Wikipedia talk:Serif or sans-serif

(See #Monobook sans-serif bias below.)

Votes in favor of serif fonts in Wikipedia

1. I feel that the serifed fonts are better because it helps distinguish us from other encyclopedias online, and sans-serifs are sooo 20th century. Rickyrab 15:35, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
2. What Ryckyrab said. Serifed fonts give a much more professional impression, and that is beside the fact that I find them easier to read. I'd vote for 15px Georgia to be used for the default, but Times is good too. Sans-serif is fine in headings, though, just not in paragraph text. Fredrik (talk) 16:47, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
3. Whatever you say, I find serifs easier to read. The default should use no font specification or a serif font. After all, most important is the article text. All else is just fluff to the encyclopedia. ✏ Sverdrup 20:43, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
4. Serif is more aesthetic, and looks especially better in italics than sans-serif. --Merovingian ↕ T@Lk 14:11, Jun 2, 2004 (UTC)
5. One of the basic rules of font selection is that serifed fonts are easier to read—in fact, that's the reason for even having serifs. Sans serif fonts, while appearing more "modern," should be used only for relatively limited amounts of text, such as titles, abstracts, etc.--Johnstone 00:47, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)
6. Count me here, for the reasons cited by Sverdrup, Merovingian, and Johnstone, which I won't bother to repeat.-- BRG 17:42, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)
7. Serif fonts are known to be more readable (look up any references on the subject or any style guide). Using sans serif for bulk text is amateur and unprofessional; it looks like 1980s “desktop publishing”. It’s fine as a design style for navigation and also even headings. But not for the text in articles that—surely—are there to be read? quota
8. The browser default font (which is usually serif) should be used for article text for the reasons cited above, and also because it will appear correctly in the user's default font size, and furthermore it will not clash with TeX math (which is serif). —Steven G. Johnson 22:17, Jun 5, 2004 (UTC)
9. Serif fonts. Danny 22:18, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)
10. Definitely serifs. For me the ideal would be a serif/sans serif option in the preferences separate from the choice of skin, although I don't know how difficult that would be to implement. Harry R 18:44, 8 Jun 2004 (UTC)

It make the font more stylish and more important - A.D 2013 — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.27.230.42 (talk) 10:27, 6 October 2013 (UTC)

1. Serif fonts are more readable. The default font is too small as well – I would have ruined my beady little eyes if I hadn't gone back to the old skin. TronTonian 12:20, 10 Jun 2004 (UTC)
2. Serif fonts for body text. Sans-serif elsewhere, for contrast with body text. -- The Anome 23:38, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
3. Serif fonts. They're for reading. Sans serif is for revolutionary pamphlets and underfunded cookie-cutter corporate websites featuring bios of all the vice presidents. --Yath 23:50, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
4. Fritzlein 18:57, 15 Jul 2004 (UTC) I don't know about scientific studies, but I personally find serif fonts much easier to read. I appreciate that san-serif fonts are prettier to look at, but most of the time on Wikipedia I am reading text, not gazing at its beauty.
5. Serif. I started reading this page thinking I would vote for serif, for readability. Coming to the block of sans serif text below presented an unusually immediate comparison of the fonts, which strongly reinforced my opinion. The sans serif felt like hitting a wall. JamesMLane 08:43, 29 Jul 2004 (UTC)
6. Agree with many of the comments above. --[[User:Bodnotbod|bodnotbod » .....TALKQuietly)]] 01:39, Aug 3, 2004 (UTC)
7. Cribcage 01:29, 12 Aug 2004 (UTC)
8. Hear, hear. There is no incentive to browse new pages, etc., when they are in sans. They are too painful to read. mfc 12:26, 13 Aug 2004 (UTC)

Votes in favor of sans serif fonts in Wikipedia

1. I assume this poll is for what the default MonoBook typeface will be, since anyone can use a user CSS to change it to whatever they like? First off, can't it be added to Preferences? In any case, for MonoBook, I prefer sans, for whatever it's worth... TreyHarris 16:23, 1 Jun 2004 (UTC)
2. Sans serif looks cleaner and more professional ;) Oh so subjective :) -AquaRichy 08:15, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

   Professional!?

