atw: A philosophic diatribe on the vagaries of fashion (not as off topic as it looks)

Oh Brian, I almost envy the certainty of "true believers".  

In my world, today's "expert" is always tomorrow's "chuntering" fool, even
the greatest of them, so I am not likely to prostrate myself at the feet of
some self appointed readability experts. 

Fashions change over time, and so will this one. 

Calibri is a good point in question - sans serif font, so supposedly not as
readable as a serif font.  I had already fallen in love with Comic Sans, but
knew it looked too "girlie" for general use. But for ME it was by far the
easiest font to read. Then material landed on my desk for review, written in
Calibri.  I wasn't sure - it looked nice, the page looked clean, but were my
eyes struggling?  I had a suite of books to do in Calibri and forgot about
any discomfort over time.  Then one landed on my desk that was written in
Time New Roman (with single spacing after full stops).  I actually couldn't
read it.  I had to change the fonts throughout to Calibri to review it.  My
fickle eyes had become "trained" to another font.

Our company has been happy to fall into line with Microsoft, and declare our
new company standard to be Calibri, as everyone who sees a document in
Calibri says how clean and easy it is to read.  Not scientific, I know, but
nor is most market research - it doesn't ask why people like what they like,
it just asks what.  Dollars talk.

But I do know that, in time, something new will emerge, standards will
change all over again and our eyes will get retrained again.  Let's hope
that Nana Mouskouri glasses and Arial 14pt never make a comeback!

So, at the end of the day, I admit that I am one of those dangerous radicals
who will take what I can from common wisdom, then make up my own mind - and
change it on a whim.  Not many of us on earth at present.

Christine

> -----Original Message-----
> From: austechwriter-bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx [mailto:austechwriter-
> bounce@xxxxxxxxxxxxx] On Behalf Of Brian A Clarke
> Sent: Tuesday, 23 October 2007 9:44 PM
> To: austechwriter@xxxxxxxxxxxxx
> Subject: atw: Tell the U.S. Marines to Getz Tuft
> 
> Shouldn't we be asking the readability experts who actually have
> evidence
> on this sort of thing - rather than our chuntering on about how nice it
> looks?
> Brian.
> 

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