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Comment by jdrc | Hacker News Reader

the answer is verdana, but they didnt test it.

I dont think this study is well done. Fonts are learned over time, and people's performance will improve, but differently. There's definitely certain fonts that are optimal.

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I agree. I couldn’t help wondering while reading the article if older users are faster with serifed fonts and younger users are faster with sans-serif fonts, however they never touched on it.

> A second interesting age-related finding from the new study is that different fonts performed differently for young and old readers. The authors set their dividing line between young and old at 35 years, which is a lower number than I usually employ, but possibly quite realistic given the age-related performance deterioration they measured.

> 3 fonts were actually better for older users than for younger users: Garamond, Montserrat, and Poynter Gothic. The remaining 13 fonts were better for younger users than for older users, which is to be expected, given that younger users generally performed better in the study.

They kinda did touch on it. From what I can see, letter sizing and kerning looks to make more of a difference.

Is there a better study you can point to? From what I remember looking into this topic the research has always provided ambiguous results with lots of context-dependence.

I think the answer was Verdana years ago but not so much today with higher dpi screens. Verdana was designed for CRTs around 800x600, with wide letter forms and kerning, to get ample spacing between glyph elements. It's the champion of readability in that format, but on a modern 1920+ display with subpixel rendering rather than an aperture grill, Verdana feels too big and clunky.

Tahoma is almost identical to Verdana, just narrower and with tighter spacing. Makes it less clunky.

> I dont think this study is well done. Fonts are learned over time, and people's performance will improve, but differently. There's definitely certain fonts that are optimal.

At least they tested their theories. Do you have a 'well done' study that supports the claims above?

Seconding Verdana, especially on low-DPI screens.

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