Colin Wheildon, in his book "Type & Layout" waxes on about this or that font in body text. The findings of his research, however, are decisive. "Body type must be set in serif type if the designer [website owner] intends it to be read and understood. More than five times as many readers are likely to show good comprehension when a serif body type is used rather than a sans serif body type," he reports.

You may be asking yourself at this point what’s the difference between serif and sans serif type.. To illustrate the difference, you might want to take a look at any large circulation newspaper. You’ll discover that sans serif type faces are frequently used in article headlines and sub-headlines; they are seldom used in the articles themselves.

More often than not you’ll see that serif type faces, like Times New Roman and Geogia are used for body text and for good reason. Serifs, those little footies that appear at the base of vertical letters like “l’s”, “k’s, and “t’s” facilitate the eye’s movement across the column, thereby, enabling the eye to capture groups of words at a glance.

In addition, the thick and thin elements of most serif faces aids the eye in distinguishing between the actual shapes of the characters; making letters more recognizable, and therefore words more readable.

By contrast, san serif types faces like Ariel and Verdana, tend to imped eye movement because the eye is forced to stop at each vertical character. The eye, instead of flowing across a line of type, shutters across the page. This is such a demanding task that readers frequently find themselves regressing - returning to the beginning of the sentence because the tedium of the reading process actually detracts from comprehension.

So should this be of concern to you?

If you are in the business of selling ideas, relying on content to convince your visitors to do business with you, then you might want to instruct your webmaster to convert large bodies of text to a browser compatible, serif type face like Times New Roman (Browser Proportional). If you’re a retailer, who is just trying to get visitors to click on short blurbs about a particular product, the change probably isn’t necessary because there isn’t much to comprehend.

Ron Scott, The PR Guru Guy, is an experienced journalist who specializes in internet public relations. He spends most of his time teaching entrepreneurs how to use internet press releases to promote their online businesses. Most of his clients’ releases get top Google placement in a week or less.

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