What font are you writing in? Trying to work out which is easiest to read

For large bodies of text, Times New Roman is the way to go. The serifs (little horizontal sticky-out bits on the top and bottom of letters, like THIS font) help the human eye link the words together. The reader can view the text as a series of lines.

Fonts link Arial are good for blocks of text, e.g. on a poster. The lack of serifs make the human eye scan the text, rather than viwing the text as a series of lines.

Hope that's helpful...and i hope it makes sense!

D'oh! Sorry, let me start again...

For large bodies of text, Times New Roman is the way to go. The serifs (little horizontal sticky-out bits on the top and bottom of letters) help the human eye link the words together. The reader can view the text as a series of lines.

Fonts like Arial are good for blocks of text, e.g. on a poster. The lack of serifs (e.g. THIS font) make the human eye scan the text, rather than viwing the text as a series of lines.

Hope that's helpful...and i hope it makes sense!

Are you talking about for your final product? Are there internal Uni guidelines for this you can refer to?

Hi Sixkitten

I use Arial for everything as it is, in my opinion, easiest to read. Alternative Times Roman yet looks very traditional. Problably best bet, as suggested by others, is to go with what the consenses is at your uni.

Times New Roman 12. I've written in this font for years and it's the one required by my department. I'm started to hate it though, and now I find Arial (surprisingly!) much more readable...

serif fonts (i.e. Times) are good for small print, the kind you see on smaller books. They are usually around 8pt. For your thesis, you will be required to type in larger sizes like 10-12 pt. So Arial (a san-serif font) is good enough to be legible, readable and tidy. You don't need to use serif fonts unless your University guidelines say so. I usually write in Lucida Sans, but for my thesis I might have to convert to Arial (which is exact copy of Helvetica, if you are a Mac user by any chance).

Just had a look at mine. Courier. And I hate courier.

Isn't that what ancient typewriters used?

yes, designed to look like that

Somtimes i do like writing in it because it has that look (dunno why)

Cryogenics, are you in computer-science?

Mine has been in times new roman 12 point, but I am rather fond of Tahoma for the chapter headings and sub-headings. I also use Tahoma in posters - think it's easier to read at a distance than times new roman, and looks nicer. But maybe I should check my regulations... I don't remember it saying anything about font... but probably better check!!! I also hate double line spacing... what a waste of paper!

golfpro - no guidelines (it just says it has to be easy to read)

I've always been a Tahoma girl, but everyone else seems to use Ariel

It seems such a silly thing to ask, but the presentation seems to be such an issue (and I know people who've had stupid things like style added to minor corrections)

Thats nice of them really. My place are very prescriptive, which can be a bugger if you find double spaced in courier anything but.