   Yes, professional. Computer rendering of serif faces is more difficult than sans faces (see Knuth's Computers & Typesetting, ISBN 0201734168).

   Yes; they need more resolution, in general. But if the resolution is sufficient for a bit-mapped font to carry the serifs (and current screen resolutions and browsers are sufficent) then serif fonts are easier to read.

   No, you misunderstand. My point has nothing to do with resolution. You want every area of a text block to have a uniform "color", i.e., overall grayness over a large area; otherwise the eye attempts to decipher meaning where there is none from the overall "blotchiness" of the text, which is distracting. Knuth's TeX does a careful job analyzing the average color of every letter ('.' is much lighter in color than 'm', for instance) and adjusts spacing minutely until the overall color is uniform and not distracting to the reader. Because sans letterforms are more uniform in color than serif ones, sans display less distractingly when set by "stupid" renderers. Try this experiment: lean back in your chair and unfocus your eyes, so that the text on this page becomes a mass of gray blocks in white fields. Notice that the sans text blocks look more uniformly gray than the serif text above.--TreyHarris 21:01, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

   Web browsers don't even make an attempt to do real typesetting.

   They tried to, but I agree they are not there yet [let’s not go down that path, that is a separate issue from the readability of the words].

   It so happens that the standard type renderers on modern operating systems pretty closely approximates the results of typesetting sans faces (with their uniform thicknesses), but does a miserable job with serif faces.

   'It so happens'? Both are miserable (that’s the fault of poor screen resolution, not the renderers). But the serif fonts are still more readable (faster to read, fewer errors made by readers). That is why the default fonts are set to be serif fonts, and why applications such as Wikipedia which are there to provide data to read should not override the default.

   It is absolutely the fault of the renderers, and it does "so happen". Even if we had 300dpi screen resolution, sans would still be more correctly rendered than serif would be, until the TeX engine or something like it is adopted for screen display. But I think if serif faces are adopted, larger sizes will have to be adopted, too, because screen resolution is still a problem for serifs. --TreyHarris 21:01, 4 Jun 2004 (UTC)

   For a given size that is big enough the serif font will be more readable. But the real problem here is that the Wikipedia font overrides the user’s chosen default font. It is not reasonable to expect users to have to find out how to change the style sheet in every Wiki or other web application that they come across. (Besides, one has to have a login id to do that, I understand.)

3. for what its worth Erich 23:35, 6 Jul 2004 (UTC)
4. Simpler=cleaner and easier to read for most people, IMO gracefool 11:38, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
5. sans serif all the way. i find serif fonts harder to read on monitors, only reason why i use sans serif and/or monospace fonts for coding. Applegoddess 08:19, 30 Jul 2004 (UTC)
6. I'll have to disagree with the pro-serif people on this one—I find sans-serif text much easier to read onscreen. The only advantage I see to serif fonts is that the visual distinction between lowercase l's and capital I's is typically better. neatnate 09:44, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
7. Eek! Serif is horrid horrid horrid! Get it away from me! Of course, I'm on Linux, so I'm probably biased, but still... Johnleemk | Talk 11:38, 5 Aug 2004 (UTC)
8. I prefer sans-serif. It's easier for me to read on a monitor. I like the look of it, as well; it's cleaner and simpler. Gemtiger 22:04, 7 Aug 2004 (UTC)
9. Sans is clearer and easier to read. There's a good reason why the UK Disability Discrimination Act requires it, and UK government information is usually issued in sans-serif typeface at 12pt minimum.

