Helvetica, Verdana, or Adsans, are more readable than is Times New
Roman, for example” (p. 413). However, this was not supported by the evidence
that they described: they cited eight studies, of which six had found no significant
difference in legibility between serif and sans serif typefaces. In fact, their abstract
stated, “Research has not produced consistent findings” (p. 402). Moreover, in the
original report on which their published review was based, Russell-Minda et al.
(2006) had arrived at a very different conclusion: “Based on results from existing
studies, the effects of the presence or absence of serifs on text legibility seem to be
inconclusive” (p. 23). In short, they definitely did not demonstrate that sans serif
typefaces were superior for people living with certain disabilities.
In other words, each of these three reference citations is in error because it fails to
support the statement to which it is attached. In the bibliographic research literature,
these are referred to as “quotation errors”, although they include indirect quotations,
paraphrases, and summaries as well as direct quotations. Mertens and Baethge (2011)
demonstrated that around 20% of reference citations in the medical and bioscience
literature were quotation errors, but it is clearly unfortunate that such errors should
occur in a document published by the American Psychological Association.
9.5 Conclusions
This chapter concludes Part I by summarising and discussing the key findings. Are
there any differences in the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces when they are
used to generate printed material? The modal finding from the research studies that
have been reviewed is that there are not. Two studies in particular have been cited in
support of the superiority of serif typefaces, but these can be discounted on scientific
grounds. Are there any differences in readers’ preferences and connotations between
serif and sans serif typefaces when they are used to generate printed material? The
modal finding is that there is no overall preference between serif and sans serif type-
faces, nor any overall difference in their connotations. Even so, there is a suggestion
that readers’ preferences and the connotations of serif and sans serif typefaces may
vary between different contexts, and the chapter discussed the implications of this
for educational publishing and educational assessment.
The chapter considers the relevance of the findings for previously stated assump-
tions about the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces. The traditional view that
“everybody knows” that serif typefaces are easier to read on paper than sans serif
typefaces is clearly untenable, since this view has never been supported by sound
empirical evidence. Finally, the chapter concludes by assessing the position that is
adopted in the seventh (2020) edition of the American Psychological Association’s
Publication Manual. The position confounds research on reading from paper with
research on reading from computer screens, and the background paper on which it
depends suffers from several quotation errors (that is, reference citations that do not
support the statements to which they are attached).

80 9 General Conclusions to Part I
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Part II
Reading from Screens

Chapter 10
“Everybody Knows”: Reading
from Screens
10.1 Introduction
The last 60 years have seen fundamental changes in the way that people acquire and
share information. At the beginning of this period, information was mainly repre-
sented in the form of written text that was either read directly by readers themselves
or else communicated by teachers or other speakers. Nowadays, much information
is available on computer monitors or other screens. (One should, of course, recog-
nise the “digital divide” both between people in the developed world and people in
the developing world and also among diverse groups within the developed world in
terms of their access to the relevant technologies.) The availability of this technology
is particularly apparent in educational settings, where students routinely expect to
acquire information through computer systems and also use such systems to submit
their academic assignments to be evaluated by their teachers and other assessors.
Users of screen-based material have a choice in how they make use of that material.
They can either read it in the form in which it is presented, or they can print it in
hard copy. Shaikh (2004; Shaikh & Chaparro, 2004) carried out an online survey
concerning reading habits and obtained responses from 330 participants: 120 were
students, and the rest were recruited from a variety of e-mail lists. Most respondents
were happy to read news items, newsletters, and product information online, but they
preferred to scan articles in journals online before printing them off to read in more
detail. This was consistent with the findings of previous studies that researchers and
other professionals tended to print off articles or other important documents to read.
It used to be popular to assume that the increased use of digital technologies
among young adults meant that they constituted a distinct population who thought
and learned in qualitatively different ways from older people. They were variously
called “Millenials” (Strauss & Howe, 1991), the “Net Generation” (Tapscott, 1998),
“Digital Natives” (Prensky, 2001), and “Generation Y” (Jorgensen, 2003). However,
these ideas were not supported by research evidence (see, e.g., Pedró, 2009). Surveys
found quantitative differences between older and younger people in their attitudes to
technology and their uses of technology, but there was no evidence for any qualitative
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0_10
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84 10 “Everybody Knows”: Reading from Screens
differences in people born since the early 1980s (e.g., Jelfs & Richardson, 2013). In
fact, many of today’s students retain a strong preference for print (Baron et al., 2017;
Mizrachi, 2015), although some do not (Singer & Alexander, 2017). (This may well
depend on mundane factors such as local printing costs.)
Which typefaces should be used in the presentation of text on computer screens?
One approach was to employ versions of typefaces that were already well established
in conventional printing. The top row of Fig. 10.1 contains two examples of such
typefaces. As was mentioned in Sect. 1.2, the serif typeface Times New Roman was
devised in 1932 for use in the London newspaper The Times. Versions became popular
in printing and publishing more generally, and in the 1980s these were provided by
Macintosh and Microsoft in their word-processing software. The typeface known as
“Times Roman” was adopted by Apple. The sans serif typeface Arial was devised in
1982 for use on IBM printers. It was adopted by Microsoft in 1990, and it was the
default typeface for several years in some of its applications; it is also available for
Macintosh users.
An alternative approach was to devise new typefaces, often with the aim of
ensuring their legibility on small or low-resolution screens. The bottom row of
Fig. 10.1 contains two examples of such typefaces. The serif typeface Georgia and
the sans serif typeface Verdana were both developed for Microsoft in the 1990s
and were released in 1996. They were subsequently made available for installa-
tion on Macintosh computers. Other researchers developed entire families of type-
faces. In the United States, Bigelow and Holmes (1986) devised the Lucida family,
while in Russia Paratype was devised for material in both Latin and Cyrillic text
(Akhmadeeva et al., 2012). Other artificial typefaces were devised by Arditi (2004),
Beier and Larson (2010), and Sanocki (1987), although some of these were so radi-
cally different from traditional typefaces that they might well have caused difficulties
even for experienced readers.
It was mentioned in Sect. 5.1 that actual serif and sans serif typefaces typically
differ in a number of characteristics. In principle, it should be possible to devise
artificial typefaces in which serif and sans serif differ only in the presence or absence
of serifs. In fact, efforts to devise such typefaces disclosed a major confound with the
width of the letters and the inter-letter spacing. In particular, Arditi and Cho (2005)
found that adding serifs to Arditi’s (2004) sans serif style led to an increase in the
mean width of the letters in order to accommodate the serifs. Conversely, Moret-
Tatay and Perea (2011) found that removing the serifs from the serif style Lucida
Fig. 10.1 Examples of common serif typefaces (Times New Roman and Georgia) and common
sans serif typefaces (Arial and Verdana) for displaying text on screens

10.1 Introduction 85
Bright led to an increase in the average inter-letter spacing. This confounding means
that any results that are obtained using such typefaces are likely to be ambiguous.
In conventional paper-based printing, individual letters and other symbols are
discrete physical entities. As was mentioned in Sect. 2.4, the overall height of type-
faces (their body size) is traditionally expressed in terms of points, where one point
is approximately equal to 0.35 mm. However, the size of typefaces is also expressed
in terms of the dimensions of lowercase letters. The x-height of a typeface is the
height of lowercase letters that do not have either ascenders or descenders (such
as the letter xitself). When the same characters are presented on computer screens,
they are simply fragmented digitised representations. Body size and x-height become
relative terms since they depend on the size in which the characters are displayed
on-screen. Rendering printed typefaces as digitised letter forms has been an exceed-
ingly complex process involving complex debates and decisions (Bigelow, 2020a, b),
although much of this process may well not be apparent to most display-screen users.
Section 2.5 argued that there was no reason to think that serifs and other features
had the same consequences when people were reading from paper as when they were
reading from computer monitors or other screens. In fact, with regard to reading
from computer screens, designers and design educators have typically claimed that
the legibility of sans serif typefaces was superior to that of serif typefaces (e.g.,
Poncelet & Proctor, 1993; Schriver, 1997, p. 508; “Universal Design”, 1999, p. 5),
hence my colleague’s assertion, mentioned in Sect. 1.1, that “everybody knew” that
sans serif typefaces were easier to read on screens than were serif typefaces. Even
so, advocates of this position have usually failed to present any empirical evidence
in support of this claim, and accordingly Part II of this book reviews the research
literature with regard to the legibility of serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces when
they are used to generate material on computer monitors and other screens.
10.2 Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces Using
Older Technology
Before considering the legibility of typefaces using modern computers, it should be
acknowledged that the use of technology to enable information to be presented in
other ways than as material printed on paper is by no means a new phenomenon. From
the eighteenth century onwards, speakers used epidiascopes (opaque projectors also
known as episcopes) and “magic lanterns” (using transparent plates) to project images
of objects and other material onto viewing screens for potentially large audiences.
However, from the 1950s these were superseded by overhead projectors and slide
projectors. The widespread adoption of the latter technologies led to the development
of recommendations for best practice. It was widely asserted, in particular, that sans
serif styles rather than serif styles should be used for the projection of textual material.
Nevertheless, as Phillips (1976, pp. 18–19) observed, such assertions seem to have
been based on personal preferences rather than empirical research.

86 10 “Everybody Knows”: Reading from Screens
Adams et al. (1965) compared the legibility of different typefaces in the images
produced by an overhead projector. They tested 120 children in Grades 1, 2, 3, 5,
and 6 (i.e., aged 6–12) of a university’s laboratory school. The children in each grade
rotated among five rows of seats at varying distances from the projection screen.
They were shown groups of four uppercase letters produced on an electric typewriter
in five different styles and sizes and were asked to list them on a prepared response
form. For one style, the letters were in a sans serif typeface (Bulletin). For the other
four styles, they were produced in different sizes in a serif typeface (Elite). One of
these styles, Elite 6/32 in. (4.76 mm), was the same size as the Bulletin type. Adams
et al. noted that letters in the Elite 6/32 in. style were significantly more likely to be
reported correctly than were letters in the Bulletin style by children in four of the
five grades. Even so, they added that this “may be a phenomenon of the sample and
might not similarly be observed in a replication of the study” (p. 427).
Grooters (1972) carried out a similar study in which rows of ten uppercase
letters were presented to 60 adult participants in four different sizes at four different
distances by means of a Kodak Carousel slide projector. Instead of actual typefaces,
he employed the templates that were in use at the time for lettering in technical
drawing. The participants were required to read the letters aloud as if in an eye
examination. He found that the sans serif style LeRoy Standard was marginally
more legible than the slab serif style LeRoy Stymie Medium, but that both of these
were significantly more legible than the sans serif style LeRoy Condensed Gothic,
in which the letters were 60% of the width of those in LeRoy Standard. These results
were found at all distances and in all sizes, except for the closest distance and the
largest size where performance approached 100% for all three styles (in other words,
there were ceiling effects).
Phillips (1976) similarly compared a slab serif style of lettering (Leroy Stymie)
with a sans serif style (Twentieth Century). Using a Kodak Carousel projector, he
presented 31 volunteers with six slides, each containing five lines of ten randomly
ordered uppercase letters in decreasing size. Three slides contained letters printed in
the slab serif style, and three contained letters printed in the sans serif style, in each
case using a light, medium, or bold stroke width. Once again, the participants were
asked to read the letters in each slide aloud, line by line. Overall, performance was
better with the slab serif style than with the sans serif style (pp. 53–54). There was
however a significant interaction between the effects of letter style and letter size, such
that the difference between the two styles was only significant using one of the smaller
letter sizes (pp. 56–57). There was also a significant three-way interaction with stroke
width, such that the difference between the two styles was only significant for two
of the 15 combinations of size and stroke width (pp. 59–60). Phillips concluded
that performance was so poor with the smaller letter sizes that neither style would
be acceptable for projected visual materials; but that conversely performance was
so good using either style with the larger letter sizes that both serif and sans serif
lettering would be acceptable for projected visual materials (p. 70).
Woods et al. (2005) showed pairs of lowercase letters to groups of children from
kindergarten to fourth grade using a tachistoscope attached to a slide projector. The
children had to say whether the letters in each pair were the same or different and to

10.2 Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces … 87
write them down. Each pair was presented in a serif typeface (Times New Roman) or
in a sans serif typeface (Arial), and the two typefaces were presented either in separate
blocks of slides or in the same block. The children’s scores on both discrimination
and identification were higher for letters that were presented in the sans serif typeface
than for those presented in the serif typeface. This was true regardless of the children’s
age or the size of the typeface used. One problem with this study is that the children
were tested in small groups, and some cheating had taken place.
Overhead projectors and slide projectors have in turn been superseded by
computer-based projection software, most obviously by Microsoft PowerPoint. (This
was developed in the 1980s by an independent software company to produce
both overhead transparencies and slides. However, the company was acquired by
Microsoft in 1987, and it was then developed to display presentations through digital
projectors on both Windows and Macintosh systems.) PowerPoint has been in general
use since the early 1990s, and in practice its applications in education and in other
fields have tended to borrow techniques adopted with the older technology of slide
projectors. In particular, presenters are still being advised to use sans serif typefaces
rather than serif typefaces in their PowerPoint presentations (e.g., Garon, 1999).
More recently, Ing et al. (2017) found that 14 out of 17 speakers at an ophthalmology
conference had used sans serif typefaces in their presentations. They suggested that
“serif fonts may be harder to read in digital slides” (p. 172). Phillips’ (1976) sugges-
tion that such advice is based more upon personal preference than upon empirical
research probably still applies, but one study has evaluated this directly.
Earnest (2003) compared the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces for mate-
rial presented using PowerPoint. He assigned 138 students to five different groups.
Four groups viewed a recording of a speech given by their university’s president
incorporating a slide presentation, whereas the fifth group only viewed the speech.
Two of the first four groups viewed slides using a serif typeface (Times New Roman),
and the other two groups viewed slides using a sans serif typeface (Verdana). Imme-
diately afterwards, the students answered nine multiple-choice questions on factual
points mentioned in the speech. Nine days later, they were asked to complete the
test for a second time. Earnest found that the groups who had viewed slides obtained
higher scores than the group who had only viewed the speech. However, there were
no significant differences between the groups who had viewed the slides in a serif
typeface and the groups who had viewed the slides in a sans serif typeface.
The limited number of studies using these older technologies have failed to
produce unequivocal evidence favouring either serif or sans serif typefaces. Consis-
tent with this idea, participants tend to give similar qualitative ratings of serif and
sans serif typefaces presented using either slide projectors (Kastl & Child, 1968) or
PowerPoint (Mackiewicz, 2007). There is certainly no support for the notion that
sans serif styles should be routinely preferred for the projection of textual material.

