Top all-time · #4631
Alex Poole
Personal blog · alexpoole.info/blogdesignscience
Alex Poole's personal blog at alexpoole.info covers design and science. Since 2008, 17 different Hacker News readers have linked it 18 times, most often “The Science of Serif vs Sans Serif Type”. The last post was in 2017, but the archive is still widely read.
Too few sampled comments (13) to say how often HN recommends it.?
Why HN links it
HN readers cite Alex Poole's blog posts as the main evidence that research on serif versus sans-serif legibility is inconclusive, mostly in threads about typography and fonts.
Summarised by Claude from a sample of 13 HN comments that link here. Each comment is marked recommending, critical or neutral (citing without judging); how this works.
Most-linked posts?
- The Science of Serif vs Sans Serif Type11 people · 12 mentions · first linked 2012-08-14
- Serif vs. Sans Serif Legibility2 people · 2 mentions · first linked 2008-07-08
What Hacker News says?
An answer this very smart person drew was that there's not sufficient data to back statements about legibility http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-s... That said, I as a news designer I believe there to be conventional reasons for using, for example, sans serifs for headlines and serifs for large blocks of body text.
Comment linking /blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/
on “Clear Sans”Submitted The Science of Serif vs Sans Serif Type as a story · 75 points
HN discussionThis page says no: "Sans serif is better for children learning to read" Books produced for children are often printed with sans serif text as teachers claim that the simplicity of the letter shapes makes them more recognisable ( Coghill, 1980) , Walker, 2001 ). But studies with child participants have found no difference in their ability to read either style of typeface. ( Coghill, 1980) ; Zachrisson, 1965 , Walker,…
Comment linking /blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/
on “Ink trap”Submitted Serif vs. Sans Serif Legibility as a story · 25 points
HN discussionI went Googling for science on this subject and promptly found a review of the usability literature: http://www.alexpoole.info/academic/literaturereview.html and a second study: http://www.unc.edu/~jkullama/inls181/final/serif.html And a poll of user preferences: http://www.wilsonweb.com/wmt6/html-email-fonts.htm The apparent conclusion: Serifs hsve a small-to-nonexistent effect on the readability of digital text, o…
Comment linking /academic/literaturereview.html
on “Ask HN: All startup websites look the same”Submitted Which Are More Legible: Serif or Sans Serif Typefaces? as a story · 2 points
HN discussionSeems like most of the research on that is inconclusive. There's not much evidence one is much more readable than the other. http://alexpoole.info/blog/fighting-bad-typography-research/ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif#Readability_and_legibili...
Comment linking /blog/fighting-bad-typography-research/
on “Netflix Sans, a new custom typeface”Submitted Which Are More Legible: Serif or Sans Serif Typefaces? as a story · 1 points
HN discussionI hope your right about the typographic future. This link argues that serifs are not more legible than sans serifs. http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-s...
Comment linking /blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/
on “Pixel Perfect”Submitted Which Are More Legible: Serif or Sans Serif Typefaces? – alexpoole.info as a story · 1 points
HN discussionAs a cautionary note, a few of the claims in this document don’t stand up well in light of more recent research. If you’re interested in the technical aspects of typography and how humans really read text, you might like to try these more up-to-date starting points: Alex Poole’s “Which Are More Legible: Serif or Sans Serif Typefaces?”: http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-s... Kevin Larson’s “T…
Comment linking /blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/
on “On the Typography of Flight-Deck Documentation (1992) [pdf]”This might very well be a myth. See e.g. http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-s... .
Comment linking /blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/
on “A regular expression matcher By Rob Pike and Brian Kernighan (2007)”Here are a couple of round-ups of studies: https://bigelowandholmes.typepad.com/bigelow-holmes/2014/11/... https://www.truthorfiction.com/dyslexie-font/ This study looked at OpenDyslexic, and found subjects preferred Verdana and Arial: http://dyslexiahelp.umich.edu/sites/default/files/good_fonts... Whether sans serif or serif fonts are more legible remains contested: http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible…
Comment linking /blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/
on “OpenDyslexic: A Typeface for Dyslexia”> "Science", some amorphous entity quite disconnected from real science, has become a religion of sorts for some non-scientifically minded people. Put "science" is a post title and you'll fool many into thinking you speak from authority. I feel the author is well intentioned here, but has gone far beyond what the science suggests. This is a huge issue I have with a lot of the blog posts I see. Especially related to…
Comment linking /blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/
on “The science behind how fonts make you feel”While designers/bloggers tend to cite scientific studies advocating sans over serif (or the other way around depending on the context), no conclusive scientific evidence to prefer one or the other [1] However, the historical reason why sans-serif are generally recommended over a serif on a computer screen was a matter of practicality. The computer monitor simply couldn't replicate the tiny detail required by serifs.…
Comment linking /blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/
on “The science behind how fonts make you feel”Just because you can't prove it doesn't mean it's not true. No, but the body of evidence suggesting that there is little if any difference might. The best starting point I know if you want to explore it is Alex Poole's site[1], which cites a large number of sources and some critical commentary similar to the blog post introducing this HN discussion but with much more material. [1] http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-ar…
Comment linking /blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/
on “The Serif Readability Myth”From above: http://alexpoole.info/blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-s... TL;DR: No. The long-standing debate over serif versus sans-serif for readability is likely less important than we thought. Other factors, like the height of the letter or spacing between them, change how easy a text is to read more than the presence or absence of serifs.
Comment linking /blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/
on “A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis”> I'm not really buying the narrative that they're not suitable for the web. Good, because from a technical perspective, you don't need to. The legibility argument has been less and less relevant as screen resolutions have gotten good enough to display serifs in a reasonably print-like manner. (Which was arguably around 2010–2014 when Apple normalized “Retina” displays above 200 dpi, but is especially true today, no…
Comment linking /blog/which-are-more-legible-serif-or-sans-serif-typefaces/
on “A 17th-century font in a 21st-century thesis”
