When it comes to fonts, there are many web myths and unsaid facts. Especially concerning mobile speed.

The Google Fonts API serves the fonts listed in the Google Fonts directory. You cannot control Googles headers (including expiration headers). According to the Google Fonts FAQs, their font files are cached for a year. If so, why the PageSpeed Insights render blocking error?

Human eyes have limitations. There’s a theme trend to use light-gray type on web pages. This is not good UX. But designers, who should know better, are setting bad examples. Black on white was the standard for many years. That color combination is fatiguing when reading a large block of text onscreen.

The recommendation is #333 dark-gray on white to reduce harsh contrast. But going lower contrast than #333 makes viewers squint to attempt reading text – even when the font size is 18px. We recommend using browser tools for checking font specifications including color and size. We use FontFinder for Firefox. There are equivalent tools for Google Chrome.

“An article about how the web is becoming unreadable has been making the rounds. I feel like most designers already know that light gray text on a white background is a bad idea. The article focuses on text color but I think a more relevant issue is font weight – I’m seeing so many sites these days set body text in 100 and 200 weights which were not designed for body text use.” — Jeremiah Shoaf of TypeWolf

How the Web Became Unreadable
I thought my eyesight was beginning to go. It turns out, I’m suffering from design. by Kevin Marks

Look at these websites. They look fabulous indeed but how good is that if people can’t read them?

Light-gray text is fake minimalism.

“Minimalism in web design started as a backlash against decades of interfaces that increased the prominence of so many elements at once that they all clamored for attention and became visually overwhelming.

What’s great about minimalism is the principle of stripping out non-essential elements. In most cases, this is a best practice to follow.

When it becomes an issue is when there is lots of essential content on a page. Having a lot of content doesn’t suit the minimalist approach to design. So the designer’s compromise has become reducing the contrast of those elements so that, at a glance, the page still ‘looks’ minimal.

Yes, low contrast text does ‘look’ minimal, the same way a blurred photo on Instagram can ‘look’ retro. But you wouldn’t blur your website even if it were fashionable. Don’t lower your contrast, either.” — Nielsen Norman Group

Easy reading helps learning and enjoyment, so what we write should be easy to understand. Readability is about ease of reader understanding. Text should be inviting. Text depends on content (vocabulary) and typography (font size, line height, and line length).

Various factors to measure readability have been used, such as speed of perception, perceptibility at a distance, perceptibility in peripheral vision,  visibility, the reflex blink technique, rate of work (e.g., speed of reading), eye movements, and fatigue in reading.

Readability and legibility aren’t the same. Legibility is a measure of how easily individual letters or characters can be distinguished from each other.

The average adult reads at the 9th-grade level. It also shows that, for recreation, people read texts that are two grades below their actual reading level.

Four variables give the most reliable measure of web reading ease:

• Words per sentence.
• Average grade level of words.
• Characters per word.
• Sentences per paragraph.

Readability should be your number one goal. Someone in your company or organization should especially check graphics to ensure they’re readable. This means:

• No “reverse” (white body text on a colored background, which is hard to read).
• As few italics as possible (they’re hard to read).
• Not too much boldface (ditto).
• Not too much super-wide full-width copy (ditto).
• No type above headlines (confusing).
• No hard-to-read colors like light grays. There should be a 30% grayscale differential between text color and background color. We search for edges of letters for character recognition.

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Measure onscreen font sizes in pixels using the Firefox browser tool: Font Finder or the Google Chrome browser tool: WhatFont.

6pt, 8px, 0.5em, 50% Sample text

7pt, 9px, 0.55em, 55% Sample text

7.5pt, 10px, 0.625em, 62.5%, x-small Sample text

8pt, 11px, 0.7em, 70% Sample text

9pt, 12px, 0.75em, 75% Sample text

10pt, 13px, 0.8em, 80%, small Sample text

10.5pt, 14px, 0.875em, 87.5% Sample text

11pt, 15px, 0.95em, 95% Sample text

12pt, 16px, 1em, 100%, medium Sample text

13pt, 17px, 1.05em, 105%, Sample text

13.5pt, 18px, 1.125em, 112.5%, large Sample text

14pt, 19px, 1.2em, 120% Sample text

14.5 pt, 20px, 1.25em, 125% Sample text

15pt, 21px, 1.3em, 130% Sample text

16pt, 22px, 1.4em, 140% Sample text

17pt, 23px, 1.45em, 145% Sample text

18pt, 24px, 1.5em, 150%, x-large Sample text

20pt, 26px, 1.6em, 160% Sample text

22pt, 29px, 1.8em, 180% Sample text

24pt, 32px, 2em, 200%, xx-large Sample text

26pt, 35px, 2.2em, 220% Sample text

27pt, 36px, 2.25em, 225% Sample text

28pt, 37px, 2.3em, 230% Sample text

29pt, 38px, 2.35em, 235% Sample text

30pt, 40px, 2.45em, 245% Sample text

32pt, 42px, 2.55em, 255% Sample text

34pt, 45px, 2.75em, 275% Sample text

36pt, 48px, 3em, 300% Sample text

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