While reading ebooks, one needs to spend a lot of time staring at the screen. Hence the presentation of the content really matters! Choosing a proper font can enhance your overall reading experience. Which font can help you read faster with less eyestrain? When it comes to fonts, there are lots of choices. Some fonts are easy on the eyes, some have a ton of personality, and some are easy to read. Here are some top fonts the experts suggest for your ebooks.
1. Common Font Categories
There are two main font categories: Serif and Sans Serif.
Serifs are a typeface characterized by decorative letter legs. It has a small stroke or line added to the end of letters, which makes serif fonts looks more heavy and decorative.
Serif stands for stroke or line and Sans means “without”. So Sans Serif font means font without strokes or lines. Thus, the Sans Serif letters appear neat, simple and elegant, which makes them the best font type for reading on screen.
Considering their characteristics, Serif fonts are commonly used in books, newspapers, and most magazines. Because it increases readability and reading speed. Unlike Serif, they are more popular on computer screens. For example for websites, blogs, etc.
Some common serif typefaces are Times New Roman, Garamond, Baskerville, Georgia, Palatino, and Courier New. In contrast, common sans serif typefaces include Arial, Verdana, Helvetica, Futura, Calibri, and Tahoma.
2. Importance of Font Choice
Choosing a suitable typeface for an eBook is crucial to the overall reading experience. Here we list the top three reasons why picking an appropriate font matters.
Holds the reader’s attention
A good font could be the difference between someone reading the book for one minute or half an hour. So it requires a good font to mainly attract the readers to stay on the page for some time. It’s also important that the body text of the ebook is visually stimulating and memorable, and font plays a huge role in this process.
Readability
Readability is a key factor in user experience. It is so important because it influences how clearly a text can be understood by the reader.
The degree of visual comfort a person experiences when reading lengthy passages or reading for a long period of time determines how readable the text is.
Font has a purpose. For instance, serif fonts are easier on the reader’s eye than sans-serif fonts. The stroke leads the reader’s eye from one letter to the next. Serifs help pull the text together, making it easier for the eye to move and recognize one letter to another, helping the eye to speed through long passages of text.
Transmit the message effectively
Some authors would like readers to get their main point in a more obvious way. They will choose to highlight the text that speaks to their heart. Thus, on one hand, highlighting the key point text plays a very critical role in transmitting the author’s message effectively. On the other hand, it has proven to increase reading speeds a lot.
3. Best Fonts for eBooks
Generally, serif fonts are ideal for ebooks. For me, whatever font is easiest to read is best. Take readability and reading experience into consideration, here are some fonts the font designers suggest for your ebooks.
1. Georgia
Many designers have noted that the serif font Georgia is preferred for digital text as it was first introduced in 1993 to be the first typeface to be viewed on a digital display. The font is popular for its readability and is considered ideal for eBooks. Georgia is a serif typeface designed for the Microsoft Corporation. It was intended as a serif typeface that would appear elegant but legible when printed small or on low-resolution screens.
2. Bookerly
My second choice is Bookerly. Bookerly is a serif typeface designed as an exclusive font for reading on Amazon’s Kindle devices and apps. Combined with a new typesetting engine, sachvui.co asserts that the font helps the user read faster with less eyestrain. Bookerly replaced Caecilia as the default font for the 2015 Kindle Paperwhite (3rd generation) and it has been used as the default font on Amazon’s following e-readers.
3. Baskerville
Another excellent easy to read font for ebooks is Baskerville. Most importantly, it fatigues the eyes less over long sessions, and it looks classy. Baskerville may not work well for some devices, however, like a smartphone. Like Georgia, it is lower contrast, thicker, serifed font. It renders clearly on all screen sizes. Baskerville has enough personality to make it feel like you’re reading an actual book.
4. Palatino
If you want something with a bit more character, font experts would recommend you try Palatino. Although Palatino is a good-looking serif font, it can be a bit worn over the course of a book. When it comes to picking an elegant font for body text formatting, Palatino is my preferred choice. Besides, Palatino is one of the best fonts available with Microsoft Word.
