Talk:Typography/discussions on readability

message: The Usher sample was made with the Chianti font's kerning table switched on, and I can tell you from having made the sample and examined the kern table inside Chianti, that Word kerned it accurately. It did exactly what the font's instructions told it to do. Certainly InDesign's optical kerning would even out the spacing, but I've finished making samples for this article.
Keep in mind that when we read text, we don't habitually stop mid-sentence to check out the spacing. The Usher sample was rendered as a PDF in Acrobat at 200% view to obtain a reasonable amount of detail in the letterforms. Acrobat's rendering is much less prone than Word to make spacing errors on account of the low resolution of computer GUI's. Looking at it close-up the inconsistent spacing tends to stand out, which may have led you to assess it unrealistically.
Looking at the sample full-size (pixel-for-pixel) on your screen, step back about four feet (more or less, assuming 20:20 vision) and read the text as you normally would—at normal speed. Don't pause to consider the spacing. Put out of your mind all notion that you are assessing a piece of typography—that you are even reading. Just go with the narrator's voice. Do these small spacing inconsistencies detract from the task of reading? If so, you may have developed hyper-awareness of the typography medium, a problem that plagues typographers, whose reading habits and awareness level are not representative of readers'. At the resolution distance and reading speed specified, small spacing inconsistencies are negligible. More to the point, they don't hinder its readability, or affect the tone.
Meaningful assessment of typesetting must ultimately based on how a text reads, not what the letters look like, or what the spacing looks like up close.
There's a school of thought that says typesetting should be absolutely perfect (if for no reason other than because we have the technology to make it perfect), and another school of thought that recognizes humanism in the arts, along with the human elements of readability, reading theory and practice. Old books set with metal type systems have wonky spacing/kerning, yet they're "perfectly" readable. Some inconsistency, noise, or lumpiness of tone in the typeset image makes text more readable by giving the eye/brain reading hardware something to "grip". Typeface design works in a similar way— individual letters need a certain degree of non-uniformity or difference to generate enough shape contrast and detail to be readable at all.
Compared to the inconsistency of color caused by the variation of structure of each letter form, and the differences in stroke density between individual letter forms, the small spacing errors in this sample, noticeable only between "i" and "l", contribute even less affection of typeset color. (I spell "color" that way because that's how it's pronounced).
Technical perfection is one thing, the art of typeface design and letter fit is one thing—reader experience is something else. Technical perfection is a great and noble thing to strive for, but reader experience proves it is neither necessary, nor necessarily conducive to readability. Technical perfection in typography and typesetting matters to typographers, but readers don't care— as long as the text is readable.
An analogy: Make roads too easy to navigate and drivers have more accidents because there isn't enough driving, or interest in driving, to keep them on the ball, their concentration lapses and they make mistakes. It's true, according to an uncle of mine who works in the road safety department of Vicroads here in Melbourne.
The Usher sample set with optical kerning in InDesign would allow a readability comparison test to be included in the article, which would prove a thing or two about readability.
Arbo 12:03, 31 August 2006 (UTC)
thread_title:  Details on the Usher sample