i’ve seen the research. most of it is old,
and little can be described as well-done.

besides, it’s based on the notion there
is one (and only one) “correct” answer.

it’s entirely possible half the population
finds one thing to be “more readable“
while the other half finds another to be
“more readable”, never the twain to meet.

nobody even really _defines_ readability
in a way that seems satisfactory to me…

reading speed is a non-starter, to my mind.
and reading comprehension is far too hard
to measure reliably. retention is important,
but needs to be measure in the long-term,
not on a 1-minute versus 10-minutes way.

“comfort” seems to me to be the best one,
and who better to gauge how “comfortable“
a person is than that very person themself?

so personal choice is the rosetta stone here,
as far as i’m concerned, and since choice is
completely compatible with e-books, why not?

–bowerbird

Good call on my blog typography. I’ve tweaked the CSS in my theme (along with installing a typography plugin) to bring my blog more in line with what I consider optimum readability.

you’ve laid out a pretty good path of questions
that people should ask themselves to answer…

unfortunately, you suggested what their answers
should be, according to your _own_ preferences.

i find that, when having people choose the best
font for themselves, they don’t have any problem
doing that. you suggest the best choice will be a
serif font, but i’ve found that roughly half of the
population will disagree with you on that matter.

likewise, you suggest a measure of 6–8 words,
which then sets the font-size, but i’ve found that
it’s best to let people choose their own font-size,
regardless of how that choice affects the measure.

i agree with you that “healthy” margins are nice, but
i’ve found that people disagree on what that means.
so once again, it’s best to let ‘em make the decision.

as for leading, i find that people usually have a solid
idea about what constitutes “too much” and “too little”,
and will quickly and easily converge on their choice…

ditto with block-paragraphs versus book-indentation.
the user-preference usually comes quickly and easily.

and again with justification. some people like it and
others don’t, so just let them decide for themselves.

as for hyphenation, their are other considerations here.
first and foremost is whether the hardware can handle it.
and even if the hardware can, often the software cannot.
plus, you need to consider if the software is sufficiently
advanced to do its searches without hyphenation glitches.

getting back to personal preferences, though, you tell
people what they should be doing, based on what _you_
prefer, when it comes to font color and background color
(and textures), when the truth of the matter is that they
should do what makes reading easy for _them_, not you.

in particular, you imply that _high-contrast_ is the best,
especially in terms of avoiding eye-strain. but many find
that a high contrast causes them the _most_ eye-strain!
suck people like dark-grey type on a cream background,
and who am i (or you) to tell ‘em differently? who indeed?

like you, i’ve not been able to make scrolling work for me.
but i’m sure not gonna argue with someone who _has_…

likewise, i find it ironic that you advise that people should
eliminate all the background buttons, but then you admit
that you leave the progress-bar on, as well as the clock…
you have good reasons for doing that, i understand well,
and i suppose that other people would have good reasons
for leaving on whatever paraphernalia that they leave on.
and again, who are we to argue with them?

again, as i said at the outset, you’ve given people a great
checklist of items to consider. i just wish you wouldn’t
have tried to fill in that checklist for them. they can do it.

–bowerbird

I find that the default settings in Stanza and the Kindle app on the iPhone are both pretty good. I find myself quite happy reading either. Many of the books aren’t well formatted, but a lot of print books aren’t well formatted either.

My experience is that people who say “I could never read a book on an iPhone” have actually just never tried it. It’s in the same class as all the comments from people who say “who would read blogs; I don’t want to hear about someone’s cat”, or more recently, “what’s the point of twitter; I don’t want to hear about what you had for lunch.”

I feel that a color combination of dark green on light amber is the easiest on the eyes when reading for prolonged periods of time.

Thanks for a heckuva post !