Serifer Madness

Posted on June 12, 2023 by JE

I know lots of people love the sans-serif type of font, but I hate its guts because it elides a significant distinction, between lower case L and upper case I, both appearing as the same glyph. For highly literate people dealing with their own language, this isn’t normally a problem, but change either one of those prerequisites and there are problems–ones that are wholly unnecessary, created by the ambiguity of the font itself.

This has been another episode of “Things Only I Get Mad About”.

About JE

James Enge is the author of the World-Fantasy-Award-nominated novel Blood of Ambrose (Pyr, April 2009). His latest book is The Wide World's End. His short fiction has appeared in Black Gate, Tales from the Magician's Skull, The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction and elsewhere.
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2 Responses to Serifer Madness

  1. Tim Walters says:
    June 12, 2023 at 5:42 pm

    Many, I would guess most, sans-serif fonts distinguish the two by other means (such as height). Helvetica, unfortunately, is not one of them; many complaints about sans-serif fonts turn out to be complaints about Helvetica.

    • JE says:
      June 13, 2023 at 5:20 pm

      I’ve seen some height and thickness differences in various sans-serif fonts, but I really don’t think those cues tend to work very well, especially on smaller screens. But I will admit to hating Helvetica more than any other font.

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