| The graphics below show a
number of fonts, in the families: serif, sans serif, script,
decorative/novelty, Symbol (Greek letters), and dingbats.
The two images are identical in size
(560 x 360 pixels), but the first is 5543 bytes and the second 7618
bytes. If you understand GIF, you will be able to explain the
difference.
NOTE: this places text in graphics. A
clever way to get around the severe restrictions that are placed on us
by the extremely limited set of fonts known to most browsers. But at a
serious price: a lot of extra space, and the text is not searchable.
(Not until the Scalable Vector Graphics--SVG--format becomes more widely
supported.)
A very few definitions, until something
slightly more complete is written.
 A point is
1/72 of an inch. It is a measure of vertical distance. 24 pts is a third
of an inch. A precise definition of what is meant by the "point
size" of a font is far more complex than some people
think. For a sense of this, look at Franklin Gothic and Nuptial
Script: they are both listed at 24 points, although Nuptial is much
smaller.
In this sample,
Palatino, Times Roman, Baskerville, and Century Schoolbook are serif
fonts: the letters have little hooks or ornaments at the top and bottom
of some letters. Arial and Franklin Gothic are sans-serif
fonts.
Compare the samples
of Palatino and Century Schoolbook, and note that the letters in
Palatino are closer together than in Schoolbook. This is a matter of letter
spacing.
The text in the
body of this page is 12 points (Size 3 in HTML terms), which is probably
a safe minimum for extended amounts of serif text.
Younger eyes may not have too much trouble with 10 point
text like this, but are your users all going to be your age? See Test of text colors
for lots of examples of font sizes, as well as combinations of text
color and background color, which has a profound effect on legibility.
For short bits of text (Top of Page)
and using the default sans-serif font, which is Arial, 10 points is
acceptable.
We distinguish
between text, such as you are reading, and headings, also called display
type. Headings are typically larger than text, perhaps much larger. In
the print world, display type of 24, 36, or even 72 points is common.
Type larger than 18 points is not too common on
the Web; there isn't screen space to waste just for effect. 24
points is pretty big, with or without serifs.
|
