Maybe we want to dress up our document by using a less common font. On the next page are some ideas, all at our comparison size of 11 point with line spacing set for automatic.

How about Jokerman?
Or this one called Sacrificial
Or something cute like Giddyup
Or maybe Olde English Text?

Not good ideas, as you can see. These fancier fonts are great for posters or other display advertising but are usually to be avoided in longer documents, for good reason, as they are much harder to read.

It does not help to mix too many fonts in a document. Two is usually sufficient, one for body text, the other for headlines. When I use Zapf Humanist, I might use Arial for headlines.

Kerning
Kerning is the term used for spreading letters wider apart or bringing them closer together. This is useful if you have an awkward space to fill, just a little too big or too small. But when kerning is used to bring letters closer together, it is important to make sure they are still clear. You do not want the word burn to end up looking like bum.

Upper case
Using all upper case does not make for easy reading. Much of our word recognition comes from letter shapes, in particular from the ascenders and descenders. Check it out in the next paragraph.

USING ALL UPPER CASE DOES NOT MAKE FOR EASY READING. MUCH OF OUR WORD RECOGNITION COMES FROM LETTER SHAPES, IN PARTICULAR FROM THE ASCENDERS AND DESCENDERS.

And here is one other test of your reading skills. Try this!

Rserceah has swohn that you can witre the ltteers in a wrod in any oderr as lnog as you have the fsrit and lsat lretets in the crorect pclae and ploepe will sltil be albe to raed your txet.

Neat, isn’t it! It shows how ingeniously your brain can unscramble words if we read frequently.

And, as always, try to check with representative readers to see which font they like best. You may be able to set up some focus groups (see chapter 8) and test comprehension of a document by giving one group a version in one font and a second group the same document in an alternative font.

This is a mere taste of all the information you might want to know about fonts. If you want to know more, you could start with The Non-Designer’s Design Book, by Robin Williams (no, not the actor). And for those who are really keen to learn more, Robert Bringhurst’s The Elements of Typographic Style is elegant and very authoritative, though it does assume some knowledge of typographic terminology.