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Interestingly, the eye complaint was a recurring one about various novel typefaces, esp. see Benjamin Franklin's autobiography where he substitutes text set in Caslon (the old approved standard) for Baskerville (the upstart the person he was with didn't like).

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As a person with an eye not especially trained for typography, these two typefaces appear too remarkably similar to be quarreled over. I’m sure those with stronger type setting preferences would disagree, but I find it funny how much humans can debate over things that appear minute and mundane to others (cf. https://xkcd.com/915/)

The thing is, the subtle distinctions do seem to matter in terms of reader acceptance and comprehension, at least in my experience of setting type.

Like most things, it's a gradient/continuum, and achieving true excellence is the result of iterating and testing until all decisions/selections are correct.

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