On Mon, Sep 26, 2005 at 06:29:50PM -0400, Bowerbird@aol.com wrote:
furthermore, they're being calculated in the wrong manner. when you break lines according to simple character-count, the underlying assumption is the use of a monospaced font.
and that's a bad assumption regarding people reading books, because nobody should read a book using a monospaced font; that's just inviting eye-strain and fatigue to ruin the experience.
with as loudly as people complain about the unpleasantness of on-screen reading, we must do everything we can to nudge 'em into an experience that lessens the irritation as much as possible.
I disagree with the above. Personally, I find monospaced, serifed fonts to be the easiest to read, and am frequently frustrated by the lack of books that use a monospaced font, and I wonder who is to blame for it. In all of the software usability testing that I've done over the years (mostly involving web applications), monospaced fonts consistently score the highest for readability and comfort with the users. Do you have some pointers to research that might explain why the prevailing wisdom is that monospaced fonts are "bad"? I've tried various google searches, and only managed to discover results that agree with my position.