The most pleasing font for the eyes. The safest font for eyesight has been determined

Verdana turned out to be the optimal computer font for reading. Scientists from the Visual Ergonomics Laboratory in the USA have concluded that Verdana is the safest for the eyes among all fonts used.

Long-term use of a computer can lead to the development of the so-called “syndrome computer vision"(Computer Vision Syndrome). It manifests itself with symptoms such as temporary myopia, dysfunction eye muscles, decreased sensitivity of vision, burning in the eyes and others. According to statistics, computer vision syndrome is detected in 60 - 90% of regular computer users.

However, there are factors that reduce adverse effect computer on your eyes. For example, using the correct computer font. Scientists have come to the conclusion that when reading texts typed in Verdana font, the eyes experience the least strain. This font was designed in 1996 by artist Matthew Carter for Microsoft Corporation. A special feature of Verdana is the absence of serif letters and their increased size due to line spacing.

In addition, study leader Jim Sheedy, a professor of optometry, believes that font size is also important: “If the text is three times smaller than your threshold size, then you will have to strain to read it. In turn, you need to bend over to get a clear result, which also affects your body due to constant awkward posture.”

Researchers consider the ideal computer font size to be 10-12 points.

Comments

2010-08-22 13:23:34 - Pyotr Sergeevich

Now I will always use the Verdana font (I think you can change this in the Windows settings). And I will advise others. Thank you!

2010-08-29 19:37:38 - Valery Vladimirovich

I'll take note. Previously, when working in Word, I always used Times New Roman. But this is no less critical!

2011-01-24 11:03:42 - Sergey Dmitrievich

The research data is for the Latin alphabet. For the Cyrillic alphabet, I think no tests were carried out. There is no doubt that the font is certainly good in itself and optimized for the screen. Matthew Carter's name alone is worth it. And Microsoft's Cyrillic consultants are also not the last people in the world of typography. But is it _really the best_ in the case of Cyrillic? Or maybe, for example, R. Slimbach’s Myriad would work better? (Actually, Carter is one of the leading masters of the Cyrillic alphabet, but who checked? Western, purely “Latin-written” experiments do not affect our eyes in any way.)

Active users of the Internet and computers in general quite often experience health problems. In particular, the most at risk are the eyes that are in constant voltage. It’s unlikely that this could surprise anyone, because since childhood we’ve all been taught “if you sit at the computer for a long time, you’ll damage your eyes.”

Despite the advent of LCD monitors, Negative influence still remain on the organs of vision, and being in front of the monitor for a long time, you should feel the manifestation of the first signs various diseases. Scientists are conducting various analyzes and developing higher quality technologies that can reduce bad influence on people.

How to reduce eye strain?

Prevention is certainly good, but 80% of people only begin to act when an obvious problem arises. What signs indicate that you are having problems with your vision?

  • short-term myopia;
  • decreased vision;
  • itchy eyes;
  • pain in the eyes and forehead;
  • violation of the eye muscles.

If you experience some of these signs, you should already be thinking about how to reduce the negative impact on your vision.
One interesting option is to use a specific font. A lengthy and complex analysis showed that the Verdana font has the least negative impact on vision.

This font was created in 1996 specifically for Microsoft, which already indicates its popularity. The safest font for the eyes is optimally used in sizes 12 and 14.

Not all sites use this font, taking care of the eyesight of their visitors, so before you start reading the next material, copy the text into Word and format it using the Verdana font. Even if this is not a significant contribution to health, nevertheless, it should not be neglected.

Doctors continually warn all computer users: sitting for long periods in front of a computer monitor is harmful to health, especially to the eyes. May develop chronic fatigue eyes, vision begins to deteriorate. A disease such as SCZ or computer vision syndrome appears. However, many Internet users who have heard such recommendations more than once still completely or partially neglect the advice of doctors. Sitting for hours in front of a monitor, they complain about vision problems and still continue with eye-stressful activities. In order to help users as much as possible in solving their difficult problem, scientists conducted a series of experiments, during which the parameters of the safest font for our vision were found.

Optometry professor and lead author of the study at Pacific University, Dr. Jim Sheedy, reported that half of the people who use computers have a clear level of SCD. “If your threshold size is 3 times larger than the text size, then you will have to strain to read some font. In turn, you need to bend down to get exact result, which also has some impact on your body due to the constant uncomfortable posture factor,” he said.

Computer vision syndrome is expressed by symptoms such as pain in the forehead and eyes, burning in the eyes, decreased sensitivity of vision, disruption of the eye muscles, and temporary myopia. Such indicators should already alert a person who values ​​​​his health.

According to ophthalmologists, from 65 to 90% of all computer users are susceptible to this syndrome. Meanwhile, in our time, representatives of almost all specialties need to spend a lot of time in front of a computer monitor. If your work requires you to type a lot, look at the monitor for a long time, that is, good way slightly reduce eye strain by using the safest font.

It was installed by scientists from the Vision Ergonomics Research Laboratory of America. Most harmless to human vision considered a computer font Verdana. An example of the use of such a font is pages. The font itself was created in 1996 by artist Matthew Carter specifically for Microsoft. This factor led to the great popularity of the font on Internet pages.