88 10 “Everybody Knows”: Reading from Screens
10.3 Issues with Screen Technology
Early computers typically lacked the facility for generating visual displays; instead,
they produced text that was generated using rudimentary printers. In the 1960s,
however, it was realised that visual displays might be useful, and appropriate tech-
nology was at hand to facilitate this in the form of cathode-ray tubes (CRTs), which
were widely used in scientific research (as oscilloscopes) and most obviously in tele-
vision sets. In CRTs, an electron gun stimulates pixels arranged in a checkerboard
pattern on a phosphorescent screen, and this process is carried out repeatedly in a
systematic manner to generate a visible display. Early monitors tended to be very
low resolution, meaning that the details of images were lost. Indeed, this is probably
the origin of the idea that sans serif typefaces should be used, because serifs would
have been among the lost details. Schriver (1997, p. 403) noted that designers for
television had mainly used sans serif typefaces for many years (see also McVey,
1985). Even so, technology improved, and by the year 2000 high-resolution colour
CRT monitors had been developed.
In the 1990s, however, an alternative form of technology became available through
liquid crystal displays (LCDs). These use liquid crystals to modulate the light emitted
from a background to generate images on a computer screen, again using a checker-
board pattern of pixels that is repeatedly scanned. LCD monitors were initially devel-
oped for use with laptop computers because of their reduced size, weight, and power
consumption; however, during the 2000s they became available more generally, and
their resolution typically exceeded that of CRT monitors. As a result, since the late
2000s LCD monitors have generally superseded CRT monitors in computer-based
applications.
One issue with the presentation of text using both CRTs and LCDs is that of
aliasing. In general terms, this is the under-sampling of the information needed to
produce an accurate reproduction of a particular character. More specifically, in
both CRT and LCD technology, text is displayed in the form of arrays of square
pixels. If a stroke in a character is oblique rather than horizontal or vertical, its
contour will receive only an approximate representation as an array of pixels. As a
result, it will appear irregular and ragged rather than continuous (an effect sometimes
known as “staircasing” or “the jaggies”). In theory, such “aliased” text should be less
legible than text printed on paper, and the effect should be more pronounced with
low-resolution monitors than with high-resolution monitors.
This issue was originally handled by means of anti-aliasing software. This
smoothed the edges of characters by averaging the surrounding pixels to yield varying
levels of grey scale in the contours of the displayed text. Gould et al. (1987) found
that text presented on paper was read significantly faster than aliased text presented
in the same typeface on a CRT; however, the difference became nonsignificant when
text presented on paper was compared with anti-aliased text presented in the same
typeface. An analogous process known as “scale-to-grey” was used when displaying
images scanned from printed text on computer monitors. Sheedy and McCarthy
(1994) found that scale-to-grey led to enhanced reading performance compared to

10.3 Issues with Screen Technology 89
simple black-and-white text, and participants reported fewer symptoms of eye strain
as a result of reading scale-to-grey text; as expected, both differences were greater
with low-resolution CRTs than with high-resolution CRTs.
The increasing use of LCDs in the 1990s enabled a different approach to be taken
to the aliasing issue. In LCDs, each pixel consists of three vertical bars representing
the colours red, green, and blue. In 1998, Microsoft introduced ClearType software
which used sub-pixel rendering with the aim of enhancing the legibility of text
presented in LCDs. However, later research using a variety of tasks failed to show an
unequivocal advantage of ClearType text over aliased text (Aten et al., 2002; Dillon
et al., 2004, 2006; Gugerty et al., 2004; Slattery & Rayner, 2010; Tyrrell et al.,
2001). Gugerty et al. (2004) also compared ClearType text with anti-aliased text
using 10-point Verdana. They found that words presented in anti-aliased text were
read significantly more slowly and less accurately than words presented in ClearType
or aliased text, and they argued that anti-aliasing software should not be employed
with smaller type sizes.
One problem with ClearType software was that the resulting characters had
coloured borders that were generally thought to be distracting for readers. Microsoft
therefore offered ClearType with five levels of sub-pixel rendering that varied from
greyscale with no colour filtering to a high level of colour contrast. Sheedy et al.
(2008) evaluated both objective performance and subjective preference for material
presented in a sans serif typeface (Verdana) with all five levels of sub-pixel rendering.
They found that readers preferred a moderate level of ClearType rendering to higher
levels or to greyscale, but that ClearType rendering did not improve text legibility,
reading speed, or reading comfort.
Another issue with screen technology is the rate at which images are refreshed:
with CRTs, too slow a refresh rate leads to flicker. Wilkins (1986) showed that
flicker tended to disrupt readers’ saccadic eye movements, even when the refresh rate
was sufficiently high to render the flicker imperceptible. (Wilkins showed that eye
movements were also disrupted when readers read a printed page that was illuminated
by conventional fluorescent lighting.) With LCDs, the screen itself does not flicker,
but in many models the screen is backlit using pulse width modulation. The flicker
may not be perceptible, but readers’ eye movements may be disrupted, and they
may complain of discomfort (Brown et al., 2020; Wilkins, 2021). Thus, any findings
regarding participants’ eye movements obtained when reading from either CRTs or
LCDs need to be interpreted with caution.
10.4 Conclusions
This chapter has discussed the increased use of screen-based reading in education and
in daily life generally. Readers usually have the option of printing off screen-based
material to be read on paper, and this seems to be popular when researchers have
to read more serious material. Both the use of computer technology and attitudes
to such technology seem to vary with the user’s age, but there is no support for the

90 10 “Everybody Knows”: Reading from Screens
so-called “digital natives” hypothesis. Some existing typefaces were taken over to
use in computer systems, while other typefaces were developed specifically for on-
screen use. The chapter discussed the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces when
projected by means of older technology such as slide projectors, overhead projectors,
and PowerPoint, but this did not show any consistent difference in their legibility.
Finally, the chapter described some of the technical issues concerning the way that
images are displayed using CRTs and LCDs.
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate
credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and
indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from
the copyright holder.

Chapter 11
The Legibility of Letters and Words
11.1 Reading Letters and Words in Serif and Sans Serif
Typefaces
One of the earliest uses of computers in vision research was as tachistoscopes for the
brief presentation of visual stimuli. One fundamental problem was that cathode-ray
tubes (CRTs) suffered from the decay time or persistence of the phosphor in the
individual pixels, which led to inaccurate measurements (see Hutner et al., 1999). (It
should be noted that traditional tachistoscopes were by no means immune to such
problems: Mollon & Polden, 1978.) Liquid crystal displays (LCDs) are generally
regarded as more appropriate for vision research (Wang & Nikoli´c, 2011). Even so,
it is generally regarded as being good practice to use a backward-masking procedure
in which a second stimulus or mask (perhaps only a random pattern) is presented
after a brief interval to overwrite the visual trace of the original stimulus.
Suen and Komoda (1986) used this approach to compare the recognition of indi-
vidual uppercase and lowercase letters that had been digitised using an optical scanner
from print in a slab serif typeface (Courier), a sans serif typeface (Letter Gothic),
and the output of a dot-matrix printer. All three typefaces were monospaced or non-
proportional (that is, each character occupied the same width). The characters were
presented on a high-resolution CRT screen controlled by an Apple microcomputer.
(The actual duration of the presentation was not specified.) They were followed by
a mask after 0 ms, 16.7 ms, or 33.3 ms. If the mask was presented immediately after
the letters, performance was best with the sans serif typeface and worst with the dot-
matrix style. The differences among the three styles were much reduced if the mask
was presented after a delay, but this may have been a ceiling effect, since performance
was 80% or better with all three styles, presumably because of the additional time
available for processing the letters.
As mentioned in Sect. 4.1, Korean is another language where the alphabet can
be rendered in either serif (or Ming) typefaces or sans serif (or Gothic) typefaces.
Hwang et al. (1997) presented Korean participants with CRT screens consisting of
12 windows, each containing letters in one of six different sizes. The participants’
© The Author(s) 2022
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92 11 The Legibility of Letters and Words
task was to find and read aloud a particular target letter and then to report how
much visual fatigue they had experienced while carrying out the task. The letters
were presented using either an unspecified Ming typeface or an unspecified Gothic
typeface. The participants’ response times were faster, their accuracy was higher, and
their reported visual fatigue was lower when reading letters in a sans serif typeface
than when reading letters in a serif typeface. Even so, different results were obtained
by Kong et al. (2011) in a study that was described in Sect. 4.1. They asked Korean
participants to read aloud sets of four one- or two-syllable letters of varying sizes and
to rate how much discomfort they had experienced when reading each set. The letters
were presented either on paper or on an LCD screen using either an unspecified Ming
typeface or an unspecified Gothic typeface. When the letters were presented on an
LCD screen, there was no difference between the serif typeface and the sans serif
typeface either in the participants’ performance or in their reported discomfort.
As was mentioned in Sect. 5.1, Arditi (2004) devised software to generate type-
faces with slab serifs of varying size. Arditi and Cho (2005) used this software to
construct lowercase typefaces of uniform thickness with slab serifs extending 0%
(sans serif), 5%, or 10% of the cap height (the height of capital or uppercase letters).
In theory, the resulting typefaces should have varied only in the size of the serifs, but,
as was mentioned in Sect. 10.1, Arditi and Cho found that an increase in the spacing
between successive letters had been required to accommodate the serifs. They there-
fore used an inter-letter spacing of 0%, 10%, or 40% of the cap height, yielding
a3×3 design. Arditi and Cho measured size thresholds when random five-letter
strings were presented on a CRT computer screen as black letters against a white
background. Data were obtained from four participants with normal vision. There
was a large effect of spacing such that closely spaced letters yielded higher thresholds
(i.e., poorer performance). There was also a significant but small effect of serif size,
such that serifs of 5% or 10% led to lower thresholds (i.e., better performance) than
a sans serif typeface, which Arditi and Cho ascribed to the concomitant increase in
spacing required to accommodate them.
After Microsoft introduced ClearType software with the aim of tackling the
aliasing issue in text presented on LCDs (see Sect. 10.3), a range of new typefaces
was commissioned to try to exploit this new technology. They included two serif
typefaces (Cambria and Constantia) and four sans serif typefaces (Calibri, Candara,
Corbel, and Consolas, the last for use mainly in programming). Chaparro et al.
(2006a, b, 2010) evaluated the legibility of these new typefaces in comparison with
that of the serif typeface Times New Roman and the sans serif typeface Verdana. Nine
participants were presented with individual characters from all eight typefaces for
just 34 ms each (but with no backward mask) using an LCD monitor with ClearType
software enabled and were asked to say each character’s name aloud. The proportion
of characters reported correctly was highest for Consolas, Cambria, and Verdana and
lowest for Times New Roman, Candara, and Corbel. Taking Times New Roman as
the reference, accuracy was significantly better for Consolas, Cambria, and Verdana
but not for the other four typefaces (Chaparro et al., 2010). Despite these somewhat
ambivalent findings, Microsoft made Calibri the default typeface for all its Office
applications in 2007 (and it remains the default at the time of writing).

11.1 Reading Letters and Words in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces 93
Moret-Tatay and Perea (2011) used a lexical decision task in which Spanish
students had to say whether or not stimuli were genuine words. Half the stimuli
were Spanish words, and the other half were nonwords created by changing two
letters in genuine Spanish words. Each was presented in the centre of an LCD screen
in either a serif typeface (Lucida Bright) or a sans serif typeface (Lucida Sans). Once
again, the typefaces should have differed only in the presence or absence of serifs,
but, as mentioned in Sect. 10.1, Moret-Tatay and Perea noted that the serifs had
occupied some of the space between the letters, and so removing the serifs led to
a slight increase in the inter-letter spacing. They found that participants responded
significantly more quickly to words presented in a sans serif typeface than to words
presented in a serif typeface, and they suggested that this might have been due to the
slight increase in inter-letter spacing.
11.2 The “Stripiness” of Words Displayed on Screens
Section 4.2 described research by Wilkins et al. (2007) which measured the vertical
“stripiness” of a word by the height of the first peak of the autocorrelation between
an image of the word and a second, horizontally displaced image of the same word.
They had found that words with a higher first peak (i.e., more stripy words) were read
more slowly than words with a lower first peak (i.e., less stripy words). However,
it was not clear whether this led to variations in how quickly words in different
typefaces were read.
Liversedge et al. (2006) had displayed sentences to 15 students as white letters on
a black background using a CRT screen and monitored the movements of both their
eyes. They found that in normal binocular reading the two eyes were often misaligned
after a saccade, so that part of the duration of the subsequent fixation was taken up
correcting this disparity in order to achieve binocular vergence. Jainta et al. (2010)
presented 32 German participants with 120 unrelated sentences in blocks of 10 to
read silently from a CRT screen. They found that the participants achieved better
binocular vergence when the sentences contained words with a higher first peak, but
that this took longer to achieve and led to a longer overall fixation duration. They
argued that these findings explained the longer overall reading time for words with
higher first peaks.
Wilkins et al. (2020) observed that different typefaces appeared to vary in the
periodicity of their letters’ vertical strokes. In two serif typefaces, Times and Palatino,
the letter strokes were relatively evenly spaced, whereas in two sans serif typefaces,
Arial and Verdana, the spaces between the strokes within a letter were greater than
the spaces between the letters, leading to low periodicity. Wilkins et al. determined
the first peak of the horizontal autocorrelation for passages from two novels when
they were printed to the Retina (LCD) screen of an Apple Macbook Pro in each of
nine serif typefaces and in each of 11 sans serif typefaces. They found that the first
peak of the horizontal autocorrelation was significantly greater for the serif typefaces
than for the sans serif typefaces. Wilkins et al. argued that this difference in the first

94 11 The Legibility of Letters and Words
peak of the horizontal autocorrelation was not due to the serifs themselves but to the
effect of the serifs on the rhythm or periodicity of the typefaces. However, Wilkins
et al. did not provide any evidence that these differences led to significant variations
in how quickly words in different typefaces were read.
11.3 Confusions Among Letters in Serif and Sans Serif
Typefaces
In their original study involving the presentation of uppercase and lowercase letters
in either a slab serif typeface or a sans serif typeface (mentioned in Sect. 11.1),
Suen and Komoda (1986) observed that with both typefaces errors often consisted of
confusions between uppercase and lowercase forms of the same letter or confusions
between letters that were visually similar in the same case. The total number of
confusions was similar in the two typefaces, but there were certain differences in the
pattern of confusions. For instance, with the sans serif typeface, lowercase letters
tended to be mistaken as their uppercase counterparts rather than vice versa, but
the reverse tended to be true for the slab serif typeface. Suen and Komoda ascribed
these trends to the design of the characters in the relevant typefaces rather than to
the presence or absence of serifs.
Using a laptop computer with an LCD screen, D. Fox, Chaparro, and Merkle
(2007) presented individual characters (the 26 lowercase letters plus the digits 0–9
and 11 common mathematical and scientific symbols) to ten participants in ClearType
rendering for just 34 ms (but with no backward mask) in each of 20 different typefaces.
The participants were asked to say each character aloud and were scored on their
accuracy. Fox et al. focused on errors for the letter e(which is confusable with the
letter cand the number 0) and for the number 0(which is confusable with the letters
eand o). For the letter e, the most accurate performance was obtained with the sans
serif typefaces Clearview Text and Verdana, and the least accurate performance was
obtained with the serif typeface Garamond. For the number 0, the most accurate
performance was obtained with the serif typefaces Centaur and Rockwell, and the
least accurate performance was obtained with the serif typeface Constantia.
In further results from this study, Fox et al. (2008) compared the data for the
numbers 0and 1(which is confusable with the letter l). For the number 1,themost
accurate performance was obtained with the sans serif typeface ClearView Text, and
the least accurate performance was obtained with the serif typeface Centaur. Fox et al.
employed classification tree analysis to identify the physical features of different
typefaces that might be responsible for variations in legibility for both numbers,
although they did not include the presence or absence of serifs as a feature in these
analyses. Taken together, the findings of this study suggest that some characters
tend to be more legible when presented on-screen in sans serif typefaces than when
presented on-screen in serif typefaces, whereas the opposite is true for some other
characters.

