Consider font and page size when writing for the web

Font type and size. What boring elements, but what important ingredients in any written communication. We often don’t realize the source, even when we can’t read it – it’s almost completely transparent.

However, writing for the web forces us to use a completely different set of rules, and those rules created for print writing no longer apply. For example, when writing for print, you should use a Times font when writing, because the slight serifs (the little marks at the end of each section of a letter) allow the reader to separate and identify letters more quickly than any other letter. This is part of the meta information of a document: it facilitates the meaning without meaning something in itself.

However, the rule is different for the web. Researchers have found that sans-serif fonts, specifically Verdana or Helvetica, work best. People can more easily read on the screen when using these fonts. Therefore, when setting the font type, these are perhaps the best used.

Actually, many specify “verdana, sans-serif”; Just to be sure. In this case, if verdana is not available, the available sans-serif will be displayed. This might be a trend, after all, web design is design, but research has shown that sans-serifs seem to improve understanding when reading information online.

Maybe it has something to do with the way we read online. We look for information, when we find it, we focus on it and then we move on. We tend to jump to topic sentences across a page. Therefore, perhaps the san-serif words stand out more. And because we don’t read a large amount of text, we don’t need the same strategies that we use when we read print documents (with which we normally read a lot more than we read online anyway).

Regarding font size: bigger is not better! Large fonts make reading uncomfortable and it is difficult to use space effectively to find the information we are looking for when the words are too large. A font size equal to 11 points is usually best. Sans-serif fonts tend to be larger anyway, so it is necessary to reduce them anyway than we would normally use in a print (12 pt) copy.

You can use larger font sizes, of course, for titles and titles, but try to limit the number of larger font sizes used – it actually detracts from comprehension and it’s hard to see the whole screen easily when the size of font of any item is great. .

Using colors with text is tricky. Web designers used to mistakenly think that bright colors would attract people to read something. They also felt that some kind of rainbow effect was helpful or would be catchy in some way. Actually, it was more kitsch than cheating.

The rules of contrast apply especially to the screen. You need to use a light background and a dark font to communicate effectively. Because we scan screens for information, you must use effective contrast to highlight the information. We will quickly overlook important information that is mixed with the background.

The size of the page and the amount of text on it are also extremely crucial in helping people find and understand information. While browsing a web page, we look for specific information from one place to another. Therefore, long paragraphs tend to get in the way of our attempts. The more information we put in a paragraph, and the longer it is, the more people will have to scan.

This will cause a couple of things to happen. People will get frustrated and walk away, or they won’t find the information they need because it’s buried under a layer of text they don’t need. Therefore, it is necessary to divide paragraphs into smaller, more manageable chunks of information, usually by subtopic, to help people find information.

Many experts recommend what is called the inverted pyramid approach to organizing information. Unlike hardcopy writing strategies, where we introduce a topic and gradually get to the point, we want to quickly give the important information up front and then fill in the details. Readers will first read the important information, perhaps the first sentence or the main topic of a paragraph, and then determine what they want to read next.

Also, the length of a page can be detrimental to the design. Long, scrolling pages are also more difficult to navigate, according to many studies. Users prefer to move to the next page, like when reading a book, than to scroll through a lot of information that they do not need. After all, we no longer use things like papyrus scrolls, making it difficult for users to adapt to finding information that way.

To improve the amount of information that the user obtains, we must also try to restrict the display information, as well as the amount of information that we provide. Therefore, the display size in which the primary information is provided should be reduced. This makes the reading task more familiar to users because, again, it is more like reading a hard copy, which is how we were originally taught to read: small pages with little bits of information. We weren’t originally trained in the landscaped rectangles we use to view web pages, so it just doesn’t look natural.

Writing for the web isn’t difficult, it just requires a different set of considerations than writing for print.