After calculations, scientists came to the conclusion that when reading those texts that were typed in the Verdana font, the human ophthalmic muscles experience minimal stress, since this font does not have serifs (serifs), and the letters are enlarged by decreasing the line spacing , therefore has good readability even with small size(skittle). In addition, psychologists believe that the Verdana font activates human lung feeling of optimism.

But the main thing is that this font helps to avoid computer vision syndrome and myopia. And for the eyes best size screen font is from 10 to 14 points.

Protect your eyesight!

Leonid Yakubovich August 9, 2012 at 11:17 pm

Reading and vision

  • Lumber room *

Rule #1 Lighting

Ideally, you should only read in good lighting. It is possible with a little dim (Ilyich light bulb, in transport), but in this case there should be an active display backlight. You cannot read in the dark under any circumstances (even faded White color on a black background) – improve, without even noticing, your eyesight. This is rule No. 1, since this is the most insidious moment.

Rule #2 On the road

Read in moving vehicles general case- it is not right. For example, you can read in the new Default City metro cars, which have a smooth ride and good lighting, but reading in some route gazelle is more expensive. If you really want to, then the rule is this: more instability and fluctuations - larger font. As for those who drive their own cars: I have no right to give recommendations, all attention should be paid to the road (especially if you are carrying passengers or driving at high speed - no reading, as a last resort, use your audio system to play audio books).

Rule #3 Colors

In fact, the colors don’t really matter, the main thing is a fairly contrasting relationship between the background and the letter (of course, without extremes like magenta on bright yellow). True, there is an even more holivar question on the topic of color temperature, but I will leave it to the public (especially when reading ordinary text in two colors, this does not really matter - although British scientists hint at a warm lamp color). If you don’t want to rack your brains, you can try the black and white version in the following proportion: 100% black background and 70-90% white text / 90-100% black color and 60-80% white background (again, it all depends from the light transmission of a particular screen). As for the aspect of using different gradients and patterns as a background - the question is interesting and open, but so far I have not found anything better than a solid solid background (on the other hand, a smooth variable background is great for the eyes, but the question is how you will read at the same time).

Rule No. 4 Screen technology

On a bright sunny day and in ideal lighting, E-Lnk is, of course, best suited for reading. But if the lighting is so-so, including changeable (for example, in transport), then screens with an active matrix should be used. At the same time, the best way to cope with this task [the task of reading text] is not the vaunted Retina and so on. improved TFT, and AMOLED (simply a fairy tale, especially if there is white text on a black background, which does not glow at all). But again, technology is a secondary matter, and in fact all this matters only with regular long-term creative binges.

Rule #5 Fonts (size)

Perhaps the most complex issue, because: the larger the font, the easier it is to read, but the smaller it will fit on the screen (again, especially true for mobile devices). And this is the eternal dilemma. It should also be taken into account that an eye that gets tired as the reading process progresses will “demand” an increasingly larger size for comfortable reading. One solution to the dilemma is to initially choose a font that is obviously slightly larger than the “comfort zone” on first reading. Moreover, it should be borne in mind that the smaller the width of the text line (the number of lines in one line), the less strained the eyes are, and “the more on the screen, the more I’ll absorb” is actually an illusion (when reading carefully, the brain doesn’t care , 15 or 40 lines on the screen - try this experiment yourself). But whether to put hyphens or not, whether to align the text in width – it seems to look nicer, and is somewhere recommended for comfortable reading, but I didn’t notice any actual difference in terms of eye strain. Please also note that the font size in points is not a physical size (for example, the same Verdana 10 points is much “larger” than Calibri 10 points), there are also such concepts as screen resolution and font scaling, so the font size is always chosen experimentally in each specific case.

Rule No. 6 Fonts (typeface)

It’s a paradox, but for reading, a sans-serif font is preferable (the paradox is that serifs are needed so that the eye clings to them when reading, but in fact the eyes get tired noticeably faster, especially if the font size is small). The font family itself should be selected by... size. For example, Calibri is good for small fonts, Segoe UI is good for medium fonts, and Verdana is good for large fonts. At the same time, I don’t recommend taking too many fonts for comparison at once, but rather take 3-4 popular and dissimilar ones (or, if you want to go through all available options, group by typeface similarity to ultimately compare the best fonts from each group). Experiment.

Rule No. 7 Golden

Take regular breaks. You can choose the best fonts and colors on best screen, but all this will not help you if you do not give your eyes time to rest. Just take your eyes off the screen for 10 seconds every 10 minutes, take a full break for 5-10 minutes once an hour - that’s quite enough. If you can stick to this rule, then you can safely ignore all the above recommendations (yes, you heard right). But it's not as simple as it seems.

Rule No. 8 Rescue

If you ignored all the points, and your eyes are already burning by the evening (*trollface*), then you don’t need to run straight to the pharmacy or brew a decoction, increasing your alchemy skills. Cut two slices from fresh cucumber and apply it at night looking at your eyes for 20 minutes (you can also massage it).

Tags: Vision safety, reading, comfortable work, workplace