11.3 Confusions Among Letters in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces 95
Beier and Larson (2010) constructed three new artificial typefaces. In each case,
they varied the presence or absence of slab serifs with no other changes to the letters
themselves. In a pre-test, each of 34 participants viewed the letter dpresented on the
LCD screen of a laptop computer that had been placed on a podium at eye-level height
at a distance of 10 m. They approached the podium until they could correctly identify
the letter. The relevant distance was then used for the presentation of individual
uppercase and lowercase letters in the main experiment. Beier and Larson found
that serifs could serve either to enhance or to impair the relative differentiation of
individual letters. For instance, a slab serif added to the top of the stem of the letter i
led to improved identification, but this was not the case when slab serifs were added to
both the top of the stem and the baseline. In Sect. 4.2, it was noted that similar findings
had been obtained with the identification of individual characters when reading from
print (Harris, 1973; Tinker, 1963, p. 36). However, Vernon’s (1929) findings, again
based on reading from print, imply that such confusions would be much less likely
if letters were presented in the context of meaningful text, as in normal reading.
11.4 Conclusions
As with reading from print, the earliest research on the legibility of different typefaces
when reading from screens was concerned with recognising individual letters and
words under different conditions. Studies that employed authentic typefaces showed
at most that some sans serif typefaces are more legible than some serif typefaces.
Research using artificial typefaces suffers from confounding between (a) the presence
or absence of serifs and (b) variations in the width of the letters and the spacing
among successive letters. The horizontal autocorrelation of individual words differs
across different typefaces, but it is not clear whether this leads to differences in how
quickly different typefaces can be read. The vertical stripiness of serif typefaces
tends to be greater than that of sans serif typefaces, but there is little evidence that
this leads to variations in how quickly words in different typefaces are read. As
with printed letters and words, identification errors are often the result of confusions
among visually similar letters, but visual confusions are not more likely with sans
serif typefaces than with serif typefaces, contradicting an old hypothesis that serifs
make letters easier to discriminate (Legros, 1922, p. 11).

96 11 The Legibility of Letters and Words
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate
credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and
indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from
the copyright holder.

Chapter 12
Reading and Comprehending Text
12.1 Reading Text in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces
The work by Gould et al. (1987) was mentioned in Sect. 10.3. In another exper-
iment, Gould et al. followed a number of previous studies comparing screen and
paper presentation in a proof-reading task: 18 research workers read through arti-
cles of about 1,000 words to try to locate between 1 and 10 misspelled words by
saying them aloud to the experimenter. The screen versions were presented as anti-
aliased characters on a cathode-ray tube (CRT) screen using a system which had been
specifically designed to simulate their appearance on paper, and high-quality printed
versions were generated using the same script files. The screen and paper versions
of each article were both presented using a serif typeface (Press) and two sans serif
typefaces (Letter Gothic and Univers). Each participant read one article on-screen
and one article on paper in each of the three typefaces. Overall, the paper versions
were read significantly faster than the screen versions, although this might have been
partly because the screen system required 1.5 s scrolling time to go from one page
of text to the next. There was no significant difference in the participants’ accuracy
between the two versions. There was no significant variation across the typefaces
and no significant interaction between the effects of display mode and typeface in
either speed or accuracy.
Also using a CRT screen, Tullis et al. (1995) compared the legibility of four
typefaces available in the Microsoft (MS) Windows operating environment: two serif
typefaces, MS Serif and Small Font, and two sans serif typefaces, Arial and MS Sans
Serif. Each was used in two, three, or four different sizes, yielding 12 combinations
of typeface and size. Each of these was shown in either a bold or regular style
and against a white or grey background, resulting in a total of 48 conditions that
were administered in a random sequence. All of the participants viewed the same
paragraph of text presented in each condition and were asked to count the number
of typographical errors that it contained. After they had read the paragraph, they
pressed the “Enter” key and reported the number of errors using a dialogue box.
Tullis et al. measured the time taken to read the paragraph and whether or not the
© The Author(s) 2022
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98 12 Reading and Comprehending Text
correct number of errors had been reported. The two sans serif typefaces yielded
faster reading times, higher accuracy, and higher ratings than the two serif typefaces,
especially with larger type sizes.
Garcia and Caldera (1996) asked ten students to read aloud paragraphs of 30
words from a computer screen (neither the computer nor the monitor was specified).
The paragraphs were presented in three different type sizes and in five different
typefaces: a serif typeface (Times New Roman), three sans serif typefaces (Arial,
System, and MS Sans Serif), and a cursive typeface (i.e., a typeface intended to
mimic handwriting) (Lucida Casual). There was significant variation across the 15
conditions, with 10-point Arial yielding the fastest reading time. System yielded the
second fastest time, but no further results were reported.
Stone et al. (1999) asked 48 female survey interviewers to read aloud 24 sets of
material, each consisting of 30 random words chosen to be at the eighth-grade reading
level. Half of the sets were presented in black ink on white paper, whereas the other
half were presented in black type against a white background on the liquid crystal
display (LCD) screen of a laptop computer to simulate the former. In both cases,
each set of words was presented on a single page, and the order of the conditions was
counterbalanced. The sets of words were presented in three different typefaces: a sans
serif typeface (Helvetica), a serif typeface (Times Roman), and a slab serif typeface
(Courier). Stone et al. found that their participants read the sets in serif typefaces
faster than the sets in sans serif typeface, but there was no significant variation in the
number of errors made. There was no significant difference in either reading speed
or accuracy between the sets presented on paper and those presented on-screen, and
neither of the interactions with the effects of typeface and mode of presentation was
significant.
Josephson (2008) carried out an exploratory study of eye-movements in reading
from screens. She presented six participants with four news stories of around 250
words on a high-resolution monitor, and their eye-movements were tracked using a
corneal reflection system. The stories were presented in the four different typefaces
shown in Fig. 10.1 in Sect. 10.1. Afterwards, the participants were asked to rate
each typeface on several 10-point scales and then to say which was easiest to read
and which they liked the most. The story presented in Verdana was read the fastest,
followed by that presented in Times New Roman. The story presented in Times
New Roman yielded the fewest fixations, whereas that presented in Verdana yielded
the most. Conversely, the story presented in Verdana yielded the fewest backward
movements to reread previously presented words, whereas that presented in Times
New Roman yielded the most. Verdana was rated highest whereas Times New Roman
was rated lowest of the four typefaces. When asked which typeface was the easiest to
read, three of the participants chose Verdana, whereas none chose Times New Roman.
Apart from the small number of participants, one limitation of this study was that one
story was assigned to each typeface, and so differences among the typefaces were
directly confounded with differences among the news stories themselves.
Banerjee and Bhattacharyya (2011) presented 40 young postgraduate researchers
with 18 passages of roughly the same length on an LCD monitor. The passages
were presented in one of three serif typefaces (Times New Roman, Georgia, and

12.1 Reading Text in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces 99
the slab serif Courier New) or one of three sans serif typefaces (Arial, Tahoma, and
Verdana) in one of three sizes (10, 12, or 14 points). The passages were assigned at
random to the 18 conditions for each participant and presented in a different random
order to each participant. The time taken by the participants to read each passage
was recorded, they then rated the overall ease or difficulty of reading each passage,
and finally they completed a short questionnaire on the mental workload involved in
reading each passage. Their eye movements were also tracked using a binocular eye
movement recorder.
There was a significant interaction between the effects of typeface and type size on
the participants’ reading time. The effect of type size was significant for Courier New
and Arial, but not for the other four typefaces. The mean reading time was signifi-
cantly less for the serif typefaces than the sans serif typefaces, but only for 10-point
and 14-point sizes. Courier New and Arial also yielded the fastest average reading
time. Verdana in 14-point was rated as easier to read than any other combinations
of typeface and size, and Arial in 14-point was rated as the second most preferred.
Verdana in 14-point was also rated as having the least mental workload, followed
by Arial in 14-point and Tahoma in 14-point. Courier New yielded the lowest fixa-
tion duration, followed by Verdana and Arial; Courier New also yielded the lowest
total gaze duration, followed by Verdana. In contrast, Times New Roman yielded
the longest fixation duration and the longest total gaze duration. However, there
were no overall differences between serif and sans serif typefaces in eye movement
parameters.
Perea (2013) presented 24 Spanish undergraduate students with individual
sentences on a computer screen and measured their eye movements using a video-
based eye-tracking device. Each sentence appeared when the participant looked at a
square on the left-hand side of the screen, and the participant pressed a key when they
had finished reading the sentence to themselves. To check on their comprehension,
a yes/no question was presented after 20% of the sentences. (Overall, 96% of these
questions were answered correctly.) The sentences were presented in four blocks of
30. Half were presented in the serif typeface Lucida, whereas half were presented
in the sans serif typeface Lucida Sans. There was no significant difference in the
participants’ reading times, in the total number of fixations, or in the mean duration
of their fixations between the serif and sans serif sentences. Perea concluded that
the presence or absence of serifs did not materially affect the process of normal
reading, although different results might have been obtained with longer extracts, as
in Josephson’s study.
12.2 Comprehending Text in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces
As with research on reading from paper (see Chap. 5), asking the participants to read
continuous text provides less opportunity for researchers to impose experimental
control over their reading behaviour. Some researchers have therefore focused on

100 12 Reading and Comprehending Text
their participants’ comprehension of meaningful material read from screens rather
than upon its legibility per se.
Williams (1990) carried out an experiment in which 56 students read two passages
on a CRT monitor and answered four comprehension questions after each passage.
Each passage contained 650–700 words and filled seven screens, so that the students
had to scroll down to read the complete passages. The material was presented in either
a serif typeface (10-point Times Roman) or a sans serif typeface (9-point Helvetica);
the use of different type sizes ensured that the typefaces were of similar x-height.
The participants were randomly assigned to five different groups. Four groups saw
the two passages in different typefaces, with the order of the two passages and the
order of the two typefaces counterbalanced across the four groups. The fifth group
saw both passages in the sans serif typeface to check for any difference in difficulty
between the two passages. The monitor screen also contained a clock, and the students
were asked to record the times when they started and finished reading each passage.
The comprehension questions were multiple-choice with five alternatives. The fifth
(control) group showed no difference in mean reading rate between the two passages.
Across the other four groups, the mean reading rate was 14.75 words/min faster for the
sans serif typeface than for the serif typeface, but the difference was not statistically
significant.
Lenze (1991) used a personal computer to present 84 students with a brief para-
graph and then asked them a question based on its content to which they would
have to type a one-word answer. The paragraph was initially presented for 1 s; if
the participant answered incorrectly, the paragraph was presented for 1 s longer, and
this process was continued until they answered the question correctly. They were
then presented with three further paragraphs in the same way. Half the participants
chosen at random were shown the paragraph in a serif typeface, and the other half
were shown the paragraph in a sans serif typeface. (Neither of the typefaces was spec-
ified.) Finally, all the participants were shown examples of text in both serif and sans
serif typefaces and were asked which they preferred. Lenze found that there was no
sign of any significant difference between the two groups of participants in the time
needed to achieve comprehension of the texts, which suggested that serif typefaces
and sans serif typefaces were equally effective in supporting reading comprehension.
Even so, 77% of the students preferred the sans serif typeface to the serif typeface.
Boyarski et al. (1998) compared the serif typeface Georgia and the sans serif
typeface Verdana, both of which had been designed for on-screen display. Sixteen
university staff and graduate students read two passages from a standard reading test
presented in the two typefaces in the same body size in Microsoft Word without anti-
aliasing. The orders of the typefaces and the passages were both counterbalanced.
They were allowed 1 min to read each passage and were then asked four questions
to test their comprehension of the passage (each answer being scored between 0 and
3). Finally, the participants were asked to compare the two typefaces. A measure of
“effective reading speed” was obtained by dividing their comprehension score by
their actual reading time on each passage in order to allow for the possibility of a
trade-off between speed and accuracy. Their comprehension scores were significantly
higher for passages in Georgia than for passages in Verdana. Nevertheless, there was

12.2 Comprehending Text in Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces 101
no significant difference between the two conditions either in their actual reading
time or in their effective reading speed. The participants judged the passage presented
in Verdana to be easier to read than the passage presented in Georgia, but there was
no significant difference in their ratings of the passages’ sharpness or legibility.
Hojjati and Muniandy (2014) presented 30 international students at a Malaysian
university with four 200-word English texts in different typefaces. Two were
presented in the serif typeface Times New Roman, and two were presented in the sans
serif typeface Verdana; in each case, one text was presented single-spaced, and the
other was presented double-spaced. After each text, the students were presented with
questions designed to test their retention of its content. Finally, they were asked to rate
the ease with which they had been able to read each text on a 6-point scale. Regardless
of spacing, they found text displayed in Verdana easier to read than text displayed
in Times New Roman, they read text displayed in Verdana more quickly, and they
recalled more of the content of text displayed in Verdana. However, the researchers
had used Amazon Kindles (which use microcapsules containing electronic “ink”)
rather than LCDs, and at least some of the texts did not fit completely onto the visible
area of the screens (p. 167). The material had been taken from Wikipedia and other
sources and had been checked by subject experts, but the texts themselves suffered
from grammatical and stylistic problems. It is also not clear whether the typefaces
used for different texts were counterbalanced across participants or whether each
text was always presented in the same typeface.
Csilla et al. (2016) asked 74 Hungarian students to read to themselves four self-
contained excerpts from a Hungarian translation of The Nature of Space and Time
by Hawking and Penrose (1999). The excerpts ran for four pages in the original
book but had been reformatted to fit onto two pages of European A4-sized paper.
Each excerpt was prepared in six different typefaces and then saved in Portable
Document Format. Two excerpts were presented on paper, and two were presented
on an LCD computer monitor. In each case, one excerpt was presented in a serif
typeface randomly chosen from Book Antiqua, Garamond, and Times New Roman,
and the other was presented in a sans serif typeface randomly chosen from Arial,
Calibri, and Verdana, so that each student saw four different typefaces. The order
of the four texts was randomised for each student. The students timed themselves
reading each excerpt and then answered a number of questions about its content.
Csilla et al. analysed the data for each of the four excerpts separately and carried
out independent-groups tests comparing (a) the participants who had read the excerpt
on paper with those who had read the excerpt on-screen and (b) the participants who
had read the excerpt in a serif typeface with those who had read the excerpt in a
sans serif typeface. There were no significant differences in either reading time or
comprehension for any of the four excerpts. It is unfortunate that Csilla et al. did not
increase the statistical power of their analysis by using the data from all four excerpts
and carrying out repeated-measures tests on the variables of presentation medium
and typeface within the 74 participants. They also did not examine whether there
was any interaction between the effects of these two variables on either reading time
or comprehension.

