Evaluation of Fonts for Digital Publishing and Display

Advances in digital technology have greatly facilitated the design of new type fonts. Today, hundreds of thousands of fonts can be found in various visual appearances or styles, which are used in digital publishing and information display. As a result, it has become important to find ways of evaluating their impact on our daily lives: (1) ease in reading, (2) comprehension of the texts, and (3) eye-strain. This paper summarizes an in-depth inquiry into the following topics: (a) impact of fonts on digital publishing and display, (b) the influence of typographic features on reading, (c) the role of fonts in reading, (d) effect of spacing on reading speed and comprehension, and (e) machine reading of early styles of ancient Chinese characters. Several insightful questions on this subject are asked, and answers have been provided through this paper and the oral presentations. A comprehensive list of references is included at the end of each section for further studies and research.

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