this post was submitted on 15 Dec 2023
81 points (97.6% liked)

Asklemmy

43826 readers
856 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_[email protected]~

founded 5 years ago
MODERATORS
 

I work at a consulting engineering firm and write a lot of reports that are read by the public. I have an opportunity to recommend a different font for all of our written documents and am looking for something more modern/fresh than Times New Roman. Also open to recommendations for purpose specific communities about typography/fonts.

you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago (13 children)

For regular text, something sans-serif that is not fixed width like Calibri.

For code or numbers, a fixed width sans-serif font like Consolas or Inconsolata.

Serif fonts definitely have their place, far away from technical documents.

[โ€“] [email protected] 9 points 11 months ago (12 children)

It feels like low effort to use the default Office font when there are so many other options, but in my sans serif font tests Calibri ended up looking the best so far. I really didn't want to like it! Curious where you think serif fonts belong? I don't know shit about fonts/graphic design...

[โ€“] [email protected] 5 points 11 months ago (2 children)

I write mostly for web, so I don't use serif a lot. I think it's still fine for use with headings.

If your reports are destined for print, it still belongs, imo.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago (1 children)

What counts as print these days though? When I first started working, we'd get literal boxes shipped to us with 1,000+ page documents inside. Now it's a cloud link that opens with a PDF reader. Does that still count as print? Genuinely curious, because I see conflicting advice depending on if its print or not.

[โ€“] [email protected] 2 points 11 months ago

Anything literally printed on paper. If you're in PDFs and you know your audience is going to be reading it on a small screen, I'd say stay away from the serif fonts. Especially since you mentioned elsewhere that you're concerned about document length; you can get away with smaller letter tracking size on sans.

load more comments (9 replies)
load more comments (9 replies)