102 12 Reading and Comprehending Text
12.3 Rapid Serial Visual Presentation
The introduction of new technologies that enable images to be presented in a variety
of visual forms prompted new research methods to be used for investigating reading.
One such method is that of rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP), in which letters,
words, or groups of words are presented one at a time at the reader’s point of fixation.
This method was first developed by Gilbert (1959a, b), who presented sentences
containing eight words using a movie projector to each of 76 participants and asked
them to write down immediately afterwards what they had seen. He found that they
were much more accurate when successive pairs of words were shown at the point of
fixation than when successive pairs of words were presented across the screen as if in
a line of text. Gilbert concluded that the former procedure enhanced the identification
of stimuli by eliminating the need for eye movements.
Rubin and Turano (1992) digitised characters from the output of a laser printer
using a Times Roman typeface and then used them in text displayed one word at a
time on a high-resolution screen controlled by an IBM computer. They found that
readers who were previously unfamiliar with this procedure could achieve reading
speeds that were several times faster than when reading the same material presented
on-screen as a single paragraph, typically in excess of 1,000 words/min for reading
aloud or as fast as 1,800 words/min for silent reading.
As was mentioned in Sect. 11.1, Suen and Komoda (1986) had digitised printed
characters in a slab serif typeface (Courier), a sans serif typeface (Letter Gothic), and
the output of a dot-matrix printer. They used these characters to present paragraphs of
roughly 160 words drawn from magazine articles to 36 participants. Each paragraph
was shown on a high-resolution CRT screen, one word at a time for just 100 ms.
Multiple-choice questions (how many was not specified) were then employed to
assess the participants’ comprehension of the paragraph. The dot-matrix style yielded
the worst performance, but there was no difference between the comprehension of
material presented in the slab serif typeface and that presented in the sans serif
typeface. Suen and Komoda argued that the higher-order skills and strategies involved
in reading connected text had overridden any differences in legibility between the
serif and sans serif typefaces.
Yager et al. (1998) used the RSVP method to compare the legibility of two type-
faces matched for x-height: Dutch, a serif typeface similar to Times; and Swiss, a sans
serif typeface similar to Helvetica. Sentences were presented on a CRT monitor in
white letters on a black background under conditions of either high luminance or low
luminance. The latter was intended to stress the visual system and hence to simulate
the situation of readers with visual impairment. The participants were 46 normally
sighted college and high-school students who were asked to read each sentence aloud
immediately after it had been presented. The presentation rate was calibrated to iden-
tify the threshold for correct responding for each participant. Under high luminance,
there was no significant difference between the number of sentences read correctly
in the two typefaces. Under low luminance, performance was significantly better
with the Swiss typeface. Yager et al. noted that in this situation the Dutch typeface

12.3 Rapid Serial Visual Presentation 103
was close to the threshold of visual acuity. They speculated that under conditions
of low luminance either the serifs or the thinner strokes of the letters of the Dutch
typeface tended to be invisible, and that this was responsible for the significantly
poorer reading performance.
Also using RSVP, Morris et al. (2002) presented 27 participants with words that
made up meaningful but unconnected sentences. The words were presented on a CRT
monitor in slab serif and sans serif typefaces taken from Bigelow and Holmes’ (1986)
Lucida styles to ensure that the typefaces were matched in all respects except for
the presence or absence of serifs. When the words were presented at the equivalent
of 14-point type (a normal reading size), there was no difference in the number
that were read correctly in the slab serif and sans serif typefaces. However, when
they were presented at the equivalent of 4-point type (a small but still tolerable
size), performance was better with the sans serif typeface than with the slab serif
typeface. Morris et al. suggested that the letters appeared relatively crowded in the
latter situation, and that rendering serifs in small sizes might be counterproductive.
As mentioned in Sect. 5.1, Arditi and Cho (2005) devised lowercase typefaces
of uniform thickness with slab serifs that extended for 0% (sans serif), 5%, or 10%
of their cap height. They presented sentences in these typefaces on a CRT display
screen using RSVP and adjusted the presentation speed for each participant to ensure
a 50% correct reading rate. Data were obtained from two participants with normal
vision and two with impaired vision. The former participants achieved higher reading
speeds than the latter participants, but there was no effect of serif size and hence no
effect of the presence versus the absence of serifs. Arditi and Cho acknowledged that
the small number of participants was a limitation of their study.
One motivation for investigating the RSVP procedure was that it was suspected it
might help to compensate for the limitations of handheld devices with small screens,
such as cellular phones, palmtop computers, and personal digital assistants (Bernard,
Chaparro, & Russell, 2000; De Bruijn et al., 2002). Palmtop computers and personal
digital assistants were fairly popular towards the end of the twentieth century, but
during the 2000s their functionality was superseded by that of smartphones. It is thus
not surprising that the RSVP procedure also became less popular as a research tool.
In any case, a major criticism of the procedure is that it lacks ecological validity,
insofar as it does not represent a situation that is characteristic of normal reading in
real-life settings (Perea, 2013).
12.4 Reading Material on Handheld Devices
and Smartphones
It has tended to be assumed that sans serif typefaces are more legible than serif
typefaces when used on handheld devices or smartphones. The sans serif typefaces
Droid and Roboto were developed for Android mobile phones, while the sans serif
typeface San Francisco was devised for Apple products, although all three typefaces

104 12 Reading and Comprehending Text
are available in serif styles. The limited amount of research comparing the legibility of
serif and sans serif typefaces when employed on handheld devices and smartphones
has been carried out by Korean researchers.
Park et al. (2008) presented texts to four Korean students by means of a personal
digital assistant (a Pocket PC 2002). They were asked to read the texts silently,
and their eye movements were monitored using an eyeball-tracking camera which
reflected infrared rays on their corneas. The texts were shown in three type sizes
and in three typefaces: two serif typefaces (Batang and Gungseo) and one sans serif
typeface (Gulim). The participants’ fatigue was measured both by monitoring their
blink rate and by asking them to rate how easy or difficult it had been to read each
text on a 7-point scale. There was no significant variation across the three typefaces
in their reading speed, their error rate, their eye-blinking, or their subjective ratings.
Kim et al. (2015) presented 14 Korean students with pairs of two-syllable words
using an Apple iPhone with a display of 90 mm by 50 mm using one of two serif
typefaces (Batang or Gungseo) or one of two sans serif typefaces (Dodum or Gulim).
There were 10 trials for each typeface, and the order of the typefaces was counter-
balanced across the participants. On each trial, one member of the word pair had
been designated as the target, whereas the other was a distractor, and the partici-
pants’ task was to read aloud the target in each pair. Their mean reading time was
marginally faster for the words shown in serif typefaces than for words shown in sans
serif typefaces, but the difference between the two means was not at all statistically
significant.
12.5 Connotations of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces
Several of the studies mentioned asked participants to express a preference between
serif and sans serif typefaces. Misanchuk (1989) argued that, in the absence of
evidence for objective differences in legibility between typefaces, designers might be
guided by readers’ preferences or satisfaction ratings. In fact, several studies found
a significant preference for sans serif typefaces over serif typefaces (Boyarski et al.,
1998; Hojjati & Muniandy, 2014; Lenze, 1991; Tullis et al., 1995), some found no
significant difference (Garcia & Caldera, 1996; Holleran, 1992; Muter & Mauretto,
1991), but none found a significant preference for serif typefaces over sans serif
typefaces.
Savory et al. (2012) found a clear preference for sans serif typefaces among mili-
tary experts in the highly specialised area of the design of radiation detector screens.
They used a focus group to discuss other aspects of these devices, a methodology
where responses can be vulnerable to peer pressure from the other participants.
However, the participants expressed their preferences among the different typefaces
in an individual written survey, which should have avoided this problem.
Section 5.4 noted research that had focused on the connotations of different type-
faces when used for print-based text, and analogous research has been carried out on
the connotations of different typefaces when presented on computer monitors. Shaikh

12.5 Connotations of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces 105
et al. (2006) examined the connotations of 20 different typefaces; they included four
serif and six sans serif typefaces, among which were the six typefaces introduced
by Microsoft to make use of ClearType software (see Sect. 10.3). Using an online
survey, more than 500 participants rated the characteristics of each typeface using
15 bipolar scales and then indicated whether they would use the typeface for each of
25 online purposes.
The serif typefaces were regarded as being stable, practical, mature, and formal,
but the sans serif typefaces were not regarded as being especially high or low on any
of the 15 traits. The serif typefaces were regarded as being appropriate for business
documents, website text, or online magazines but not for digital scrapbooking, chil-
dren’s documents, or e-greetings. The sans serif typefaces were regarded as being
appropriate for website text, e-mail, or online magazines but not for scrapbooking,
computer programming, or mathematical documents. Shaikh et al. concluded that
computer users consistently attributed personalities to typefaces displayed on-screen
and that both serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces were seen as being appropriate
for the kinds of material that were typically read on-screen.
Shaikh (2007, pp. 44–100) carried out another online survey in which 379 partic-
ipants rated text samples of 40 typefaces on 15 bipolar constructs. The typefaces
included ten examples of each of four categories: serif, sans serif, display (used in
advertisements or logos), and cursive (akin to handwriting). Each participant was
shown 20 typefaces including five serif typefaces, five sans serif typefaces, five
display typefaces, and five cursive typefaces; these were randomly selected and
presented in a random order. The participants also rated the legibility of each type-
face using a 7-point scale. There were significant differences between the serif and
the sans serif typefaces on five of the scales: the serif typefaces were regarded as more
delicate, beautiful, expensive, warm, and old, whereas the sans serif typefaces were
regarded as more rugged, ugly, cheap, cool, and young. However, these differences
were small in magnitude, and in general the serif and sans serif typefaces tended to
be regarded as similar. The participants’ ratings of legibility showed no significant
difference between the serif and the sans serif typefaces, but both were rated as being
significantly more legible than the display typefaces or the cursive typefaces.
Koch (2012) asked 100 volunteers to evaluate six typefaces in an online survey:
five were variants of a sans serif typeface, Helvetica, and one was a slab serif typeface,
Glypha Medium. For each typeface, participants were presented with the uppercase
and lowercase alphabets, together with a grid showing 12 cartoon characters, each
representing a different emotion (although the emotions themselves were not named).
When they clicked on each character, they were shown a short animation in which
the character enacted the relevant emotion; they were also shown a 5-point scale
and indicated how much the relevant typeface had aroused the emotion in them
(from “I do not feel this” to “I feel this strongly”). Out of the 100 volunteers, 42
completed the survey (yielding 12 ratings for each of six typefaces), of whom 32 had
had some prior training in design. Comparisons between the overall ratings given
to the slab serif typeface and the sans serif typefaces yielded just one significant
comparison, in that Glypha Medium yielded higher ratings of satisfaction than the
average across the different variants of Helvetica. However, Koch had carried out 48

106 12 Reading and Comprehending Text
different comparisons in total, suggesting that even this effect might well have been
a spurious result due to chance variation (i.e., a Type I error).
Kaspar et al. (2015) carried out an online survey in which 188 students evaluated
three scientific abstracts on six dimensions. The students were randomly assigned to
receive the abstracts and the rating scales either in the serif typeface Lucida Bright or
in the sans serif typeface Lucida Sans. (As mentioned in Sect. 11.2, these typefaces
are identical except for the presence or absence of serifs.) There was no significant
difference in the time taken to read the abstracts or in the time taken to complete
the rating scales between the groups who received material in the two typefaces.
The students who read the abstracts in the serif typeface rated them significantly
more positively than the students who read them in the sans serif typeface: they rated
them as significantly more comprehensible and more appealing overall, and they
were significantly more interested in reading the full paper from which the abstract
had been taken; they also rated the topicality, the quality, and the importance of
the research question significantly more highly. Kaspar et al. noted that reports of
scientific work were more often presented in a serif typeface, and they concluded that
the use of such a typeface increased the impression of a work’s scientific character.
Kaspar et al. (2015) carried out a similar study in which 187 students were
randomly assigned to receive abstracts and rating scales either in the serif type-
face Times New Roman or in the sans serif typeface Arial. (These typefaces differ
on several other characteristics as well as in the present or absence of serifs.) Once
again, there was no significant difference in reading speed between the groups who
received material in the two typefaces. However, in this case, the participants who
read the abstracts in the sans serif typeface rated them significantly more positively
than the students who read them in the serif typeface: they rated them as significantly
more comprehensible and more appealing overall, and they were significantly more
interested in reading the full paper from which the abstract had been taken; they
also rated the quality of the research question significantly more highly, although
there was no significant difference between the students who read the abstracts in
different typefaces in their ratings of either the topicality or the importance of the
research question. Kaspar et al. concluded that there was no simple rule of thumb
that favoured the presence or absence of serifs under all circumstances and that sans
serif typefaces could lead to more desirable text evaluations when other features of
the text compensated for the missing serifs.
12.6 Conclusions
Studies of the legibility of connected sentences that have measured readers’ speed and
accuracy have proved inconclusive. Research on reading text presented on computer
screens has enabled investigators to use other forms of technology such as eye-
tracking equipment. However, research into readers’ eye movements has not yielded
conclusive findings with regard to the presence or absence of serifs. As with research

12.6 Conclusions 107
on reading from paper, asking participants to read continuous text providesless oppor-
tunity for researchers to impose experimental control over their reading behaviour.
Some researchers have instead focused on their participants’ comprehension of mate-
rial. Such studies have not yielded consistent findings with regard to the presence or
absence of serifs on readers’ speed or accuracy, and at least one study suffered from
serious methodological problems.
A particular device that has been investigated is the presentation of letters, words,
or groups of words one at a time at the reader’s point of fixation: RSVP. This was orig-
inally thought to compensate for the limitations of handheld devices. Five studies
have compared readers’ comprehension, speed, or accuracy and found no signifi-
cant differences except that serif styles were less legible with very small type or
under conditions of low luminance when, of course, serifs are likely to have been
faint or even completely invisible. It has tended to be assumed that sans serif type-
faces are more legible than serif typefaces when used on handheld devices or smart-
phones. However, two studies failed to find any difference between serif and sans
serif typefaces in terms of the participants’ reading performance when using such
devices.
Finally, this chapter described research on the connotations of different type-
faces when presented on computer screens. Some studies, but not all, have found
that readers express a preference for sans serif typefaces when reading on computer
screens, but in general both serif and sans serif typefaces are regarded by users as
appropriate for online purposes. There is some evidence that serif and sans serif type-
faces differ in their connotations or “personality”. These differences seem to reflect
variations in readers’ expectations, which in turn depend on their prior experience
and familiarity with different typefaces.
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Chapter 13
Readers with Disabilities
13.1 Readers with Visual Impairment
Plass and Yager (1995) tested 61 patients with visual impairment due to a variety of
causes. Almost all preferred to read text shown on a computer monitor rather than
printed on paper. Their reading rates were significantly faster when the individual
words were presented on a screen using the RSVP procedure than when they were
presented as a single paragraph. Although they had presented the text using both
the serif typeface Times Roman and the sans serif typeface Arial, they found no
significant differences in reading speed between the two typefaces (see Yager et al.,
1998). Four of their patients were adults with a history of congenital nystagmus; as
mentioned in Sect. 8.2, this causes visual impairment by disrupting the normal pattern
of eye movements. A follow-up study by Aquilante et al. (1997) confirmed that these
four patients tended to read faster with RSVP than when reading the same material
as a single paragraph of text. This suggested that techniques which eliminated the
need for eye movements might be useful for improving the reading ability of people
with nystagmus or other visual disorders. However, Aquilante et al. did not compare
their patients’ performance using different typefaces.
13.2 Readers with Dyslexia
Research on people with dyslexia reading from print was described in Sect. 8.7.Itwas
noted that the British Dyslexia Association (2018) had for many years recommended
that materials for people with dyslexia should use sans serif typefaces, and this advice
seems intended to apply both to material shown on screens and to material printed
on paper.
Rello and Baeza-Yates (2013) recruited 48 participants between the ages of 11 and
50 who had been clinically certified as dyslexic and asked them to read 12 extracts
of 60 words from a Spanish novel. These were presented in 12 different typefaces,
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0_13
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110 13 Readers with Disabilities
including three serif typefaces (Computer Modern Unicode, Garamond, and Times)
and four sans serif typefaces (Arial, Helvetica, Myriad, and Verdana). Assignment
of the different typefaces to different extracts was counterbalanced across different
participants. The extracts were presented on a liquid crystal display (LCD) screen
in 14-point size, and the readers’ eye movements were monitored using a corneal
reflection system, both to record the duration of their fixations and to record their
total reading time. After each extract, the participants answered a multiple-choice
question to check their comprehension of the text, and at the end of the experiment
they rated their preference for each typeface on a 5-point scale.
There was significant variation among the 12 typefaces in the participants’ reading
time, but there was no overall difference between the serif typefaces and the sans serif
typefaces in this regard. There was significant variation among the 12 typefaces in the
participants’ fixation duration, and this was slightly longer for the serif typefaces than
for the sans serif typefaces. There was significant variation among the 12 typefaces
in the participants’ preference ratings, but there was no overall difference between
the serif typefaces and the sans serif typefaces in this regard. Rello and Baeza-
Yates argued that shorter fixations reflected a reduced processing load and hence
greater legibility, and they concluded that sans serif typefaces enhanced reading
performance, even though this was not reflected in an enhanced reading time.
However, Rello and Baeza-Yates had not controlled the spacing of their different
typefaces. It was noted in Sect. 8.6 that readers who are dyslexic benefit from
increased spacing when reading from paper, and that this explains differences in
their performance across different typefaces. It was also noted in Sect. 10.1 that the
addition of serifs leads to an increase in inter-letter spacing, at least when letters
are presented on screen. Perea et al. (2012) found that a small increase in inter-
letter spacing could lead to enhanced performance when reading from computer
screens, especially in children with dyslexia. Consequently, any suggestion in Rello
and Baeza-Yates’ results in favour of sans serif typefaces is likely to be due to the
confounding of typeface with inter-letter spacing. Otherwise, the results of their
study indicate no difference in legibility between serif and sans serif typefaces in
dyslexic readers, and once again this contradicts the advice of the British Dyslexia
Association (2018).
13.3 Readers with Age-Related Macular Degeneration
Several studies have investigated people with age-related macular degeneration
(AMD). As was mentioned in Sect. 8.2, this causes impaired vision in the centre of the
visual field. Section 11.1 described a study in which Arditi and Cho (2005) measured
size thresholds when random five-letter strings were presented on a cathode-ray tube
(CRT) screen as black letters against a white background. They used software to
construct lowercase typefaces of uniform thickness with slab serifs extending 0%
(sans serif), 5%, or 10% of the cap height (the height of capital or uppercase letters).
They also used an inter-letter spacing of 0%, 10%, or 40% of the cap height, yielding

