Journal of a Sabbatical

August 8, 2000

not even close

Today's Reading: Wanderlust by Rebecca Solnit (set in what appears to be 10-point Weiss) - Finished it.

Today's Starting Pitcher: Pedro Martinez

I really hate 9 point Arial. I really really really hate it. I hate 9 point Helvetica too. And 9 point Geneva, and 9 point anything in that font family whatsoever.

I don't hate 9 point Times nearly as much. I find fonts with serifs much easier to read. So even though 9 point Times looks smaller than 9 point Arial, I have a lot easier time reading it.

Back when I was a young whippersnapper, I remember being taught that serif fonts were easier to read. Do I want to disturb Wilbur who is lounging in front of the bookshelves so I can pull out Words into Type or Methods of Book Design? Nope. Because the moment I think of it, I realize that anything I learned about what people can read on a printed page does not apply to a screen. I don't think I have any books on words onto screen or methods of web page design. It matters not. I shall have to break down and get new glasses soon. Back in the ancient mists of time, when I was toggling the boot code for the paper tape reader into the the behemoth in the air-conditioned machine room via the console switches, I never dreamed the day would come when I would be too old to read a computer screen. Sure we joked about retiring to the old programmers' home someday, but that was about burnout not bifocals.

Somewhere in a drawer, I have middle distance glasses I had made for computer screen viewing around the time I got bifocals so I could follow presentations on white boards or overhead projector screens and still see to take notes or glance at a meeting agenda without taking my glasses off. That was near the tail end of my brilliant career, when I had begun to spend more time in meetings than behind a monitor. Retired the bifocals and the middle distance glasses when I quit my soulless job. I can tell a ring billed gull from a herring gull with my regular glasses even on a cloudy day with gull shit on my glasses. Shorebirds are hard without a scope even for young people with perfect vision. I'm not worried about that.

What I am worried about is being excluded from more and more online content because I have trouble reading 9 point Arial. In Netscape on the Mac, 9 point Arial looks about the size of the 6 point type on insurance contracts. It takes clicking on "increase" 4 times to get it big enough to read and then the lines look so spindly and weak I give up anyway. Some of the search engines now display the search results in 9 point Arial. The three online journals nominated for best design in the diarist.net awards all use 9 point Arial. It's all over the place. I have seen the future and it is documented in 9 point Arial.