[Word] Question about document readability

Tue Mar 31 23:34:43 CDT 2009

I definitely prefer Bookman over TNR and have been using it on my own personal documents for several years now.

Geez, I was just playing piano for an hour or so, and I have the darnedest time trying to type after I play piano for any length of time.  It is hilarious !!!

Cheers,
JoJo

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-----Original Message-----
From: word-bounces at dcomp.com [mailto:word-bounces at dcomp.com]On Behalf Of fr.bill at comcast.net
Sent: Tuesday, March 31, 2009 9:05 PM
To: DailyWordTips
Subject: Re: [Word] Question about document readability

Liz,
One further note on legibility -- I agree with Ron that serif types are easier to read in body text, but lean towards Bookman Old Style 'BOS' (similar to Times New Roman'TNR' but the individual letters are a bit wider) for even easier reading.  The trade-off, of course, is that it takes a little more paper.  I am writing this in BOS while the text below is TNR, both 12 pt, which will give you an idea of the difference if your email program preserves the fonts.
Bill+

----- Original Message -----
From: "Ron Solecki" <rohnskii at gmail.com>
To: "DailyWordTips" <word at dcomp.com>
Sent: Sunday, March 29, 2009 4:55:37 PM GMT -05:00 US/Canada Eastern
Subject: Re: [Word] Question about document readability

Liz, the stuff you are asking about is very subjective.  However, the change you are specifically asking about, Times New Roman to Arial is a change imposed specifically by MS Word.  Pre 2007 the "Normal" style defaulted to Times New Roman, in Word 2007 it changed to Calibri (which is a Sans Serif format in the same general family as Arial).  The general theory I was taught years ago was that for printed documents, Times New Roman was better for body text because the little "footy" things (serifs) on the letters provided a visual connection that lead the eye from letter to letter and word to word.  And a Sans Serif (no little footy thingies) font was better for titles because they were visually different from the body text.  Size wise, body text was typically 10-12 pt.  In part that was carried over from old-style printing press documents and typewriters.  Either size is currently acceptable, so decide on your target audience.  If it is relatively young, then the smaller size won't be a problem, if it is relatively older, then be kind and make the text larger.

Left justified vs Full justified ...  Left justified is technically easier to do than full justified.  Unfortunately, MS Word "traditionally" did a crappy (kindergarten quality) job "natively" on full justification so people got used to defaulting to left justified word processing.  There is a compatibility option to do a much better job of full justification that is buried deep down in Tools / Options / Compatibility (tab) / Options: "do full justification like WordPerfect" .

Full justified text looks more "professional" when it is done "properly" (ie not the old MS Word way).  Just look at any paper printed book, newspaper, magazine.  99% are full justified.

Now for the rest the points you were asking about, vary depending on the medium you use.  Letters & general correspondence are subtantially different than info brouchures which are different than articles (depending on where they are published!) which are different than web pages ...

I have some links you can look at:
http://webdesign.about.com/od/printerfriendly/a/aa041403a.htm - What Makes a Printer-Friendly Page Printer-Friendly?  This page substantially addresses your question

http://webdesign.about.com/od/webdesignbasics/u/webdesignbasics.htm#s1 - Web Design Basics.  You'll like this page, it is aimed specifically at design for online pages, but also refers back to printed pages too.  It is subdivided into 8 topics and each topic has links to several detailed pages.  

http://webdesign.about.com/od/webdesigntutorials/a/aa070504.htm - Basics of Web Design.  This page also address your questions

http://webdesign.about.com/od/layout/a/aa062104.htm - Similar to Paper Layouts - Web Layouts Should be Simple and Clear

http://webdesign.about.com/od/css2/a/aa090202a.htm - CSS2 - Cascading Style Sheets Level 2 - What is it, and How is it Different from Cascading Style Sheets Level 1 (CSS1)

http://webdesign.about.com/cs/a_5.htm - Web Design.  Links to several other pages that may help.

http://webdesign.about.com/od/accessibility/Web_Accessibility_Web_Usability.htm - a little off topic, but it does address part of what you ask about.  Search some more on this site, I suspect it will have other articles closer to what you want

http://www.poynterextra.org/et/i.htm - Stanford-Poynter Project | EyeTracking Online News 

http://www.webbuyersguide.com/resource/resourceDetails.aspx?id=4431 - The Importance of Data Representation: Best Practices in Creating a Usable Report  (4 pg)

http://www.computersmiths.com/csis77/Spring2009%20Lessons/First%20Assignment/Design_VS_Usability.pdf - Do Users seek a colorful website or a usable website- Design VS Usability  (18 pg)

I pulled these out of the links that Phil provided (there is lots of good stuff in those articles and the references they cite):
http://www.useit.com/eyetracking/ - Eyetracking Research

http://www.nngroup.com/reports/ - this page has dozen of reports/guidelines for sale on web design

HTH

On Sun, Mar 29, 2009 at 10:24 AM, Liz <ackerliz at shaw.ca> wrote:

  LOL, yes the courts dictate how they will accept certain documents, that we don't have issues with. What we are trying to determine is what is acceptable out there for other documents: letters, general coorespondence, information brochures, articles, papers, etc. So for example, is Times New Roman 12/11 standard or has that shifted to Arial 11 (which seems to be very popular). In articles, is a two column or 3 column structure preferred?

  Most of the articles that I have found deal with internet pages, reading. Not paper documents.

  Just have to keep digging!

  Thanks, JoJo!

  Liz

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