13.3 Readers with Age-Related Macular Degeneration 111
a3×3 design. In addition to four participants with normal vision, Arditi and Cho also
tested two people with AMD. They normalised the data to each participant’s best
performance by dividing each data point by the participant’s minimum threshold.
Both the participants with normal vision and the participants with AMD showed the
same pattern of performance. There was a large effect of spacing such that closely
spaced letters yielded higher thresholds (i.e., poorer performance). There was also a
significant but small effect of serif size, such that serifs of 5% or 10% led to lower
thresholds (i.e., better performance) than a sans serif typeface, which Arditi and
Cho ascribed to the concomitant increase in spacing required to accommodate them.
There was no evidence that the presence or absence of serifs made any difference to
the performance of the participants with AMD.
Subsequent researchers tried to devise typefaces that might be helpful for people
with AMD. Bernard et al. (2016) developed Eido, a monospaced sans serif typeface
that emphasised the distinctive shapes of different letters. They presented normally
sighted volunteers with letters, words, and sentences in either Eido or the monospaced
slab serif typeface Courier using a CRT screen. They carried out six different exper-
iments with varying print sizes. In each case, the participants used their dominant or
preferred eyes, but an eye-tracking system superimposed a mask over the centre of
their visual field to simulate AMD. The participants made fewer errors when stimuli
were presented in Eido than when presented in Courier, but there was no difference
in their reading speed between the two typefaces.
Xiong et al. (2018) used both Eido and Maxular Rx, a proportionally spaced slab
serif typeface developed by Steven Skaggs that employed extra spacing between
successive letters and lines. For comparison, they also used Courier, Helvetica, and
Times Roman. (Helvetica is a proportionally spaced sans serif typeface, whereas
Times Roman is a proportionally spaced serif typeface.) Individual sentences were
presented on an LCD screen controlled by a Macintosh computer. The participants
consisted of 19 individuals with AMD, 14 age-matched individuals with normal
vision, and 26 young adults with normal vision. The researchers measured their
fastest speed to read the sentences aloud, the smallest print size to achieve that
speed, and the smallest print size that could just be read. The reading speed varied
significantly across the five typefaces for the individuals with AMD, but not for the
control participants. All three groups showed significant variations in the measures
of print size. However, there were no systematic differences between the three serif
typefaces (Courier, Maxular Rx, and Times Roman) and the two sans serif typefaces
(Eido and Helvetica).

112 13 Readers with Disabilities
13.4 Conclusions
As mentioned in Chap. 8, any differences in the legibility of serif and sans serif
typefaces might become more apparent in readers whose visual systems are chal-
lenged as the result of disablement. One study evaluated a heterogeneous sample of
patients with visual impairment and found no difference in reading speed between a
serif typeface and a sans serif typeface, regardless of whether text was presented on
screen as a single paragraph or using the RSVP procedure. Another study evaluated
a large sample of readers with dyslexia. This too found no difference in their reading
speed between serif and sans serif typefaces. Any differences in the participants’
preferences or in their eye movements could be attributed to the researchers’ failure
to control the inter-letter spacing of the different typefaces. Differences in inter-letter
spacing also explain differences in reading speed in a study which simulated AMD
in readers with normal vision. A study which compared reading in people with and
without AMD found no systematic differences between serif typefaces and sans serif
typefaces.
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate
credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and
indicate if changes were made.
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Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from
the copyright holder.

Chapter 14
Reading Text in Internet Browsers
14.1 The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces
in Internet Browsers
The research studies described thus far have been mainly concerned with mate-
rial generated on local workstations using conventional word-processing software.
However, many readers view material that has been saved in hypertext markup
language (HTML) on remote sites on the internet to be viewed in web browsers. Even
so, this is not a hard-and-fast distinction. First, word-processed documents can be
uploaded to remote web sites and retrieved by other users to read on their smartphones
or tablet computers as well as their own workstations. Second, how downloaded docu-
ments appear on-screen will depend on the browser settings and other software on
the local device. Third, material can also be saved in HTML on local workstations
and viewed through web browsers in order to mimic the retrieval of information from
remote web sites. Even so, the question arises whether serif and sans serif typefaces
differ in legibility when used in documents saved in HTML and viewed through
web browsers. As with material that is generated on local workstations, designers
and design educators tend to recommend that sans serif typefaces should be used on
web sites due to the poor legibility of serif typefaces on low-resolution monitors or
with small type sizes (Davidow, 2002). However, others maintain that a preference
for sans serif typefaces for websites simply reflects readers’ greater familiarity with
sans serif typefaces when accessing sources of information on the internet (Redich,
2012, p. 62).
Gosse (1999) asked 200 participants to read stories selected from the websites of
real newspapers published outside the immediate locality. Eight stories were edited
to a standard length of 325 words and presented on a laptop computer with a liquid
crystal display (LCD) screen using a web browser as if they were being viewed on the
World Wide Web. Four stories were presented in different serif typefaces (Courier,
New Century Schoolbook, Palatino, and Times), and four were presented in different
sans serif typefaces (Avant Garde, Hallmarke Light, Helvetica, and Quick Type). The
stories were assigned at random to four pairs, each containing a story in serif typeface
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0_14
113

114 14 Reading Text in Internet Browsers
and a story in sans serif typeface. Participants were timed while they read the two
stories in a pair, and they were then asked a number of questions, including their
preference between the two typefaces they had seen (pp. 67–75).
There was no significant difference in either reading time or preference: serif
passages were read in an average of 92.0 s, and sans serif passages were read in
an average of 95.8 s; 102 of the participants preferred the serif typefaces, and 98
preferred the sans serif typefaces (p. 81). Unfortunately, there were two problems
with this study. First, the opening page on the web browser listed short titles of the
eight stories, each presented in the appropriate typeface, and the participants were
free to choose which of the stories they read first (p. 91). This then determined
which story they read second and which typefaces the participant received. This
contradicts the author’s assertion that the order of presentation of the different serif
typefaces was “systematically randomized” (p. 69). Second, in the data analyses, the
contrast between serif and sans serif typefaces was incorrectly treated as a between-
subjects variable and not as a within-subjects variable (pp. 84–85), and this would
have reduced the analyses’ statistical power.
Grant and Branch (2000) asked 21 undergraduate student teachers to participate
in an online experiment using a specially constructed website. The stimuli were
two passages of 164 words taken from the Graduate Record Examination and two
test questions presented on the same screen as the passages. Students who used a
Windows platform were shown stimuli in Times New Roman and Arial; those who
used a Macintosh platform were shown stimuli in Times and Helvetica. Students
who accessed the website alternately received a serif typeface first or a sans serif
typeface first; in both cases, all the stimuli were shown as 11-point black text on a
white background. The system recorded the reading time for each passage, and the
students were given feedback on their answers to the questions, but these were not
recorded. The reading data were converted to words per minute and showed that the
serif typefaces were read significantly more quickly than sans serif typefaces, but
there was no significant practice effect between the two passages. Grant and Branch
acknowledged that the number of participants in their study was relatively small
and that they had compared just two typefaces in each participant. They also had no
control over the platforms used by the participants.
14.2 The Research of Bernard and Colleagues
Michael Bernard and his colleagues carried out a series of experiments to evaluate
the legibility of different typefaces when reading online material. They identified
passages of text (typically around 1,000 words for young adult readers) and in each
case replaced 15 randomly selected words with substitutes. The latter rhymed with
the original words but were semantically inappropriate to the context. The passages
were saved in HTML and were viewed on a high-resolution LCD monitor using a
browser as if they had been retrieved from the internet. The participants were asked
to read each passage silently but to say the inappropriate words aloud. They were

14.2 The Research of Bernard and Colleagues 115
also asked to rate the different passages on several characteristics and to rank their
overall preference among the different typefaces.
This research was initially published in Usability News, a biannual newsletter
that was produced by the Software Usability Research Laboratory at Wichita State
University. Dyson (2005) argued that these reports could not be relied upon because
they had not been peer reviewed. In fact, some of the reports were also published as
articles in academic journals or conference proceedings, where they will certainly
have been exposed to independent peer review. In such cases, I will cite both versions
of these reports so that readers can make meaningful comparisons for themselves.
Bernard and Mills (2000; Bernard et al., 2003) compared the presentation of
material in either a serif typeface, Times New Roman, or a sans serif typeface,
Arial, in either 10-point type or a 12-point type, and in either a aliased form or
an anti-aliased form. There was no significant variation either in the participants’
detection of substitutes or in the time they had taken to read the different passages.
However, the fastest reading time was obtained when the passages were presented in
12-point aliased Times New Roman, and the slowest time was obtained when they
were presented in 10-point anti-aliased Arial. There was no significant difference in
perceived legibility between the passages presented in Arial and those presented in
Times New Roman, but the passages presented in a 12-point Arial typeface (whether
aliased or anti-aliased) were rated as sharper than the passages presented in 10-point
anti-aliased Times New Roman. The passages presented in 12-point Arial (whether
aliased or anti-aliased) or in 12-point aliased Times New Roman were the most
preferred.
Bernard, Mills, Peterson, and Storrer (2001e) compared five serif typefaces
(Century Schoolbook, Courier New, Georgia, Goudy Old Style, and Times New
Roman), five sans serif typefaces (Agency FB, Arial, Comic Sans MS, Tahoma, and
Verdana), and two ornate typefaces (Bradley Hand ITC and Monotype Corsiva). The
typefaces were matched in terms of their body height and were mainly 12-point.
(Whether they were aliased or anti-aliased was not specified.) There was significant
variation in the time taken to read the different passages, with Corsiva yielding the
fastest reading time and Tahoma the slowest. However, there was no overall difference
in reading time between the serif typefaces and the sans serif typefaces. Moreover,
when Bernard et al. constructed a measure of “reading efficiency” by dividing the
percentage of substitutions that were detected by the overall reading time, there was
no significant variation in this measure among the 12 typefaces. This suggests that any
variation in reading time represented a trade-off between speed and accuracy rather
than any genuine differences in reading efficiency. The participants’ perceptions
showed significant variation, but again there was no overall difference between the
serif and sans serif typefaces. Finally, Arial, Comic Sans, Tahoma, Verdana, Courier
New, Georgia, and Century Schoolbook were ranked higher than other typefaces in
terms of the participants’ overall preference.
Bernard, Lida, Riley Hackler, and Janzen (2002a) compared eight different type-
faces. Of the four serif typefaces, two, Courier New and Times New Roman, had
originally been designed for print applications; one, Century Schoolbook, had been
designed for educational materials; and one, Georgia, had been designed to be

116 14 Reading Text in Internet Browsers
displayed on computer screens. Of the four sans serif typefaces, two, Arial and Comic
Sans MS, had originally been designed for print applications, and two, Tahoma and
Verdana, had been designed to be displayed on computer screens. Different groups
of participants were presented with passages in 10-point, 12-point, or 14-point type.
Bernard et al. found that passages presented in Times New Roman or Arial were
read significantly more quickly than those presented in Courier New, Georgia, or
Century Schoolbook. Again, however, there was no overall difference in reading
time between the serif and sans serif typefaces. The passages presented in 12-point
type were read significantly more quickly than those presented in 10-point type. The
researchers noted that passages which were read more quickly tended to be read
less accurately: in other words, there was a speed–accuracy trade-off. This time,
they calculated a measure of reading efficiency by dividing the overall reading time
by the percentage of substitutions detected (in other words, the reciprocal of their
previous measure of reading efficiency). On this measure, there was no significant
variation in this measure among the eight typefaces. The participants’ perceptions
again showed significant variation, but there was no systematic difference between
either the ratings or the rankings of the serif typefaces and the sans serif typefaces.
Bernard and colleagues carried out further experiments with both older and
younger participants. Bernard, Liao, and Mills (2001b, c) tested 27 adults aged
between 62 and 83. Passages of around 700 words were presented in two serif
typefaces, Times New Roman and Georgia, or two sans serif typefaces, Arial and
Verdana, in either 12-point or 14-point type. In each passage, ten randomly selected
words had been replaced by substitutes that rhymed with the original words but were
semantically inappropriate to the context. The participants were also asked to rate
the different passages with regard to the perceived legibility of the typeface and to
rank their overall preference of the typefaces.
The passages presented in 12-point serif typefaces were read significantly less
quickly than the passages presented in either 14-point serif typefaces or 14-point
sans serif typefaces. When Bernard et al. constructed a measure of reading efficiency
by dividing the percentage of substitutions detected by the overall reading time, the
14-point passages yielded higher scores than the 12-point passages, but there was
no significant variation in reading efficiency across the four typefaces. Similarly,
the participants rated the 14-point passages as being more legible than the 12-point
passages, but there was no significant variation in their ratings of the four typefaces.
Finally, the 14-point sans serif typefaces were ranked higher than the 12-point sans
serif typefaces and all of the serif typefaces in terms of the participants’ overall pref-
erence. No significant differences were found on any measure between the typefaces
designed for printing on paper (Times New Roman and Arial) and those designed
for screen display (Georgia and Verdana).
Bernard, Liao, Chaparro, and Chaparro (2001a) repeated this experiment with
a new sample of 26 older adults in order to focus on their perceptions of different
typefaces. After reading each passage, they rated it on 7-point scales in terms of its
legibility, how easy it was to read, its sharpness and crispness, its attractiveness, and
its personality. Finally, they ranked their overall preference of the typefaces. The 14-
point passages obtained higher scores than the 12-point passages, although this was

