Research

Print fonts and web fonts are distinguished by why they were created. While print fonts are designed for easy reading on paper, web fonts are designed to be easily read via a computer screen. Considering this, it would make sense that web fonts should be easier to read online than print fonts. However, the research suggests that this is not entirely true. While people might prefer the aesthetic value of web fonts, there does not appear to be a major difference in readability between the two types of fonts.

Boyarski, Neuwirth, Forlizzi, and Regli found that there was no perceptible difference in their study of the difference in readability of two fonts, Georgia and Times New Roman. While both are serif fonts, Georgia was designed for the web and Times New Roman is a print font. Both Georgia and Times New Roman have large x-heights. The x-height is the height of a lowercase x in a line of text. In a study of 48 participants, the researches measured the reading comprehension and speed using a reading task and the Nelson-Denny Test. The mean score out of 12 points for Georgia was 9.6 and 10.2 for Times New Roman. Although participants scored slightly higher for Times New Roman, they noted a preference for Georgia over Times New Roman. This suggests that serif web fonts like Georgia may be preferable over serif print fonts.

Although there might be a slight preferences for serif web fonts over serif print fonts, the bulk of research where both sans-serif and serif web and print fonts were compared has shown little difference in the readability of web and print fonts. Bernard, Liao, and Mills concluded that there was no perceptible difference in the readability of computer and print fonts. Bernard, Liao, and Mills used two print fonts (Times New Roman and Arial) and two web fonts (Georgia and Verdana) in their study. Below are examples of the fonts used in the study.

Print Web
Serif Times New Roman Georgia
Sans Serif Arial Verdana

To test readability, the researchers had participants read eight different passages from a fixed distance as quickly and accurately as possible. They concluded that there was no difference between print and web fonts in terms of legibility and reading speed.

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