Quote:
Originally Posted by frabjous
I'm surprised to learn of your reaction. As should be clear from some of the intermediate posts, ligatures, and other more advanced typographical measures, are supposed to make text easier to read, not harder. There's a lot of reseach done to suggest that we don't process every letter in every word, and rely on cues from the overall word shape, and ligatures, from what I understand, are designed in part to keep that shape consistent and "flowing".
Ligatures are in almost all professionally typeset material, and have been for centuries; most people just don't notice them. If my eyes were bad, I'd expect that I probably would just not notice them either, not that they would bother me somehow.
Similarly, if my vision were bad, I doubt I'd notice the difference between straight and curly quotation marks, but I think I'd still subliminally get part of their intended positive effect of leading the eyes.
But obviously my speculation is worthless as anything more than that. I wonder if studies have been done on their effect, and certainly, what holds good in general might not hold good for everyone... and I certainly don't dispute that they cause you trouble.
|
"Supposed to" is not true for me. I note that you consistently state 'if my eyes' or 'if my vision' were bad. Well, obviously it ain't so until you've read 1,000,000 pages with *my* eyes, you'll never know how hard all the ligature stuff can be on small-display devices. Don't worry, you'll get there soon enough.
Until that time, feel free to enjoy all your document formatting you so love.
Derek