14.2 The Research of Bernard and Colleagues 117
mainly true for men, not for women. No significant differences were found among
the four typefaces on any of the aspects of the participants’ perceptions. Overall,
the participants ranked the sans serif typefaces higher than the serif typefaces, but
there was no systematic difference between the ranks of the typefaces designed for
printing on paper and the ranks of those designed for screen display.
Bernard, Mills, Frank, and McKown (2001d; Bernard, Chaparro, Mills, &
Halcomb, 2002b) tested 27 children aged between 9 and 11. Children’s short stories
of about 580 words were presented in two serif typefaces, Times New Roman and
Courier New, or two sans serif typefaces, Arial and Comic Sans MS, in either 12-
point or 14-point type. In each story, 15 randomly selected words had been replaced
by substitutes that rhymed with the original words but were semantically inappro-
priate to the context. The participants were also required to rate the different stories
with regard to how easy they were to read, whether they enabled them to read faster,
the attractiveness of the typeface, and whether they would like their schoolbooks to
use the typeface. Finally, they ranked their overall preference of the eight typefaces.
There were no significant differences among the four typefaces and the two
type sizes in terms of either the detection of substitutes or the speed of reading.
Bernard et al. computed a measure of reading efficiency by dividing the reading
time by the percentage of substitutes detected (so that lower scores implied higher
efficiency). The only significant difference was that reading efficiency was less on
stories presented in Courier New than on stories presented in the other typefaces.
The stories presented in 14-point type were rated as significantly better than those
presented in 12-point type in terms of their ease of reading, reading more quickly,
their attractiveness, and their use in schoolbooks. Stories presented in Times New
Roman were rated as being less easy to read than those presented in Arial or Comic
Sans; stories presented in Times New Roman were rated as being less attractive than
those presented in Comic Sans; and those presented in Times New Roman or Courier
New were rated as less desirable for use in schoolbooks. Among the 14-point type-
faces, Arial and Comic Sans were ranked higher in overall preference than Courier
New or Times New Roman; among the 12-point typefaces, Comic Sans was ranked
higher in overall preference than the other typefaces.
14.3 Subsequent Research
Myung (2003) presented 12 Korean students with newspaper stories of between
453 and 532 words using the internet browser installed on a personal computer.
The stories were shown in three typefaces: one serif typeface (Batang) and two sans
serif typefaces (Dodum and Gulim). The participants were asked to read the stories to
themselves and then to rate their typographical appearance on a 7-point scale. Myung
calculated a measure of reading speed by dividing the total number of characters in
each story by the time taken to read it. There was no significant variation among the
three typefaces in terms of the participants’ reading speed. However, the application

118 14 Reading Text in Internet Browsers
of conjoint analysis to the participants’ preference ratings showed that the stories that
had been printed in Dodum and Gulim were preferred to those printed in Batang.
Ling and van Schaik (2006) carried out two experiments to examine the influence
of typeface and line length on students’ use of web pages. In both cases, the web
pages were presented in either a serif typeface (12-point Times New Roman) or a
sans serif typeface (10-point Arial) and in four different line lengths. In their first
experiment, 72 participants had to say whether or not a mock web page presented
in a browser contained a specified hyperlink. There were no significant differences
between the students who saw web pages in the serif typeface and those who saw
web pages in the sans serif typeface in either the accuracy or the response time for
hits or in either the accuracy or the response time for correct rejections.
In their second experiment, 99 participants had to answer questions based upon
the information contained in five mock web sites, each consisting of 30 pages, on
various topics. The proportion of correct answers approached 100%. There were no
significant differences between the students who saw web sites in the serif typeface
and those who saw web sites in the sans serif typeface in either the time taken to
carry out their task or the number of web pages that they visited to find the correct
answers. Ling and van Schaik concluded that there was no difference between the
serif typeface and the sans serif typeface either in visual search or in information
retrieval.
After both experiments, the participants were asked to express a preference
between the two typefaces and to rate their aesthetic value on a 10-point scale.
In the first experiment, regardless of which typeface they had seen, the participants
tended to prefer Arial rather than Times New Roman and to rate Arial more highly
than Times New Roman in terms of aesthetic value, although the latter difference
was small in magnitude and unlikely to be of any practical importance. In the second
experiment, there were no significant differences in either the participants’ preference
or in their ratings of aesthetic value.
Chernecky et al. (2006) recruited 22 cancer patients. The patients were assigned
to workstations in groups of two or three but recorded their individual responses
on a prepared form. The stimuli were presented using an internet browser, but the
computers and monitors used were not specified. In one section of the test, the patients
were presented with examples of text in varying sizes and in different typefaces with
different backgrounds, two at a time. In each case, they indicated which of the two
displays that they preferred. The strongest preference was for the serif typeface
Times New Roman in a ten-point font and in blue lettering on either a tan or white
background. The next strongest preference was for the sans serif typeface Arial in
a nine-point font and black lettering on a tan background. However, the sans serif
typeface Verdana was not preferred. Chernecky et al. ascribed the preference for the
serif typeface to the fact that it was widely used in books, newspapers, and magazines.
They did not carry out any kind of statistical analysis of their results, and they did
not include any comparison group, and so it is unclear whether their findings were
peculiar to cancer patients or would generalise to other kinds of participant.
In a study mentioned in Sect. 12.5, Shaikh et al. (2006) obtained participants’
ratings of the appropriateness of different typefaces for various online purposes.

14.3 Subsequent Research 119
Fox et al. (2007) selected three of these typefaces judged to be of high, medium,
or low appropriateness for each of three purposes: a business document, an e-mail
message, and a narrative for young people. A total of 120 participants were presented
with an example of each document (a bank letter, an e-mail invitation to a company
picnic, and an explanation of how fireworks work) in one of the three typefaces.
Each was presented as an HTML web page and was viewed using a web browser.
The participants were asked to rate the “personality” of the document using 15 bipolar
scales from Shaikh et al.’s (2006) study and to rate its “ethos” (their perceptions of
the author and the intended readership) using five scales.
The choice of typeface had no significant effect on the participants’ perceptions
of the business document, except that its author was viewed as less mature if the
least appropriate typeface was used. If the least appropriate typeface was used for
the e-mail message, it was viewed as less stable, less practical, more rebellious,
more youthful, and more feminine; its author was also viewed as less believable,
less professional, less trustworthy, and less mature. The choice of typeface had no
significant effect on perceptions of the narrative for young people, except that it
was viewed as more youthful and more casual if the most appropriate typeface was
used. Fox et al. concluded that in general on-screen documents were more likely to
be perceived in a negative manner if they were presented using a less appropriate
typeface.
Beymer et al. (2008) carried out a similar study. They presented 82 employees of
a computer company with one-page stories taken from a science news website. They
were presented on a computer screen as a series of web pages in a 12-point anti-aliased
typeface: half of the participants saw the stories in the serif typeface Georgia, and half
saw them in the sans serif typeface Helvetica. Their eye movements were monitored
while they read the stories, and a multiple-choice test was administered after each
story to check their retention. There was no significant difference between the two
subgroups in their reading speed, in a variety of statistics relating to their eye move-
ments, or in their retention. Beymer et al. noted that around half of their participants
reported having a first language other than English. Having found significant differ-
ences in eye movements related to the participants’ age, they focused on those aged
30–39. The participants for whom English was the first language produced shorter
fixations and longer eye movements than those who had some other first language.
However, neither group showed any differences between the two typefaces.
Ali et al. (2013) compared the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces in 48
Malaysian students reading texts of moderately high difficulty containing 140 words
in the Malay language. These were presented in a web browser on an LCD monitor
in a 12-point typeface. For the first 24 participants, the texts were presented in two
typefaces designed for screen presentation: the serif typeface Georgia and the sans
serif typeface Verdana. For the second 24 participants, the texts were presented in
two typefaces designed for printed media: the serif typeface Times New Roman and
the sans serif typeface Arial. The participants were required to read the texts aloud
as quickly and accurately as possible, and their performance was monitored by two
research assistants. Their reading speed and their accuracy were both mapped onto
scales from 1 to 5, and the results were added together to yield an overall score.

120 14 Reading Text in Internet Browsers
There was no sign of any difference in performance either between Georgia and
Verdana or between Times New Roman and Arial. Two problems with this study
are that all the students read the texts in the same sequence and that all saw the two
typefaces in the same sequence; hence, there was no control for transfer effects (such
as the positive effect of practice or the negative effect of fatigue). The researchers
also carried out independent sample tests when the observations had been obtained
by repeated testing of the same participants, and this would once again have reduced
the analyses’ statistical power.
Mátrai and Kosztyán (2014) devised web pages containing verbal comprehension
tasks and compared text presented in the serif typeface Times New Roman and text
presented in the sans serif typeface Arial. In addition, they manipulated the size of
the text (three sizes for each typeface), the line length and spacing, the colour of
the background, and the alignment of the text, which yielded a total of 144 condi-
tions. Each of 125 university students was asked to solve the tasks on a sample of
40 web pages. (The computers and the monitors were not specified.) A regression
analysis found no significant difference between the two typefaces in terms of the
response latencies. Mátrai and Kosztyán stated that there was a significant difference
in terms of the proportions of correct responses, but they did not provide any further
information. In fact, the overall difference was relatively slight (Times New Roman,
84.0%; Arial, 83.3%) and unlikely to be of any practical importance. Finally, the
students were asked to express a preference among the different displays, but there
was no significant difference in their preference between the two typefaces. A funda-
mental problem with this study is that Mátrai and Kosztyán assigned different verbal
comprehension tasks to different conditions, but they failed to evaluate whether the
tasks were of equal difficulty. Consequently, even the small difference that they found
between the two typefaces in terms of the proportions of correct responses might have
been due to differences in the difficulty of the relevant tasks rather than to differences
in the legibility of the typefaces.
Beyon and Cox-Boyd (2020) carried out a follow-up to the study mentioned in
Sect. 6.4 by Gasser et al. (2005), who varied the typeface used when participants were
reading text from paper. Beyon and Cox-Boyd used a text concerning spinal health.
They presented this text in four different typefaces: a monospaced slab serif typeface
(Courier New), a monospaced sans serif typeface (Lucida Console), a proportionally
spaced serif typeface (Palatino Linotype), and a proportionally spaced sans serif
typeface (Arial). Independent of this, they presented the text in black, blue, or red,
yielding 12 different conditions. They recruited volunteers from an online website
(Amazon Mechanical Turk), who were asked to carry out the task as an online survey.
They were asked to read the text, complete a questionnaire about their attitudes to
spinal health as a distractor task, and then answer six questions to test their retention
of the key information contained in the original document. The participants were
randomly assigned to one of the 12 presentation conditions. Beyon and Cox-Boyd
found no significant differences in performance among the four typefaces or the three
type colours. Beyon and Cox-Boyd acknowledged that they had no control over the
devices or platforms which the participants had used to carry out the task.

14.4 Conclusions 121
14.4 Conclusions
This chapter discussed whether serif and sans serif typefaces differ in their legibility
when the material is saved in HTML and viewed on-screen through web browsers.
This includes material saved in local workstations as well as material retrieved from
the internet. In addition to a variety of individual studies, the chapter described a
research programme that was carried out by Bernard and colleagues at Wichita State
University. Further research has been carried out into the use of different typefaces for
various online purposes. When reading material in internet browsers, by far the most
common finding is that there is no significant difference between serif typefaces and
sans serif typefaces in terms of the users’ reading comprehension, reading speed, or
reading accuracy. There is also no consistent evidence that readers have a preference
between serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces when reading material in internet
browsers. Once again, both serif and sans serif typefaces are regarded as being broadly
appropriate for internet sites, whereas display and cursive typefaces are regarded as
being generally inappropriate for serious use.
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate
credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and
indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from
the copyright holder.

Chapter 15
General Conclusions to Part II
15.1 Key Findings from Part II
Once again, as was mentioned in Sect. 1.4, Part II of this book has reviewed diverse
studies using diverse methods of data collection, and this precludes any formal meta-
analysis to integrate the findings. One must instead focus on the most common
finding—the modal finding—regarding the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces:
superiority of serif typefaces; superiority of sans serif typefaces; or no difference.
Part II has been concerned with the question of whether there are differences in the
legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces when they are used to produce material to
be read on computer monitors or other screens.
Studies of the legibility of letters and words have proved inconclusive (Sect. 11.1).
The studies that employed authentic typefaces showed at most that some sans serif
typefaces (Consolas, Letter Gothic, and Verdana) are more legible than some serif
typefaces (Times New Roman and the slab serif typeface Courier). In addition,
researchers who employed artificial typefaces confounded the presence or absence
of serifs with variations in the width of the letters and variations in the spacing among
successive letters. Early studies using the tachistoscopic presentation of printed
letters and words showed that errors in their identification were often the result
of confusions among visually similar letters (see Sect. 4.2), and this idea has been
confirmed using screen-based presentation (Sect. 11.2). However, such confusions
seem to be due to the design of individual characters in specific typefaces rather
than to the presence or absence of serifs. Indeed, visual confusions are not more
likely with sans serif typefaces than with serif typefaces, which contradicts the old
hypothesis that serifs make letters easier to discriminate and identify (Legros, 1922,
p. 11).
Early research using print-based presentation suggested that visual confusions
were much less important when reading connected sentences (Vernon, 1929), but this
notion does not seem to have been tested using presentation on computer screens.
Five studies compared the speed with which participants read sentences displayed
in serif and sans serif typefaces (Sect. 12.1): one found that serif typefaces were
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0_15
123

124 15 General Conclusions to Part II
read more quickly, two found that sans serif typefaces were read more quickly,
while two found no significant difference. Three of these studies also compared the
participants’ accuracy: one found that sans serif typefaces were read more accurately,
while two found no significant difference. Research into readers’ eye movements has
not yielded consistent findings with regard to the presence or absence of serifs.
Five studies compared readers’ comprehension of meaningful text when presented
on computer screens in serif and sans serif typefaces (Sect. 12.2). Four of the studies
found no significant difference in the time taken to read the material in question.
The fifth (Hojjati & Muniandy, 2014) found that material displayed in a sans serif
typeface was read more quickly, but this study suffered from serious methodological
problems. Three of the studies reported measures of comprehension: one found an
advantage for a serif typeface, one found an advantage for a sans serif typeface, and
the third found no significant difference.
The rapid serial visual presentation (RSVP) procedure constitutes another means
of presenting meaningful material, and five studies have compared readers’ perfor-
mance with serif and sans serif typefaces in terms of their comprehension, speed, or
accuracy (Sect. 12.3). All five studies found no significant difference between serif
and sans serif typefaces, except that serif styles were less legible with very small
type or under conditions of low luminance (when, of course, serifs are likely to have
been faint or even completely invisible). Two Korean studies compared the legibility
of serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces when viewed on the screen of a personal
digital assistant or a smartphone, but neither study found any significant difference
in the participants’ reading performance (Sect. 12.4).
Differences in the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces are not apparent even
in readers whose visual systems are challenged as the result of disablement. Different
studies have examined a heterogeneous sample of patients with visual impairment
(Sect. 13.1), a large sample of readers with dyslexia (Sect. 13.2), and people with and
without age-related macular degeneration (Sect. 13.3). In each case, there was no
difference in the participants’ reading speed between serif typefaces and sans serif
typefaces. Any differences in the participants’ preferences or eye movements could
be attributed to the researchers’ failure to control the width or inter-letter spacing of
different typefaces.
Finally, when reading material in internet browsers, by far the most common
finding is that there is no significant difference between serif typefaces and sans serif
typefaces in terms of the users’ reading comprehension, reading speed, or reading
accuracy (Chap. 14). This applies regardless of whether or not researchers have used
measures of reading “efficiency” to control for the possibility that readers employ
some kind of trade-off between their speed and their accuracy. There is also no
consistent evidence that readers have a preference between serif typefaces and sans
serif typefaces when reading material in internet browsers. Once again, both serif
and sans serif typefaces are regarded as being broadly appropriate for internet sites,
whereas display and cursive typefaces are regarded as being generally inappropriate
for serious use.

