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| 1 | +{{{ |
| 2 | + "bodyClass" : "bg-white" |
| 3 | +}}} |
| 4 | +<article class="pa3 pa5-ns"> |
| 5 | + <h1 class="f3 f1-ns lh-title"> |
| 6 | + 9.5.1 If the text will be read on the screen, design it for that medium. |
| 7 | + </h1> |
| 8 | + <p class="f3 lh-copy measure"> |
| 9 | + Like a forest or a garden or a field, an honest page of letters can absorb -- |
| 10 | + and will repay -- as much attention as it is given. Much type now, however, is |
| 11 | + composed not for the page but for the screen of a computer. That screen can be |
| 12 | + alive with flowing color, but the best computer monitors have dismal resolution |
| 13 | + (about 130 dpi: one fifth the current norm for laser printers and roughly 5% of |
| 14 | + the norm for professional digital typesetting). When the text is crudely |
| 15 | + rendered, the eye goes looking for distraction, which the screen is all too |
| 16 | + able to provide. |
| 17 | + </p> |
| 18 | + <p class="lh-copy measure"> |
| 19 | + The screen mimics the sky, not the earth. It bombards the eye with light |
| 20 | + instead of waiting to repay the gift of vision. It is not simultaneously |
| 21 | + restful and lively, like a field full of flowers, or the face of a thinking |
| 22 | + human being, or a well-made typographic page. And we read the screen the way we |
| 23 | + read the sky: in quick sweeps, guessing at the weather from the changing shapes |
| 24 | + of clouds, or like astronomers, in magnified small bits, examining details. We |
| 25 | + look to it for clues and revelations more than wisdom. This makes it an |
| 26 | + attractive place for advertising and dogmatizing, but not so good a place for |
| 27 | + thoughtful text. |
| 28 | + </p> |
| 29 | + <p class="lh-copy measure"> |
| 30 | + The screen, in other words, is a reading environment even more fugitive than |
| 31 | + the newspaper. Intricate long sentences full of unfamiliar words stand little |
| 32 | + chance. At text size, subtle and delicate letterforms stand little chance as |
| 33 | + well. Superscripts and subscripts, footnotes, endnotes, sidenotes disappear. In |
| 34 | + the harsh light and coarse resolution of the screen such accessories are |
| 35 | + difficult to see; what is worse, they dispel the essential illusion of speed. |
| 36 | + so the links and jumps of hypertext replace them. All the subtexts then can be |
| 37 | + the same size and readers are at liberty to skip from text to text like |
| 38 | + children switching channels on tv. When reading takes this form, sentences and |
| 39 | + letterforms retreat to blunt simplicity. Forms bred on newsprint and signage |
| 40 | + are most likely to survive. |
| 41 | + </p> |
| 42 | +</article> |
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