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Subject:Re: Font and Case for best readability on a Form? From:"Parks, Beverly" <ParksB -at- EMH1 -dot- HQISEC -dot- ARMY -dot- MIL> Date:Thu, 18 Sep 1997 14:35:51 -0700
One of the best demonstrations I've seen for the readability of all caps
vs. mixed case was in (dare I say it) one of Robin Williams' books ("The
PC is Not a Typewriter"). If you were to draw a rectangle around each
individual letter in a word or sentence, then blacken it in, the
all-caps version would look like a line of solid black boxes with little
variation. The mixed case version would have more varying widths as well
as blocks that were above and below the centerline (the ascenders and
descenders of the alphabet).
The demonstration in the book gave as examples common quotations. There
were no letters, just those black boxes. Based on the variations and
pattern of the black boxes in the lower-case examples, it was easy to
figure out what the quotation was. Wish I could demonstrate it in email
somehow...
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