#readability

[oakenroots]

Tumblr just loves fucking with the readability of posts for the Lols

@staff Fucking restore the font size of the notes counter you demons. I already cant block the revolting FUCKing pimple popper ads which is almost enough on its own to make me log out and never come back, if you make this hellsite any more inhospitable I'm going to find where you live and come breathe heavily over your shoulder until you fix it.

[ratbugs]

hey yall what would you say is the easiest font to read, specifically at small sizes?

also something that’s in microsoft word. . . i personally think the tumblr font is pretty great as someone who cannot see unless it’s like right up under my nose

but idk how i can get that on word

[grayrazor]

A lot of Davy Jones’s crew are kinda in the Michael Bay Transformers territory, where they look cool and detailed up close, but in motion they’re kinda too detailed to look like anything other than humanoid jumbles of shapes.

[ominous-faechild]

Btw, in case anyone was wondering...

It can be difficult to get the colors for characters!

Especially because I like giving families similar colours, or align colors with people's magic! 👀

(Also, the middle color for Algernon was selected, haha)

Taglist under "read more"!

@honeybewrites @the-golden-comet @illarian-rambling @ashirisu @urnumber1star

@the-letterbox-archives @48lexr @aalinaaaaaa @thecomfywriter @an-indecisive-nerd

[acurtist]

It's okay. 🙂‍↕️

Kindness is obviously the hardest form of labor. 😶

[dsudis]

a gentle observation

I love you, Dreamling writers, and you should all format the text of your stories as you see fit, but I just want you to know that for me and a non-zero number of other neurodivergent readers (and probably some who aren't neurodivergent but have a difficulty with this for other reasons), when you bold all of Dream's dialogue the effect is not just a bit of emphasis on those lines or somehow evoking Tom Sturridge's voice, it's like you put all of Dream's dialogue in size 84 font and the rest of the story in size 8. I just flat out stop seeing all the text in between Dream's lines.

I can fight through it! I have definitely successfully read stories where Dream's dialogue is all in bold, and sometimes I do even manage to stop noticing the effort. But that formatting choice does make it significantly harder for me to actually read all the words in your story.

Just. In case you were not aware that that is a thing some readers are experiencing: here is your heads up.

[rainestormy-nights]

font rant below cut - I think it's important

STOP USING TIMES NEW ROMAN (and other fonts with high thick/thin contrast) IN ACADEMIC SETTINGS/ANY LONG PARAGRAPHS

[pt] Stop using Times New Roman (and other fonts with high/thick/thin contrast) in academic settings/any long paragraphs [end pt]

I'm learning typography right now, and something that has been repeatedly said is that Times New Roman is not a good font for readability. (Note that readability is not the same as legibility. Readability aims to make a large section of body text easy to recognize and understand, while legibility applies to a specific word or phrase, usually a title or headline.) Times New Roman has a lot of thick/thin contrast, meaning that each letter is made up of both (very) thick and (very) thin lines. This causes more "visual clutter," as my teacher puts it, and makes the text less readable. It also affects dyslexia and visual impairments more than its low thick/thin contrast counterparts.

Times New Roman is also a serif font, meaning that it has the funny little things on the ends of letters, like this recreation of the Vogue font:

The funky things on the ends of the letters are serifs. These decorative lines, while pretty, make a font less readable. Serif fonts are best for headlines, titles, or small bursts of text. Sans serif (lit. "without serif") fonts don't have these funky decorations. By default, Tumblr uses a sans serif, Helvetica. Some of the themes use serif fonts, but default and dark mode use Helvetica. The lack of thick/thin contrast and distracting (albeit cool) serifs gives the brain less information to process, making words more recognizable. This helps people like me who are visually impaired. I'm not dyslexic, but I've heard that it can help dyslexic people as well.

In modern academia, there is no reason to be using Times New Roman for everything in existence. There is more to the readability equation, but this is just a rant on the funny hellsite. Helvetica and Ariel are no less "professional" than Garamond or Times New Roman, and the former two fonts make writing much more accessible than the latter two.

Also, Comic Sans is only annoying because it's overused in professional settings to make things seem more "fun."