All fonts used to have serifs. The first sans-serif font appeared in 1816, but as a novelty, and until halfway through the twentieth century people only used sans-serif fonts for titles and decorative effects.
They are now widely used for ordinary reading text. On the Web, as I mentioned in yesterday’s post, they are far and away the most common kind of font.
But are they really as legible as serif fonts? I sometimes wonder if the well-known fact that people scan Web pages rather than read them isn’t in part due to the fact that sans-serif fonts remain a tiny bit harder to read at any speed.
Whether that’s true or not, canny Web designers lay out pages for scanning rather than reading, and pick fonts which enhance their usability. The fundamental things apply.
To sse the effects of different fonts on the same text, you might like to take my Spanish Journey, a trip through a set of identical home pages using different designs with different fonts, from Times Roman to Comic Sans and beyond (because I make some use of Flash).