15.2 Preferences and Connotations 125
15.2 Preferences and Connotations
Some studies, though not all, have found that readers express a preference for sans
serif typefaces when reading on computer screens, but in general both serif and sans
serif typefaces are regarded by users as appropriate for online purposes (Sect. 12.5).
There is some evidence that serif and sans serif typefaces differ in their connota-
tions or “personality”. This seems to reflect variations in reader’ expectations, which
in turn depend on their prior experience and familiarity with different typefaces.
When reading on computer screens, these differences are small in magnitude and are
often not statistically significant. One study (Kaspar et al., 2015) found that scientific
abstracts were rated more positively in a serif typeface than in a sans serif typeface
when artificial typefaces were used, but the reverse was true when authentic typefaces
were used. This suggests that other features can override any effect of the presence
or absence of serifs.
One limitation of the latter study is that the ratings were provided by students
and not by experienced teachers or researchers. Nevertheless, it raises the possibility
that evaluations of academic writing may be influenced by readers’ preferences and
the connotations of serif and sans serif typefaces. Section 9.2 discussed the possible
implications of this notion in the context of reading from paper, but similar points
can be made about reading on-screen:
•In the context of academic publication, authors will want to be assured that their
work is evaluated in terms of its content rather than in terms of its typographical
appearance. The findings of Kaspar et al. (2015) indicate that on-screen evalua-
tions of scientific abstracts can be influenced by the typeface in which they are
presented. It is reasonable to assume that the same applies to on-screen evaluations
of entire articles or books (although there seems to be no empirical evidence on
this matter). One solution to this problem is for academic journals and publishers
to require that manuscripts should be submitted for publication in a standard
typeface so that they can be compared on a like-for-like basis.
•In the context of academic assessment, it is possible that teachers and other asses-
sors will give more positive on-screen evaluations of students’ online assignments
if the teachers and their students share the same typographical preferences than if
they differ in those preferences (although once again there seems to be no empir-
ical evidence on this matter). It would be both useful and fairer in the interests
of ensuring valid assessment if teachers responsible for particular course units
(and, ideally, for entire degree programmes) could agree on their typographical
preferences and make these known to their students.
Of course, in both contexts these variations in readers’ expectations and prefer-
ences might depend on their prior experience and familiarity with different typefaces
rather than on any intrinsic properties of the typefaces themselves (and there is empir-
ical evidence on this point in the case of reading from paper, if not in the case of
reading from screens: see Sect. 9.2). Even so, there is a need for research on the extent

126 15 General Conclusions to Part II
to which reviewers’ on-screen evaluations of academic manuscripts and teachers’ on-
screen evaluations of their students’ assignments are affected by the reviewers’ and
teachers’ preferences and expectations.
15.3 Implications for Previous Assumptions
Where does this leave the recommendations of designers and design educators who
have traditionally advocated the use of sans serif typefaces for material presented
on-screen? Poncelet and Proctor (1993, p. 101) simply stated without qualification or
supporting evidence: “Often san-serif fonts work better on the computer screen than
serif fonts.” This assertion is clearly not supported by the research evidence reviewed
in Part II. Similarly, Schriver (1997) claimed without qualification or supporting
evidence that sans serif was “the preferred style of type for online because of its
simple, highly legible, modern appearance” (p. 508). Her claims about the appear-
ance of sans serif typefaces are partially supported by the results of research on the
connotations of different typefaces, but they do not appear to translate into objective
differences in their legibility.
Universal design is an approach to the development of educational websites that
aims to ensure accessibility for all students instead of implementing ad hoc adjust-
ments for those with particular disabilities. Proponents of universal design have
advocated: “Use Sans Serif fonts for text. Letters with serifs are difficult to read on-
screen and can create visual fatigue when large amounts of text are included on web
sites” (“Universal Design”, 1999, p. 6). In general, there is no support for the idea
that serif typefaces are harder to read on-screen than sans serif typefaces. One might
expect that such effects would be more evident in readers with visual impairment
under the high demands of the RSVP procedure, yet two studies failed to find any
significant difference in performance between serif typefaces and sans serif type-
faces in such readers. The quoted text refers specifically to material included on web
sites, yet there is no evidence for differences between serif typefaces and sans serif
typefaces when reading from internet browsers.
In fact, the notion of universal design has had its critics. For instance, Raymaker
et al. (2019, p. 148) argued that it was
ultimately impractical due to the fact that access needs can conflict with each other. For
example, some guidelines intended for people with intellectual disability . . . recommend
simplifying vocabulary, which—if implemented without retaining the precision afforded by
more complex wording—can make language pragmatics more difficult for autistic users to
understand. . . . Likewise, high-contrast color schemes suitable for people with low vision
may be painful or unreadable to autistic users with hypersensitive vision
Even so, Raymaker et al. concurred that websites designed for people with autism
should “use a plain accessible sans-serif font (e.g., Arial) for ease of readabil-
ity” (p. 147). Once again, they provided no empirical evidence to support this
recommendation, and so we are back in the world of “everybody knows”.

15.4 Conclusions 127
15.4 Conclusions
This chapter concludes Part II by summarising and discussing the key findings.
Studies of the legibility of letters and words when presented on computer monitors
or other screens have failed to yield a consistent pattern of results, as have studies of
the legibility of connected sentences, even when using the RSVP procedure. With
regard to readers’ comprehension of meaningful text when presented on computer
screens, the modal finding is that of no significant difference in reading speed between
serif and sans serif typefaces. The studies that reported measures of accuracy in this
situation failed to show a consistent pattern of results. Some studies have found that
readers express a preference for sans serif typefaces, and there is some evidence that
serif and sans serif typefaces differ in their connotations; however, these findings can
be attributed to readers’ previous experience of reading text on-screen. Previously
stated assumptions about the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces when used
to present material on computer screens are not supported by empirical research
findings. In short, despite various assertions and recommendations, the conclusion
of Part II is that there is no difference in the legibility of serif typefaces and sans
serif typefaces when they are used to produce material that is presented on computer
monitors or other screens.
Open Access This chapter is licensed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0
International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate
credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and
indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from
the copyright holder.

Chapter 16
Coda: Lessons Learned
Both serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces have a long history, going back to
inscriptions in Ancient Rome and probably earlier (see Sects. 1.2 and 1.3). Histor-
ically, serif typefaces were used in printing earlier than sans serif typefaces, and
they have usually been preferred to sans serif typefaces for use in formal documents.
Section 1.2 described a number of theories aimed at explaining why serifs should
have survived in modern typography and indeed at explaining why serif typefaces
should be more legible than sans serif typefaces when reading from paper: (a) that
serifs constitute additional visual cues to support the reader’s gaze; (b) that they over-
come the harmful effects of irradiation; and (c) that they facilitate the operation of
line detectors in the human visual system. However, none of these explanations has
proved especially convincing in the light of subsequent arguments and evidence. In
the case of reading from screens, it was argued that serifs and other details might be
lost when reading from low-resolution monitors, but this is not a plausible argument
now that high-resolution monitors are widely available.
A different approach is to claim that serif and sans serif typefaces do not differ in
their legibility because of inherent properties of serifs themselves, but that the pres-
ence or absence of serifs serves as a proxy for some other property of typefaces. This
approach was adopted by Wilkins et al. (2020; see Sect. 11.2), who suggested that
serifs tended to accentuate the spatial periodicity of letter strokes (i.e., the vertical
“stripiness” of words), as measured by the first peak in a word’s horizontal autocor-
relation. Wilkins et al. showed that words of low vertical stripiness are read more
quickly than words of high vertical stripiness, and that serif typefaces tend to have
higher stripiness than sans serif typefaces, but they did not show that this leads to
variations in how quickly words in different typefaces are read. For the moment, the
theoretical and practical implications of vertical stripiness must remain unclear and
contentious. More important, the arguments put forward by Wilkins et al. entail that
serif typefaces should be less legible than sans serif typefaces both when reading
from paper and when reading from screens, which is not position that has been
adopted to date by any other researchers.
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0_16
129

130 16 Coda: Lessons Learned
In contrast, there is a good deal of evidence about the negative effects of horizontal
stripiness—the extent to which successive lines of text tend to resemble horizontal
stripes. As mentioned in Sect. 4.1, horizontal stripes are known to induce eye strain,
visual illusions, headache, and even seizures. Wilkins et al. (1984) used the Michelson
contrast to measure the horizontal “stripiness” of visual displays: this is defined as
the difference in the luminances of the light and dark sections of a pattern divided by
the sum of their luminances. In the case of horizontal stripes, Wilkins et al. found a
clear relationship between this measure and the probability of illusions and seizures.
Wilkins and Nimmo-Smith (1987) applied the measure to lines of printed text and
found that it was inversely related to readers’ ratings of the clarity and comfort of
the material. More recently, Wilkins et al. (2020) applied Fourier analysis to text
displayed on an LCD screen and obtained similar results. In both studies, the clarity
and comfort of the text appeared to be improved by increasing the spacing between the
lines of text relative to the x-height of the typeface. However, Wilkins and Nimmo-
Smith (1987) had compared the mean Michelson contrast of samples of 24 serif
typefaces and seven sans serif typefaces: they found a highly significant variation
across the 31 typefaces, but they did not find any systematic difference between the
serif typefaces and the sans serif typefaces. While clarity and comfort may be very
important characteristics of text presented on paper or on screens, there seems to be
no difference between serif and sans serif typefaces in these characteristics.
In fact, the copious evidence that has been reviewed in this monograph leads to the
conclusion that there is no difference in the legibility of serif and sans serif typefaces
either when reading from paper or when reading from screens. This contradicts
various assertions made over the last 100 years by typographers, designers, and
other authority figures. What this means is that assertions to the effect that “everyone
knows” that such-and-such should not be accepted on the basis of the authority or
status of the people or organisations making them but should be regarded merely
as conjectures that might well be subject to refutation through carefully designed
empirical research (cf. Popper, 1959, 1962.) Of the large number of studies that I
have reviewed in this monograph, some have been more carefully designed than
others, and I have identified at least some of the design flaws that are apparent in
previous research. Nevertheless, the overwhelming thrust of the available evidence is
that there is no difference in the legibility of serif typefaces and sans serif typefaces
either when reading from paper or when reading from screens. Typographers and
software designers should feel able to make full use of both serif typefaces and sans
serif typefaces, even if legibility is a key criterion in their choice.

16 Coda: Lessons Learned 131
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International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, sharing,
adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate
credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license and
indicate if changes were made.
The images or other third party material in this chapter are included in the chapter’s Creative
Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not
included in the chapter’s Creative Commons license and your intended use is not permitted by
statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from
the copyright holder.

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Author Index
A
Adams, M. J., 24
Adams, S., 86
Akhmadeeva, L., 37,38,84
Alexander, P. A., 84
Ali, A. Z. M., 119
Anderson, J. L., 71
Aquilante, K., 109
Arditi, A., 24,36,78,84,92,103,110,111
Arnold, E. C., 44
Aten, T. R., 89
B
Baethge, C., 79
Baeza-Yates, R., 109,110
Bailey, I. L., 32
Balfour, S., 59
Banerjee, J., 98
Baron, N. S., 84
Bartram, D., 40,49
Bhattacharyya, M., 99
Beier, S., 31,36,84,95
Bell, R. C., 35
Bennett, A. G., 32
Benton, C. L., 39
Berliner, A., 39
Bernard, J.-B., 111
Bernard, M. L., 103,114–117
Beymer, D., 119
Beyon, J., 120
Bigelow,C.A.,4,15,84,85,103
Bjørndal, A., 8
Bluhm, A., 54
Boyarski, D., 100,104
Branch, R. M., 114
Braun, C. C., 60,61,70
Bringhurst, R., 2
British Dyslexia Association, 71,73,109,
110
British Standards Institute, 32
Brockington, G., 53
Brookshire, C. E., 71
Brown, C. H., 37
Brown, E., 89
Brumberger, E. R., 49
Burt, C., 24,53–55,61,75
C
Caldera, C. I., 98,104
Campbell, K. A., 69,71
Caplan,P.J.,9
Catich, E. M., 3
Cattell, J. M., 13
Chaparro, B. S., 83,92,94,103,116,117,
119
Chernecky, C., 118
Child, I. L., 87
Chomsky, N., 11
Chung, S. T. L., 9
Click, J. W., 45
Clough, J., 5,6
Coghill, V., 53,57,58
Cossu, G., 59
Cowan, A., 32
Cox-Boyd, C., 120
Craig, J., 17,21
Crist, W. B., 59
Csilla, K. P., 101
D
Dale, N., 53,54
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0
151

152 Author Index
Davidow, A., 113
Davidson, H. F., 59
Davis, R. C., 39
De Bruijn, O., 103
Deederer, C., 32
De Lange, R. W., 57
Dillon, A., 89
Dreyfus, J., 22,38
Düger, T., 68,76
Dyson, M. C., 31,115
E
Earnest, W. J., 87
English, E., 44
Errando Oyonarte, C. L., 22,23
Estey, A., 68,71
F
Flynne, L. P., 45
Fox, D., 94,118
Fox, J. G., 37
Franken, R. B., 39
Frank, T., 117
Franz, S. I., 27
G
Gallagher, T. J., 54
Garcia, M. L., 98
Garon, J. E., 87
Gasser, M., 36,50,120
Gilbert, L. C., 102
Goikoetxea, E., 59
González-Rodriguez, R., 22,23
Gosse, R., 113
Gould, J. D., 88,97
Grant, M. M., 114
Gray, N., 6
Griffing, H., 27
Griffiths,G.W.,58
Grooters, L. E., 86
Gross, J. S., 50
Gugerty, L., 89
H
Halcomb, C. G., 115,117
Hamai, M., 21
Hargreaves, A., 58
Harris, J., 31,95
Hartley, J., 37,55
Haskins, J. B., 44,45
Haugen, T. T., 67
Haw, C., 71
Hawco, C. L. A., 24
Hawking, S. W., 101
Hearnshaw, L. S., 55
Hedges, L. V., 9
Hedlich, C., 70
Herbert, R., 71
Hering, E., 4
Hetherington, R., 32
Hofstätter, P. R., 38,39
Hojjati, N., 101,104,124
Holleran, P. A., 104
Holmes, K., 84,103
Howe, N., 83
Hutner, N., 91
Hvistendahl, J. K., 43
Hwang, W. S., 91
I
Ing, E., 87
J
Jacklin, C. N., 9
Jacobson, W. S., 54
Jainta, S., 93
Jelfs, A., 84
Jorgensen, B., 83
Josephson, S., 98,99
Juni, S., 50
K
Kahl,M.R.,43,44
Kaspar, K., 106,125
Kastl, A. J., 87
Kempson, E., 46
Kennedy, H., 59
Kerr, J., 54,55,61
Kim, M., 28,104
Kinross, R., 6,12,13,55
Koch, B. E., 105
Komoda, M. K., 91,94,102
Kong, Y.-K., 28,92
Kosztyán,Z.T.,120
Krulee, G. K., 24
Kullmann, D. M., 23,77
Kuster,S.M.,72,73
L
Lamare, M., 4

