Very small font

[agibsonsw]

Hello.
Would someone recommend a font that's looks reasonable when very small (5 point!)?
Andy.

[HansV]

I think 7 points is the minimum if you want something that's readable (with a bit of effort). With 5 points size, you'll sacrifice too much.

Windows comes with a font called Small Fonts. Here is what it looks like in 5, 6 and 7 points size:

SmallFonts.png

It's not available in Word, though.

[HansV]

There's a free font containing 5-point caps only that looks quite nice: Silkscreen is a small free font for your Web graphics.

[agibsonsw]

Thank you. Andy.

[Peter S]

For what it's worth:

My Communications lecturer stated (many years ago): If you want people to read AND REMEMBER what you write, use cerife fonts (Such as Times New Roman). Non-cerife fonts (such as Arial) can be used for light reading. (Perhaps that is why most news papers and text books, to this day, do not use non-cerife fonts?)

Apparently, the cerifes force your brain to scan the text slower, hence (apparently) improving retention of the written message.

The smaller the font, the more the presence of cerifes will "clutter" the text and make it less easy to read. So, the smaller the font, the better-suited a non-cerife font will be. Arial will therefore be better than Times New Roman at size 5, but retention of what is read will be less: So, it's a trade off: Is the size of the font more important than ensuring the reader remembers what is read?

Edit: To correct typos.

[HansV]

Hi Peter,

Welcome to Eileen's Lounge!

Serif fonts generally give the individual lines a clearer identity, so the eye is guided along the lines. Text set in a non-serif font tends to become a single block.

But nowadays, the distinction is less clear - for Windows Vista and Office 2007, Microsoft introduced fonts such as Calibri (non-serif, but with clearly identified lines) and Cambria (rather light serifs) that work well both on the computer screen and in print.

[ChrisGreaves]

Would someone recommend a font that's looks reasonable when very small (5 point!)?

Well, Andy, if your hand-writing is failry neat there's always How to turn your handwriting into an email font

[HansV]

But even failry neat handwriting will probably be hard to read at 5 point size...

[ChrisGreaves]

But even failry neat

I rest my (lower) case.

[ChrisJakarta]

On a related topic, the designer of Comic Sans (the font that everyone loves to hate) was recently interviewed on the BBC. He stated that readers remember MORE when the fonts are difficult to read. Don't know if this is evidence-based.

Chris

[John Gray]

My hatred for Comic Sans (which I quite like, when not overused) pales into insignificance when compared with my loathing of Algerian... (In at #12 in A Plea From 16 Most Overused Fonts.) Thank heaven that Microsoft didn't supply it in Office 2010.

[HansV]

Perhaps the only advantage of 5 points font size is that Algerian becomes completely unreadable...

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