Comment by xamuel
9 hours ago
I didn't read the OP but one pet peeve of mine is the uppercase I vs. lowercase L in sans-serif. Especially in contexts like randomly-generated passwords which you have to manually copy for whatever reason. Does the article address this in any way? Or is the context limited to "real" language where that's not as much of an issue?
That's only a problem with some sans-serif fonts. This very site is using a sans-serif and the capital 'I' has bars in either end so it's not confused with 'l'.
Some sans-serif fonts do add little flourishes to some letters, like 'l', to further distinguish them.
According to the CSS, this site requests the fonts Verdana or Geneva in order, and what you say about the capital 'I' is true for the former but not the latter.
> That's only a problem with some sans-serif fonts. This very site is using a sans-serif and the capital 'I' has bars in either end so it's not confused with 'l'.
I'm not sure if my browser is broken or what but they literally look identical to me in your comment.
font-family: Verdana, Geneva, sans-serif;
My computer has neither Verdana nor Geneva, and my browser's default sans-serif is Noto Sans, which has bars on the upper case "I".
Verdana does, too. It looks like Geneva does not (<http://www.identifont.com/show?1O3>), so you're probably using Geneva.
Maybe Verdana is the default for Windows, Geneva for MacOS, and "other" for Linuxes.
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Probably your browser. They look different to me.
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Aren't those bars the serifs? So you're saying the sans-serif I has serifs?
Hacker news uses sans-serif font and in all my browsers the I and l look nearly identical btw.
I think the serifs would be embellishments at the ends of the bars, not the bars themselves.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Serif
This might be a question of philosophy! I suspect that they were originally serifs - see inscriptions to Julius Caesar, say (such inscriptions being the inspiration for Trajan font) - but for some writers they were extended to become part of the letter body, akin to the bar on the top of capital-T.
My take then is, originally they were serifs, now they are sometimes part of the letter form.
Perhaps, a well-designed random password generate should not use 1, l, or I. Or 0, or O. (I know mine don't).
Now I'm imagining an unrealistically-nerdy world where all secret entry/display widgets let you flip between different representations.
So a form might have a choices between ASCII, Hex, Base52, Base64, or schemes with anti-typo check digits, etc.
It's surprisingly rare for fonts to be careful to distinguish not just Il1| but also 0O 2Z "'' 5S B8. I typically set my system font to something that does, like Atkinson hyperlegible.