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Comment by systemvoltage | Hacker News Reader

/rant Substack has literally one job: to display written information on a webpage and provide good typography for writers. The most commonly used font - "Spectral" is a complete mess. Kerning is off, letter spacing is too much and word spacing is too little. If someone is reading this at Substack, please for the love of god consult a professional typographer and ask them for a recommendation. If you can't then just use one of the many Google Fonts such as Source Serif Pro. Here is a comparison of how bad it is:

Original, Spectral: https://i.imgur.com/SBS8iQG.png

Source Serif Pro: https://i.imgur.com/AM8KSUC.png

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If you are using an ad blocker, you can add the following rules to change the font:

substack.com##body:style(font-family: Arial !important)

I can't unsee these sins now

This is classic form over function. It's been scientifically measured that sans-serif fonts are better for screens with serif best for printed text.

Something like Helvetica with good spacing and high contrast is the best for reading online.

Helvetica is designed for posters and logos. It is a poor typeface to choose for body copy, especially on screens.

This isn’t to dispute serif vs sans-serif.

I’m pointing the letter spacing. Doesn’t matter if it’s serif or sans-serif. If the fitting is bad, it’s going to be difficult to read. The vision system recognizes word shapes and it’s sensitive to how much space is between letters (kerning is a bit different, usually pairs of glyphs).

Orthogonally, can you cite the scientific source that claims sans serif is better on displays? Curious when it was published. I wonder if it still applies to retina displays and hidpi screens.

> It's been scientifically measured that sans-serif fonts are better for screens with serif best for printed text.

Were any of those studies conducted after high DPI displays became commonplace? Other than backlighting, I can't think of much that would distinguish a serif font on a high DPI display from one in print.

Not every screen is high-DPI, and device modality matters too. Being able to touch and trace with your fingers on a smartphone with flexible angles is very different than scrolling text on a monitor. True legibility needs to take into account all of those factors.

In terms of priorities, is it fair to say that the main issue here is word spacing? I don't see much difference with the kerning to be honest. For letter spacing, is there any level at which it would be too little?

Source Serif Pro is truly one of the most beautiful modern web fonts.

I very much agree. It’s exceptional in so many ways.

Spectral might be bad, but I'd not replace it with a serif font.

Wow, you're not wrong.

It doesn't seem that bad in a dark theme

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