Nerdlaw: Thou Shalt Use The Right Font
And now the answer to the question you've all been waiting for:
What is the perfect font?
Alas, gentle reader. You might as well ask me what is the perfect wine? The answer is, "It depends."
- What are you eating?
- What type of wine do you like?
- Dry or fruity?
- Red or white?
- Does this taste good to you?
As with wines, the perfect font depends on what you are writing?
- Posters?
- Street signs?
- A brief?
- A letter?
- Are there font size requirements?
- Does the court make you double space?
After all, every good law student learns that the answer to most Socratic questions is, "It depends." So it is with fonts or wines.
Nevertheless, after the jump, I'll reveal, at long last, the official font recommendations of The Appellate Record.
Feel the magic.
There are two kinds of folks who write about fonts. One is the connoisseur who speaks of their historical roots and describes their aesthetic qualities much the way a sommelier describes wine. Matthew Butterick and Derek Kiernan-Johnson are that first kind of person.
The other knows a little something about fonts, but mostly "knows what he likes"--tends to drink his favorite Cabernet with a steak and his favorite Chardonnay with fish. That's me.
But even I have figured out that, like wine, there are some good pairings and bad pairings when it comes to fonts. Think of serif and sans serif fonts as red and white wine. What's the difference? If you're new to this nerdiana, look to Ruth Anne Robbins and her influential paper, Painting with Print:
Fonts are grouped in families according to certain visual attributes. Although there are six families, the most important two for attorneys are those most commonly used in traditional text, serif and sans serif fonts. A “serif” or “wing” is the extra little line dangling on the bottom of letters. . . . Serif fonts all have those danglers. Sans serif fonts, on the other hand, have no such extra danglers, hence the “sans,” French for “without.” In other words, sans serif is “without wings.” A common sans serif font is Arial. Tahoma and Univers are other examples of sans serif type.*
Professor Robbins also makes some recommendations about which fonts to use for which purposes, which I share with you now.
In my "white wine with fish" sort of way, sans serif fonts work very well for headings, providing a nice contrast, standing out, and providing highly legible guideposts for the reader.
I use Helvetica. Because I do. Because it rocks. Just because. Watch the movie.
In my "red wine with steak" sort of way, it seems best to pair a serif font--one designed for books, not for newspapers--for use in extended blocks of text. This assumes, of course, you and your reader are dealing in paper rather than screen reading. Some research shows that using a serif "book" font aids the reader's ability plow through and thus absorb all that text.
But I can already hear you asking, "which serif font should I use?" Butterick has some great suggestions from an aesthetic point of view, especially if you find it important enough to purchase a license to use real fonts in your shop. Kiernan-Johnson has written well about which fonts might evoke which "ethos" for specific purposes--e.g., if you want to take on the credibility of the Solicitor General, why not adopt the emperor's clothes (or fonts).
But for the workaday Cabernet sort of lawyer, one can hardly go wrong with the recommendations of the Seventh Circuit, in choosing a serif font designed for books:
Both the Supreme Court and the Solicitor General use Century. Professional typographers set books in New Baskerville, Book Antiqua, Calisto, Century, Century Schoolbook, Bookman Old Style and many other proportionally spaced serif faces. Any face with the word “book” in its name is likely to be good for legal work. Baskerville, Bembo, Caslon, Deepdene, Galliard, Jenson, Minion, Palatino,
Pontifex, Stone Serif, Trump Mediäval, and Utopia are among other faces designed
for use in books and thus suitable for brief-length presentations.
Try them out. Taste and see if you like them. I find that I use different fonts depending upon the spacing and point size required by the court, just because some that I like at 12 or 13 point look truly ugly at 14 point double spaced. But my "go to" fonts, that look good to me in almost any size, any spacing, and almost any briefing application are Book Antiqua and Century Schoolbook.
Feel the magic.
RESOLVED: Thou shalt use the right font.
Coming soon, why you should give your readers C-R-A-P and a modest proposal that court formatting rules ought to pass the Daubert standard or be eliminated.
*Ruth Anne Robbins, Painting with print: Incorporating concepts of typographic and layout design into the text of legal writing documents, 2 J. ALWD 108, 119 (2004).
