Best Font for e-Learning

Print is Dead! Or so <a href="http://www.davidcarsondesign.com/">David Carson</a> thought in his book of the same title. These days you can't go without reading content on-screen. The challenge to e-Learning developers and in e-learning content development is to make that text look as comfortable to read as printed text. In his article "The Fine Art of Font Choices",  Mark Daoust

presents his research on the best fonts to use for web content and some other topics of consideration.

The key issue is readability and Daoust makes the case for font size, line-height, and line length. Making text enormous doesn't always make it readable. The same maxims that apply to newspaper design apply to the web. Make the line length comfortable to be read quickly and easily. Set the line-height (or leading) to allow the eye to freely move from one line to the next. Set the font size of the main text to a standard size and then offset the headings in appropriate increments from that.

In terms of font choice, research by Daoust indicates that sources are all over the board when it comes to font choice, narrowing the two main choices as Arial and Verdana. Curiously, Times New Roman, which offers serifs for easier reading, was viewed by readers as "unformatted." Georgia factored in as an alternative serif font that's easy to read.

Verdana was regarded by many to be the most readable font however, Verdana has a shorter x-height than Arial and therefore, Daoust concludes that Arial reigns supreme, at least for now. As far as line-lenght, a 70 character line length is more suitable for most reading and 120% is recommended for line-height. Refer to the following examples and make up your own mind!

Arial

At 120% line-height and 70 characters in lenght

Contemporary sans serif design, Arial contains more humanist characteristics than many of its predecessors and as such is more in tune with the mood of the last decades of the twentieth century. The overall treatment of curves is softer and fuller than in most industrial style sans serif faces. Terminal strokes are cut on the diagonal which helps to give the face a less mechanical appearance. Arial is an extremely versatile family of typefaces which can be used with equal success for text setting in reports, presentations, magazines etc, and for display use in newspapers, advertising and promotions.

Verdana

At 120% line-height and 70 characters in lenght

Unfortunately I could not find a consensus among the several studies that I read. Each had their own methodologies which came to differing conclusions on the specific font-size and font style (ironically enough, verdana was never listed as the most readable font, although it usually tested as one of the most readable fonts). Some measured the performance of readers while others asked users for their actual experience in reading the website. The result was recommendations for just about every combination of Arial, Verdana, and Times New Romain with varying font sizes.

Al Lemieux
Senior e-Learning Developer
SyberWorks