Comments on: It’s Time for a Typeface Change

By: George L

George L — Thu, 10 Apr 2008 08:03:12 +0000

Ken, it’s my first visit to your blog and I think it is awesome.I am a contract attorney working in-house for a major Greek bank. I think that you may have inadvertently touched a (Mac) nerve here, as most of the comments to this article are Mac, Win or MS oriented. I was a Mac evangelist myself back in the ’80s and I had to turn to Windows due to compatibility problems (especially in Greek lang documents)so I know how attached Mac users are with the Apple platform. For me Calibri was a welcome change after years of poorly translated TNR(Greek)and harsh-edged Arial(Greek).I have actually experimented many times with various commercially available fonts, namely Palatino, Charter, Franklin Gothic and Garamond, only to find out that it was not practical to use them when exchanging drafts with other lawyers who did not have those fonts installed in their system (although Word has an option to save documents with the fonts embedded, this leads to very large files). All in all, I think that the new ClearType font collection is quite remarkable and the concerns voiced by your readers will either go away as early adoption matures into mainstream practice or will stay on as aesthetic remarks (which are of a subjective nature-not all people liked TNR in the first place).

By: Michael Dodson

Michael Dodson — Sun, 03 Feb 2008 15:39:03 +0000

It is a pleasure to see that folks really care about the typeface they use. I am a Mac and PC user and also approach anything from Microsoft with great skepticism. Calibri is however a fine sans serif face. I have tried many sans serif faces for routine legal correspondence, but always fell back to Palatino. Calibri will now be my standard. Now, if we can just get the Florida Supreme Court to change its brief style rule to count words instead of requiring “Times New Roman 14-point font.”

By: Gregory S. Marsiglia

Gregory S. Marsiglia — Sat, 19 Jan 2008 01:15:40 +0000

On a Mac, the Windows versions of Microsoft’s ClearType fonts can be used. Just drop them into your fonts folder, either the one in your Home folder (~/Library/Fonts) or the one in the system-wide fonts folder. The only wrinkle is getting the fonts: The compatibility pack is Windows only, so they must be installed on a Windows PC and then copied over to the Mac. But they seem to work fine for me using Mac OS X (v10.5).

By: Creating Captions in Word | The Connected Lawyer

Creating Captions in Word | The Connected Lawyer — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 21:49:51 +0000

[...] uses Cambria as the font. For an explanation of why I use Cambria, see Ken Adams’ post It’s Time for a Typeface Change. I agree with much of when Ken has to say here, which the minor quibble that I prefer as serif [...]

By: Stephen Chakwin

Stephen Chakwin — Mon, 07 Jan 2008 02:03:40 +0000

Interesting post to read. I’m happy to have discovered your blog and look forward to reading as much of it as I can find.
All of that said, I have two points to make.
The first is that at least one New York appellate court has done its own study of readability and has issued a rule requiring that briefs filed with it be in a serifed font. 22 NYCRR 670.10.3. I’ve heard from people who have spoken with the clerk of the court that they have determined that serifs make a difference in how easy it is to read a document. I know that there are studies on both sides of this, but some of us have found a judicial thumb on the scale. And it might be worth thinking about whether the institutions that have to do more reading than any others have something to teach us.

The second point is that it’s hard to square your platform agnosticism with your dismissive remarks about Apple computers. I’m a happy Mac user after having used every version of Windows from 3.0 through XP and think that if you find a way to look at the number of law practices, as distinguished from lawyers, using Macs, you might find that we are a larger force in the community than you might believe.

Calibri looks nice on screen but I don’t know what it will look like in print in a long document and I am nervous about anything that issues from Redmond, no matter how benign it may appear at first. I believe that MS put things into Windows that were there to sabotage WordPerfect and that it has consistently made sure that its office suite for Mac is not perceived as faster than its office suite for windows. So I see this font as slowing printers (as you’ve suggested) and creating other potential problems and issues that we don’t yet know about.

My takeaway from this is proceed with caution.

Best,

Stephen

By: TisDone

TisDone — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 21:42:32 +0000

A brief response … I imagine a day in the not-to-distant future where existing document sharing tools mature just a wee bit to allow for fully-authenticated, and permissions managed, sharing of documents to occur. Of course, such a system would ensure that as documents were edited, all appropriate revisions were shared with all parties, and that the final ’signed’ version was verified to be identical and represents a true meeting of the minds.

The technology to do such things exists, but as separate, awkward to use pieces. Once it is packaged in a way that makes it routine to use, I hope it will soon become a standard.

By: Ken Adams

Ken Adams — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:57:33 +0000

TisDone: I understand your point, but the flexible approach to fonts that you propose would make it more awkward to ensure that counterpart copies of a signed contract are in fact identical. Ken

By: TisDone

TisDone — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 20:52:16 +0000

Though the legal world might not quite be ready for it – the world is increasingly drifting towards the electronic sharing of documents. And along with that, can come an increased appreciation of respecting the reader as an individual by allowing the reader to choose the font they are most comfortable reading, including both the typeface and the size.

With the exception of true copy work such as advertising and graphical design – the exact positioning of words on a page can be fairly irrelevant. Sure its nice to be able to refer to “the second paragraph of page 2″ – but you can just as easily label such things with section numbers and text headings. And if one is viewing the document electronically, creating links within the document and an easy-to-use search function can make the specific location of any section of text even more irrelevant.

Respecting the reader brings along many benefits. The reader can choose the typeface that works best for them. Additionally, the reader can select the font size – larger or smaller – depending on the device they are using to read the document, and their visual acuity. This parallels to the concept of “Universal Design” when it comes to accommodating disabilities. Rather than just designing the space for a wheelchair bound individual, it is better to design the space that works for all, regardless of abled/disabled status.

By: Bad Language / Interesting links and new year’s resolutions

Bad Language / Interesting links and new year’s resolutions — Wed, 02 Jan 2008 08:43:51 +0000

[...] is not regular reading for me. It’s about contract drafting. However, I picked up a link to a page about typefaces on it from Lynn Gaertner-Johnston’s blog. It’s fascinating and very, very relevant for [...]

By: Ken Adams

Ken Adams — Sun, 23 Dec 2007 14:17:24 +0000

Gabriel: I’m not enough of a typography buff to attempt to suggest where the ClearType fonts rank in the typeface pantheon. What matters to me is that they’re an improvement on TNR, are designed to work with ClearType, and pose few, and soon will pose no, cross-platform compatibility issues. Minion doubtless meets the first criterion, but not the second or, I suspect, the third. Ken