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I'm a title and energy transaction attorney in my second year of practice, but also do a lot of litigation-related memos. Lots of title opinions, contracts, and detailed conveyance instruments. Some briefing, but not much. As such, I usually consider my target audiences to be my boss first, then my typically-sophisticated client, but not necessarily a judge. My bosses are generally in a hurry and will be happier if he feels the text appearance is not bogging him down, so I tend to pick fonts for the ease and speed with which they can be read. In that light, I found this study interesting:
http://www.surl.org/usabilitynews/32/font.asp
Times and Tahoma got the quickest reading time. It doesn't indicate why, but both fonts are comparatively dense, and I find from my own experience that a denser font is easier and quicker to scan and absorb because it creates a more defined word shape and shortens the distance the eye must cover. It also creates a clearer line of text, so you are less likely to skip or repeat lines. The study discounts reading time as a significant factor in readability of short online passages, but I almost always deal in long, complex, paper-based texts. I have also heard, and found to be true, that serif fonts are easier to read on paper than sans serif fonts. I've used Times 12 pt. for a long time as default, but have recently switched to Calisto 11.5 font (not included in this study, but also a serif font, and appears denser than Times). I rarely use a sans serif font. If I'm forced to, I choose Tahoma 11 pt. (dense like Calisto, with a size comparable to Times). I also find that using a headings font that is different than the text font is distracting and kind of tacky, so no sans serif headings either.
Interestingly, the study indicates that speed of reading does not obviously correspond with a reader's conscious preference, or which font appeared most "business-like." However, notice that Times also scored well in "business-like" (though I'm not sure that's a good thing since Courier also scored well in that category). I wonder whether, in the context of a long and complex legal document, which is more important in impressing a reader who is a sophisticated legal scholar: ease and speed of readability or the reader’s conscious preference. But consider that a particular scholarly reader has also gone through the rigorous font selection process for his own writing, in which case he has developed a personal bias for a font. In that case, I'm screwed unless I already know his preferred font. Given that conscious preference is somewhat unpredictable, and that a reader may prefer a font that is unique or attractive but bad for publishing, I tend to choose the font that will objectively allow for easier and faster reading.
On a similar subject, I never double-space unless I have to because I think the reader's comprehension benefits from seeing entire paragraphs on a single page. Plus it looks sharper. Large blocks of text can overwhelm some readers, but I doubt it's a problem for my audience. I also try to counter the effect by emphasizing white space, like putting two spaces between paragraphs and never starting a paragraph at the bottom of a page unless I can fit in three or more lines of it. I also try to avoid making the last line of a paragraph less than three words long. That doesn't really have to do with readability, I just think it looks awkward and unpolished, and I'll alter content to make it work.
I know a lot of people that are very concerned about these questions, but for whatever reason don't want to share their ideas publicly. So thanks for your posts on this subject, and I hope they spur more interest.
Great series of posts Kendall. My name is Frank, and I use Times New Roman and 2 spaces after periods. Now that I have admitted my problem, I can begin the recovery process. (note the single spaces here.)
I will second your endorsement of Book Antiqua. I have been using it ever since I read the Seventh Circuit's commentary on font selection. The only drawback I have found is that I cannot use it when the court has a page limit (instead of a word limit) and my brief is close to that limit. Book Antiqua is slightly larger than Times New Roman, so that even when they are both set at 13 point, Book Antiqua fills more pages with fewer words. Over a 50-page brief, Book Antiqua can add two or more pages to the length. Luckily, I don't write 50-page briefs very often. Other than that one drawback, I think that Book Antiqua is a great looking font.
It also has the advantage of being included with Word. So when I send a draft to co-counsel or a client, they can read it without any problem. Fonts that are not included with Word might have some aesthetic advantages, but they make collaborating with others more difficult.
Interesting study, Brandon. Note that the participants were screen reading, not reading paper or e-readers. That makes a big difference and may explain the high scores for Arial--a sans serif font. Very small sample size too. Any study in which Courier would rank highly is immediately suspect in my eyes.
But we are obviously kindred spirits given the thought we put into a subject like this.
It's OK, Frank. This is a safe space. I too have not completely abandoned the double space after the period. I may have sobriety, but my thumb on the space bar does not.
And Rich, like you, I seldom have a length problem, but when I do I often pull out the Goudy or Garamond.
Never the Font That Dare Not Speak Its Name.