“As the saying goes, the guy is a beautiful group of letters, not a group of beautiful letters.” – Mathew Carter. I agree with Carter because we don’t select one font for every letter, we select one font for all letters. Font selection is the most important part of formatting and designing your whitepaper. In my opinion, the sources show your understanding and sense of the document you are presenting to readers. For technical documents, the fonts must show their sober personality, in order and order. Sources like Bradley, Ravie, Harrington, etc. they show their funny side, which is not suitable for technical documents.
Recommended fonts:
The most suitable fonts for technical documents are the SANS SERIF and SERIF groups. SANS SERIF fonts include Arial, Helvetica, Tahoma, and Verdana. And SERIF fonts include Times Roman, Times New Roman, Georgia, and Bookman.
Definitions:
The technical definition of the term SERIF is “a typeface that has small strokes at the end of the main strokes of each character.” In plain English, SERIF fonts have captions at the end of each letter. According to little research, it makes the content much easier to read.
As in SANS SERIF, SANS means NO or NON in French. Because the feet are an acknowledgment of the SERIF font, therefore SANS SERIF stands for font without feet. It is technically defined as “typeface without serifs (small strokes at the end of the main strokes of each character)”.
Why use SERIFS and SANS SERIFS:
The most important benefit of using these fonts is that they are legible. SERIFS are believed to improve the reading experience and readability of readers (Arditi, Cho 2005). Readers can distinguish the ends of the letters in this group by their feet. The industry uses SERIFS for user manuals and online help because even at a small size, they are legible. While it was considered a few years ago that NON SERIFS should be used for online content and publishing, it is now agreed that both are perfect for reading online and in print. Bernard (2003), in his research compared SERIFS and SANS SERIFS with Times New Roman and Arial. Results varied in font size, but both were legible.
It is also common practice for writers who format and design their documents that we keep Arial 12 and Times New Roman 10 fonts and both are legible. Technical documents have codes, definitions, descriptions, schematics, etc. so writing the text in SERIFS and SANS SERIFS increases the reading speed and better tracking of the text. According to www.unc.edu, in a recent study, Arditi and Cho evaluated the use of SERIFS and SANS SERIFS with respect to speed, letter recognition, and continuous reading. And both had a negligible difference of these aspects.
A large percentage of users use Microsoft Windows as their operating system. The fonts available with Microsoft Office are the ones that are installed automatically with the operating system. So while you are typing in Microsoft Office documents or even using Adobe printer for PDF conversion; use SERIFS and SANS SERIFS. When we write technical documents, it is very likely that they will be converted to PDF or published as web page / document.
Recommended styles for SERIFS and SANS SERIFS
- Use SANS SERIFS for titles and chapters
- Use SERIFS for content, captions, and text
- Select fonts with space between letters
- Chicago manual style
- MLA style
- APA style
- They work best in italics because they keep their prominent features and are still legible. We need to italicize some terms in technical documents, such as functions, features, tabs, or web pages.
- Use 2 or 3 typefaces in a document, that is, my favorite is Times New Roman, Arial, and Verdana.