Author Index 153
Larson, K., 36,84,95
Legge, G. E., 15
Legros, L. A., 31,59,95,123
Lenze, J. S., 100,104
Liao,C.H.,116
Lida, B., 115
Liddell, H., 60
Lightfoot, C., 5
Ling, J., 118
Liversedge,S.P.,93
Lockhead, G. R., 59
Lovie, J. E., 32
Luckiesh, M., 12,28
Lund, O., 6,28
M
Maccoby, E. E., 9
Mach, E., 59
Mackiewicz, J., 49
Marinus, E., 72
Mátrai, R., 120
Mauretto, P., 104
McCarthy,M.S.,49,88
McKown, J., 117
McLean, R., 6,21,59
McVey, G. F., 88
Mertens, S., 79
Mills, M. M., 115–117
Misanchuk, E. R., 104
Mizrachi, D., 84
Moeller, R., 49
Mohammadi, E., 37
Mollen, J. D., 91
Moore, N., 46
Moret-Tatay, C., 84,93
Moriarty, S. E., 44
Morison, S., 4,21,22,77
Morrison, G. R., 40
Morris, R. A., 103
Mosley, J., 2,4–6
Moss, F. K., 12,28
Mothersbaugh, D. L., 49
Muniandy, B., 101,104,124
Muter, P., 104
Myung, R., 117
N
Nersveen, J., 70,71
Nikoli´c, D., 91
Nimmo-Smith, M. I., 130
Nisbet, J., 54
Nolan, C. Y., 63,75
Noonan, E., 8
Novy, F., 24
Nutt, D. J., 22
O
Olkin, I., 9
Osgood, C. E., 38–40
Ovink, G. W., 6,28,35,39
P
Park, K.-S., 104
Paterson, D. G., 14,27,38,57,78
Pedró, F., 83
Penrose, R., 101
Perea, M., 6,77,84,93,99,103,110
Peterson, M., 115
Phillips,R.M.,85–87
Pittman, B., 66,75
Plass, B., 109
Poffenberger, A. T., 39
Polden,P.G.,91
Poncelet, G. M., 85,126
Poole, A., 46,47
Popper, K. R., 130
Popp, H. M., 59
Potter,M.C.,59
Poulton, E. C., 16,17,37
Powell,S.L.,72,73
Prensky, M., 83
Prince, J. H., 68
Proctor, L. F., 85,126
Pyke, R. L., 4,12,14,15,27,47
R
Raban, B., 54
Raymaker, D. M., 126
Rayner, K., 89
Read, J., 71,75
Redich, J., 113
Rello, L., 109,110
Reynolds, L., 12,36,53,54,58
Richardson, J. T. E., 84
Richards, O. W., 32,84
Ripoli, J. C., 58,59
Robinson, D. O., 4
Roethlein, B. E., 27
Rooum, D., 55
Rose, T. A., 71
Rowe, C. L., 39,49
Rubin, G. S., 69,75,102

154 Author Index
Russell, M., 103
Russell-Minda, E., 78,79
S
Sanocki, T., 24,84
Sassoon, R., 57,66
Savory, P., 104
Scheiner, E. C., 44
Schiffman, H. R., 4
Schiller, G., 39
Schriver, K. A., 43,46,48,54,76,85,88,
126
Schwarz, N., 15
Schweinberger, S. R., 24
Seale, J., 1
Shaikh, A. D., 83,105,118,119
Shaw, A., 64,68
Shaw,S.C.K.,71
Sheedy, J. E., 88,89
Singer, L. M., 84
Skilton, A., 68
Slattery, T. J., 89
Sloan, L. L., 32
Smither, J. A.-A., 60,61,70
Smith, H. J., 39
Snellen, H., 32
Soleimani, H., 37
Song, H., 15
Stempel, G. H., III., 45
Stiff, P., 6
Stone, D. B., 98
Storrer, K., 115
Strauss, W., 83
Suen, C. Y., 91,94,102
Sullivan,J.L.F.,35
Svensson, E., 29
T
Tannenbaum, P. H., 39,40
Tantillo, J., 40
Tap sco tt, D ., 83
Tarita-Nistor, L., 69
Tat ler, B. W. , 4
Taylor, C. D., 4
Taylor, J. L., 35
Thompson, G. B., 59
Tinker,M.A.,12–14,27,28,31,38,44,57,
78,95
Treiman, R., 60
Trice, A. D., 72,73
Tullis, T. S., 97,104
Turano, K., 102
Tyrrell,R.A.,89
U
Uman,L.S.,8
Uysal, S. A., 68,76
V
Vaidya, C. J., 24
Vanderplas, J. H., 60
Vanderplas, J. M., 60
Van Schaik, P., 118
Vernon, M. D., 31,95,123
W
Wad e, N. J ., 4
Wal ker, S. , 53,54,58
Wang, P., 91
Watanabe, R. K., 60
Watts, L., 53
Weaver,D.F.,24
Webster, H. A., 28
Weiss, A. P., 12,56
Weiss, M. J., 56
Wendt, D., 35,39
Wheildon, C., 45–48,51,75
Whittemore, I. C., 43
Wiebelt, A., 59
Wilkins, A. J., 29–31,36,57,89,93,94,
129,130
Williams, M. A., 100
Williamson, H., 17,21
Wilson, L., 71,75
Woods, R. J., 24,86
X
Xiong, Y.-Z., 111
Y
Yage r, D., 102,109
Yule, V., 59
Z
Zachrisson, B., 12,14,43,55,56,61,76
Zuccollo, G., 60

Subject Index
A
Advertising products, 39
Age-related macular degeneration, see
macular degeneration
Aliasing, 88,89,92
Amazon Kindles, 101
American Psychological Association,
Publication Manual,77,79
Anti-aliasing software, 88,89
Antique typefaces, 6,63
APA PsycInfo (database), 8
Aphasia, 71,73,75
Artificial typefaces, 31,37,49,84,85,95,
123,125
Ascenders, 16,30,59,85
Atmosphere value, 38
Autocorrelation, horizontal, 29,30,33,
93–95,129
B
Backward masking, 92,94
Backward searching, 9
Bibliographic searches, 8
Binocular rivalry, 14
Block typefaces, 27.See also Slab serif
typefaces
Body size, 15–17,70,85,100
Box scores, 9
Brain (journal), 23
C
Cap-height, 16
Carolingian minuscule, 3,4
Carry-over effects, see Transfer effects
Cataract, 65,68–70
Cathode-Ray Tubes (CRTs), 13,88–93,97,
100,102,103,110,111
Cellular phones, 67,103
Chicago Manual of Style,2
Children
reading from paper, 53–60
reading from screens, 84,85,117
ClearType software, 89,92,105
Comprehending text
reading from paper, 36
reading from screens, 99
Comprehension versus factual recall, 37
Comprehension versus reading, 101
Computational models, 4
Confusions among letters
reading from paper, 31
reading from screens, 94
Conjectures and refutations, 130
Connectionist models, 4
Connotations of typefaces
reading from paper, 39
reading from screens, 104
Connotative meaning, 38,39,41
Context, 1,9,32,43,47,48,51,76,78,79,
95,114,116,117,125
Cursive typefaces, 8,15,49,58,59,66,71,
98,105,121,124
Cyrillic script, 37
D
Deaf-blindness, 68
Descenders, 16,30,67,85
Designers’ attitudes, 85,126
Digital Natives, 83,90
Direction signs, 6
Display typefaces, 7,105
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0
155

156 Subject Index
Distance method, 12,14,27,28,31
Dyslexia
reading from paper, 71
reading from screens, 109
E
Early typography, 6
Ecological validity, 13,103
Egyptian typefaces, 32,40
Epileptic seizures, 24
ERIC (database), 8
“Everybody knows”, 79,126
Expectations, 43,51,76,107,125,126
Eye movements
reading from paper, 4,13,23,35,65
reading from screens, 89,99,102,104,
106,109,110,112,119,124
F
Familiarity (with typefaces), 13,107,125
Fatigue in reading, 13.See also transfer
effects
Fonts versus typefaces, 17
Forward searching, 9
Fourier analysis, 130
G
Generation Y, 83
Glaucoma, 65,69
Gothic (gothic) typefaces, 27,28,32,37,
40,60,66,91,92,97,102
Grapheme–colour synaesthesia, 24
Gravity chronometer, 13
Grotesque typefaces, 6
H
Handheld devices, 103,104,107
Headlines, 44–48,51
I
Infant characters, 53,58
Internet browsers, 113,117,118,121,124,
126
Irradiation, 4,55,129
J
Journal of Psychopharmacology,22
K
Korean, 28,75,91,92,104,117,124
L
Leading, 16,46,93
Legibility, 2,4,8–17,21–23,27–29,32,
33,35,36,38,40,41,43,45,47–49,
51,55–59,61,66,68,69,71,73,75,
77–79,84–87,89,90,92,94,95,97,
100–102,104–106,110,112–116,
119–121,123,124,126,127,129,
130
Legibility, methods for measuring, 12–14
Legibility versus readability, 11,17
Letter reversals, 59
Lexical decisión, 93
Liquid Crystal Displays (LCDs), 13,88–95,
98,101,110,111,113,114,119,
130
M
Macular degeneration, 65,69,110,124
Medication labels, 61
MEDLINE (database), 8
Merriam-Webster’s Manual for Writers and
Editors,22,77
Meta-analysis, 9,75,123
Michelson contrast, 130
Millenials, 83
Ming typefaces, 28,92
Mobile phones, 103
Myopia, 65
N
Narrative reviews, 8,9
Net Generation, 83
O
Older adults
reading from paper, 59–61
reading from screens, 116
Overhead projectors, 29,85–87,90
P
Palmtop computers, 103
Palo seco [dry stick], 22,23
Peripheral vision, 12,56
Personal digital assistants, 103,104,124
Personality, 40,116,119,125
Personality, of typefaces, 38,49,107

Subject Index 157
Polarity profile, 38
PowerPoint, 12,87,90
Practice effects, see Transfer effects
Preferences
reading from paper, 76
reading from screens, 125
Printing screen-based text to hard copy, 2
Q
Quotation errors, 79
R
Rapid serial visual presentation, 102,103,
107,109,112,124,126,127
Reading letters and words
reading from paper, 27
reading from screens, 91
Reading text
reading from paper, 35
reading from screens, 97
Reflex blink method, 12
Researcher bias, 48,67
Revista Española de Anestesiología y
Reanimación,22
Roman Empire, 2–4
Roman Republic, 5
Roman (roman) typefaces, 4
S
Sans serif inscriptions, 6
Sans serif typefaces, defined, 4
Scale-to-grey, 88,89
Semantic differential, 38,39,41,45
Serif inscriptions, 5,6
Serif typefaces, defined, 2
Short-exposure method, 12,13,27,28,35
Size of typefaces, 15,17,85
Slab serif typefaces, defined, 6
Slide projectors, 85–87,90
Smartphones, 28,103,104,107,113,124
Snellen chart, 6,32
Spanish-speaking countries, 58
Special education, 66,67
Speed–accuracy trade-off, 116
Speed of reading, 13–15,117
Subjective reports, 14,17
Systematic reviews, 8–10
T
Tachistoscopic presentation, 123
Transfer effects, 120
Typeface-specific information, 24
Type I errors, 50,66,106
Typographers’ attitudes, 21
U
Universal design, 85,126
V
Visibility thresholds, 12,14,28
Visual acuity, 6,32,33,64,103
Visual impairment, acquired, 68,73
Visual impairment, congenital, 68,73,75
Vote counting, 9
X
X-height, 16,17,30,38,48,49,57,58,64,
70,72,85,100,102

Typeface Index
A
Adsans, 69,79
Agency FB, 115
Akzidenz-Grotesk, 23
American Typewriter, 78
Andale Mono, 69
Antique with Old Style, 63
Arial, 3,5,15,24,30,37,50,58,59,
68–70,72,77–79,84,87,93,97–99,
101,106,109,110,114–120,126
Avant Garde, 113
Avant Garde Gothic, 40
B
Baskerville, 2,3,31,37
Batang, 104,117
Bauer Bodoni, 48
Bauhaus Md BT, 49
Bembo, 37,55
Block, 6,22,27,29,32,87,93,99
Bodoni, 28,35,39,44,48,60
Book Antiqua, 101
Bookman, 67
Bookman Old Style, 37
Bradley Hand ITC, 115
Brush455 BT, 15
Bulletin, 86
C
Calibri, 77,78,92,101
Cambria, 92
Candara, 92
Centaur, 94
Century, 2–6,11–13,21,22,25,32,33,44,
58,59,85,86,103
Century Schoolbook, 40,60,61,68,113,
115,116
Clearview, 69
Clearview Text, 94
Cloister Black, 78
Comic Sans, 3,58,59,67,68,115–117
Computer Modern, 77
Computer Modern Unicode, 110
Consolas, 92,123
Constantia, 92,94
Corbel, 92
Corona, 46
Coronet, 45
CounselorScript, 49
Courier, 50,60,61,69,70,91,98,102,
111,113,115,116,123
Courier New, 70,99,113,115–117,120
D
Dodum, 28,29,104,117,118
Droid, 103
Dutch, 102,103
Dyslexie, 72,73
E
Egyptian, 6,40
Egyptian Paragon, 32
Eido, 111
Elite, 37,86
F
Fin Grotesk, 55
Folio, 39
Foundry Form Sans, 69
© The Author(s) 2022
J. T. E. Richardson, The Legibility of Serif and Sans Serif Typefaces,
SpringerBriefs in Education, https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-90984-0
159

160 Typeface Index
Franklin Gothic, 27
Frutiger, 70
Futura, 35,39,40,43–45,48,56,57
G
Garamond, 2,3,39,45,48,94,101,110
Geneva, 30
Georgia, 77,84,98,100,101,115,116,
119,120
Gill Sans, 35,55,57,58,64,66
Glypha, 105
Gothic, 6,27,28,32,40,60,66,86,91,92,
97,102,123
Gothic Elite, 37
Goudy Old Style, 40,115
Grotesk, 14,55
Grotesque 215, 37
Gulim, 28,104,117,118
Gungseo, 28,29,104
H
Hallmarke, 113
Harrington, 71
Helvetica, 35,39,40,43,44,46,48,50,57,
58,60,61,67,69,70,79,98,100,
102,105,110,111,113,114,119
I
Imperial, 6,43
Imprint, 14
K
Kabel, 27,28,39,78
Karnak, 44
L
LeRoy Standard, 86
LeRoy Stymie, 86
Letter Gothic, 91,97,102,123
Lexia Readable, 58,59
Lining Grotesque, 14,27
Lo, 28
Lucida, 69,99,103
Lucida Bright, 85,93,106
Lucida Casual, 98
Lucida Console, 120
Lucida Sans, 30,77,93,99,106
M
Mager Futura, 56
Mager Konsul, 55
Maxular Rx, 111,112
Mediaeval, 56
Metrolite Medium, 63
Metrolite No. 2, 28
Mistral, 15
Modern, 37,40
Monaco, 50
Monotype Corsiva, 115
MS Sans Serif, 97,98
MS Serif, 97
Myriad, 110
N
New Century Schoolbook, 113
News #2, 43
News Gothic, 27
News Sans, 43
Nordisk Antikva, 55
O
Old Style, 37,40,63,115
Optima, 48
P
Paladium, 57
Palatino, 2,3,24,30,39,48,50,93,113,
120
Palatino Linotype, 120
Parinesy, 57
Perpetua, 16,17
Pica, 66
Plantin, 64,66
Poster Bodoni, 28
Press, 11,35,97
Press Roman, 35
Primary, 30,33,40,51,57,64,66,68
Q
Quick Type, 113
R
Roboto, 103
Rockwell, 94
Royal, 43,69

Typeface Index 161
S
San Francisco, 103
Sans Heavy, 43
Sassoon Primary, 30,57
Scala, 70
Scala Sans, 70
Scotch Roman, 78
Script, 3,37,45,66,97
Small Font, 97
Spartan, 39,45,60
Spartan Black, 45
Standard Elite, 37
Swiss, 102
Sylfaen, 58,59
System, 1,4,6,12,67,72,73,83,87,90,
97,98,102,110–112,114,124,129
T
Tahoma, 3,5,30,68,99,115,116
Tempo, 44
Times New Roman, 2,3,4,16,17,21,24,
29,30,35,40,49,50,58,59,68,69,
72,77,78,79,84,87,92,98,99,
101,106,114–120,123
Times Roman (Times), 4,35,39,44,48,
57,58,60,67,69,70,84,98,100,
102,109,111
TimesSansSerif,29
Tiresias, 69,70
Trade Gothic, 60
Transitional, 40
Twentieth Century, 13,22,44,86,103
U
Univers, 16,17,31,35,37,40,48,68,97
V
Verdana, 3,5,24,30,57,68–71,79,84,87,
89,92–94,98–101,110,115,116,
118–120,123