Comparing the Legibility of Six ClearType Typefaces to Verdana and Times New Roman

This study compares the on-screen legibility of six ClearType typefaces to that of two existing typefaces widely used for business documents, email, and websites. Participants were presented with individual letters, digits, and symbols from each typeface for brief durations and asked to verbally identify the character. Percent correct identification for each character was calculated and graphical sunflower plots were used to highlight the characters misidentified. Results show that the legibility was higher for the ClearType typefaces Consolas and Cambria as well as the non-ClearType typeface Verdana than for Times New Roman, especially for digits and symbols.