   But that is not entirely relevant. Sans serif is easier to read at large sizes (18+pt, please, for the visually impaired) because serifs are noticable and distracting at the larger sizes. For smaller fonts, serifs improve readability (which is why almost all books and newspapers use serif fonts; there's a good reason for that. :-)) quota

10. I think sans is better because it`s cleaner and simpler. Without too much tiny details, the text looks "lighter" to the eyes, since the brain has less visual details to handle with. Some characters might be confusing together (l and I) but I don`t think that`s a problem at all. The current font is perfect ot me -- Kieff 08:01, 24 Aug 2004 (UTC)
11. Sans Serif is toally more internet than serifs. RMG 23:44, 12 Sep 2004 (UTC)
12. sans-serif is meant for screen display, Wikipedia is screen display. That block of text above that is serif is nearly unreadable in safari. Yes, i know it is because the size it not optimized, so, what would really happen? 14px Times New Roman for Wikipedia. Somehow I don't think that will make the internet community think we know what we're doing... [[User:Cohesion|cohesion ☎]] 00:54, 15 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Votes in favour of using the browser's default font

1. Let the users decide for themselves. -- pne 08:09, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)
2. gracefool 11:09, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
3. Different fonts are best suited for different screen size and/or OS. Let the users choose which one is good for his/her system. -- Stamm 15:09, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)
4. For viewing on screen, I prefer sans-serif. But someone else might prefer serif. Let the viewer decide. -phma 13:30, 21 Jul 2004 (UTC)

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There is a new vote at MediaWiki talk:Monobook.css

Which effectively might make this irrelevant. Dori | Talk 00:53, Jun 4, 2004 (UTC)

Only if you think it is. Don't. ✏ Sverdrup 12:17, 5 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Monobook sans-serif bias

This page is inherently biased toward the font for which the prevailing style (Monobook skin for nearly everyone) is tuned. Monobook is carefully tuned to render sans-serif in an appropriate size. Serif fonts like Times New Roman (the usual default serif) appear smaller in this style than they would using the Standard skin (which makes sans-serif look too big). The Monobook default style therefore causes the otherwise useful practice of displaying each voting section above in its own style biased against serif for the vast majority of users. -- Jeff Q 23:30, 14 Jun 2004 (UTC)

*grin* So you're claiming that instead of 11-2 the vote might be 12-1 or 13-0, were it not for this bias? --TreyHarris 00:39, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

You know, I hadn't even noticed how lopsided the vote was in the direction other than what one would expect with this bias. That's quite odd — and I'm not being sarcastic. I was just commenting on the dramatic visual impact that makes either serif or sans-serif look bad, depending on which skin one is using, and that most are using Monobook (whether they want to or not), which favors sans.

I finally read the content of the votes here, including the oddly-placed argument within sans vote #2 (rather than creating a comments section), and it seems that this audience is rather seriously pushing serif, even when its appearance on this page contradicts the likely visual experience. (Or have most of the pro-serif crowd switched back to Standard? And how valid can such a debate or vote be when we don't even know how people are viewing the pages when they comment or vote?) Although most other discussion pages seem to be pushing default-browser (which is usually serif) or specifically serif, the vociferousness on this page sounds like a content bias toward serif. Perhaps it's to make up for the Monobook bias toward sans? (Geez, this gives me a headache.)

I think what's happening among all these style arguments involves more than just the font face or size; it's about the Wiki community being surprised by extreme and unexpected Wiki 1.3 changes. I think many of us are coming up with selective ex post facto arguments to disguise our unwavering desire either to keep style changes or go back. Add to that the complete disregard for non-programmers that several gleeful CSS2 style experimenters have over the many woes 1.3 has induced, and you've got the Wiki equivalent of a riot building. Jeff Q 03:40, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Monobook is carefully tuned to render sans-serif in an appropriate size. - that's not the experience I had in a browser which mapped the CSS "sans-serif" font-family to Arial; I found pages too small to read comfortably. Things became more readable after I switched to Verdana, which looks bigger. -- pne 08:07, 15 Jun 2004 (UTC)