Category: Publishing

Serif or sans serif?

L.T. Hanlon6 Comments

Photo is of a typewritten page with the following text, which varies between serif and sans serif typefaces. Tuesday, May 14, 2019. Chicago, USA. To serif or not to serif. I've always preferred using a serif typeface for body text; the legs and feet just always seemed to make it easier to read. At newspapers where I worked, the house style often dictated serif for body type and sans serif for captions. The exception was so-called advertorial, aka advertising designed to look like real news. This usually employed sans serif for body type as a way to make it appear different from regular news content. In my experience, however, serif or sans serif never made that big a difference when it came to editorial vs. advertorial because most newspaper readers have been — and continue to be — unaware of the difference. But I have warmed to the quasi-sans typeface used in this Hermes 3000 typewriter from 1968. Its typeface, Techno Pica, feels like a serif face sometimes and sometimes like a pure sans serif. Only a few letters sport serifs, others don't — but I 'm unable to figure why. The photo shows an example of Techno Pica typeface, which is mostly san serif except for a handful of exceptions. I can sort of see why the serifs. You don't want a lowrcase ell to be mistaken for a sans serif numeral one. So in Techno Pica, both are unique. Tis a mystery.

 

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