Standard font for technical documentation

[Art Campbell]

I think it depends on the application, how the documents are
delivered, and what the company's stanard fonts (part of the corporate
"look," or branding, are).

The other thing you should know is that for some reason, picking fonts
amounts to a religious war with odd fervor among the participants. So
you're unlikely to get one good answer.

If I were you, I'd start with Adobe's Type Primer
http://www.adobe.com/education/pdf/type_primer.pdf

For material that will be printed or delivered via PDF and likely to
be printed by the customer, I usually use a serif body font and serif
heads. The one I'm working in now uses Palatino and Avant Garde. If
the material will only be on-screen and/or web, I'd go with serif
fonts for both body and heads, and I'd pick one that was designed for
on-screen display -- very few are, or were. Verdana is one of them.
Arial is not.... Most type foundries today will have a few.

If you want more detail, on why, Google "font readability research"

Cheers,
Art

Art Campbell
               art.campbell at gmail.com
  "... In my opinion, there's nothing in this world beats a '52
Vincent and a redheaded girl." -- Richard Thompson
                                                      No disclaimers apply.
                                                               DoD 358



On Mon, Jul 20, 2009 at 2:57 AM, mathieu jacquet<bobitch at hotmail.com> wrote:
>
> Dear all,
> is there any "standard font" for writing Getting Started guides, User Manuals and other technical documents? Which one do you personnally use? Do you find that some fonts offer a better "reading quality" than others?
> Thank you very much in anticipation.
> Yours sincerely,
> Mathieu.
>
>
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