Standard font for technical documentation

[Combs, Richard]

Art Campbell wrote:
 
> 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"

Good advice, except for the serif / sans serif confusion. Serifs are the
little embellishing strokes, usually more or less horizontal, at the
tops and bottoms of letters. They help to guide your eye along a line of
text as you read. Palatino is indeed a serif font, but Avant Garde,
Verdana, and Arial are all sans serif fonts. Most people agree that sans
serifs are preferable for the comparatively low resolution of a computer
screen. 

Oh, yeah -- and among serifs, Palatino rules! Anyone who doesn't agree
is an uncouth barbarian! ;-)

Richard


Richard G. Combs
Senior Technical Writer
Polycom, Inc.
richardDOTcombs AT polycomDOTcom
303-223-5111
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rgcombs AT gmailDOTcom
303-777-0436
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