Comments on: A rant about non-typographers designing type

By: Meryl Yourish

Meryl Yourish — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 23:59:25 +0000

David, I cannot have a discussion about typography and publishing with someone who doesn’t understand the entire concept of publishing. I’m done here.

By: David C.

David C. — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 21:52:41 +0000

Unless your articles are about typography, it shouldn’t matter what font or spacing people see. The best way for people to read your text is to present it in a font/size that they can most easily read. And since there is no single format that everybody is comfortable with, it’s far better to just leave the whole mess up to the browser itself.

You say I want a return to the 1980’s. The way I see it, you want a return to the 1880’s – where a small select number of professionals dictate how all text everywhere must be formatted.

By: Meryl Yourish

Meryl Yourish — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:26:10 +0000

Oh, the banished font was Lucida. I had to replace it again yesterday due to another security upgrade. WP, she is having troubles with hack attacks, methinks.

By: Meryl Yourish

Meryl Yourish — Tue, 04 Aug 2009 14:25:21 +0000

Spoken like a true computer geek.

David, the average person doesn’t even know where to find the menu that controls their browser typeface.

Also, uh, you know, publishing is all about making things look a certain way to readers. And while yes, you have to account for the internet’s ability to turn all readers into publishers, that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t make your presentation attractive.

Really, you should stop and think about what you’re asking. Basically, you want a return to the late 1980s. You have fun back in BBS and CompuServe days. Me, I’ll take the 21st century with all its glories.

By: David C.

David C. — Mon, 03 Aug 2009 22:08:12 +0000

Personally, I think most web pages shouldn’t specify fonts at all (outside, perhaps, of borders and decorative sections of the page.) Every browser lets you configure a preferred font and size. The main content of a web page should simply use that configuration. So what if I like Helvetica and someone else likes Times Roman? Why should some faceless webmaster come along and decide that we have to be forced to read text in his preferred (and quite possibly unreadable) font?

If your content is your text, then let the reader read it in the font/size he’s most comfortable with.

By: Meryl Yourish

Meryl Yourish — Sat, 01 Aug 2009 03:56:29 +0000

Honestly, I don’t recall the font name. But there was a -75% letterspacing, which is really stupid. Unbelievably unreadable type. People who don’t know type should be required by law to not make fonts for web pages.

By: HT

HT — Fri, 31 Jul 2009 21:50:55 +0000

By any chance, was the font that you ‘banished’ Tahoma? I have seen it on a couple of other WordPress websites, and always wondered why anyone would choose it, as it is a condensed font and very hard to read, especially in large blocks of type. The act of condensing a font used to have some advantages in the days of ink-on-paper, but now is much less useful (it’s not like we’re going to run out of pixels or anything). But if it’s a default option and they don’t know enough to change it, that would actually make sense…

Or are you talking about a regular font, but calling out negative letterspacing in the CSS? Just curious.