dyslexic font diversions
a loaded title that can be taken many different ways. Appropriately so, since the naming of the monospaced fonts on this site have been somewhat whimsically inconsistent, if not confusing.
This is an attempt to normalize the font names since promoting the MonoLexic variants, removing redundant alias font naming and, instead, assigning custom Space cell widths to those font names—i still harbour a fondness for those names :)
geolexic
is now assigned to the former elementary font in honour of geometric fonts such as Futura with their distinctive single storey lower case a. The *Lexic postfix name now consistently represents dyslexic fonts with a double cell width Space separator for maximal word separation. And Grotesk is no longer an alias for Unolexic, yielding..
font** | b-d-p-q | f | a | space |
---|---|---|---|---|
Monolexic | round-serifless-corner-hook | flat | double | 2x |
Unolexic | round-serifless-corner-hook | extended | double | 2x |
grotesk | round-serifless-corner-hook | extended | double | 1.6667x |
Geolexic | round-serifless-corner-hook | flat | single | 2x |
elementary | round-serifless-corner-hook | flat | single | 1.6667x |
**An “i” prefix to the font names designate font sets with a serifed capital I (see fonts).
word separation
Why the new elementary and grotesk fonts?
After considerable time on my e-readers with the 2x Space cell width dyslexic fonts, i found for myself, that a slightly narrower cell width spacing maintained adequate word separation with a slight increase in reading (scan) speed—along with a visually appealing page density.
The full page columnar alignment is lost by the partial word spacing reduction—the visual benefit of which, appears to be dependent on one’s spatial predisposition.
i originally thought it beneficial to have a columnar—vertical letter alignment—layout for the visual cortex to absorb in full but now i am uncertain whether unaligned “noise”—non-vertical letter alignment—may be less distracting to the visual center. No doubt, people will be found in both camps.
Responses from the community who have found the original dyslexic spacing beneficial, still appear to prefer the 2x spacing—the neural parameters being very individual. i may be the outlier here :)
single storey a
Interestingly, while the double storey lower case a is the more legible of its lower case representations, i have been finding myself drawn to elementary as my default e-reader font. At 300PPI, it renders clearly and distinctly (for my eye sight) and i like the increased air the open glyph presents on the printed line.
For web browsers and computer monitors, the double storey glyph still looks more legible to my eyes. This is largely a function of PPI and current browser font rendering—this opinion may change tomorrow.
It is these personal aesthetics that create the beautiful typeface variations available to us. Whatever works for you :)
update
after acclimating to the 1.6667x cell width Space character and finding it quite agreeable, i revisited a 1.5x cell width which i previously discarded at the time—finding the jump too jarring after a lengthy tenure with the default 2x Space character.
To my surprise, this now worked (for me—i still recommend the default 2x Space character for maximal dyslexic benefit). This cell width staggers the columnar format of the page with a high degree of vertical character alignment along with increased page density.
So there are now three word spacing options available..
font** | b-d-p-q | f | a | space |
---|---|---|---|---|
Unolexic | round-serifless-corner-hook | extended | double | 2x |
grotesk | round-serifless-corner-hook | extended | double | 1.6667x |
grotesk | round-serifless-corner-hook | extended | double | 1.5x |
Geolexic | round-serifless-corner-hook | flat | single | 2x |
elementary | round-serifless-corner-hook | flat | single | 1.6667x |
elementary | round-serifless-corner-hook | flat | single | 1.5x |
All the Space character cell widths are available in the OneDrive repos in serifless and serifed capital “I”.
fonts
The font files may be found here. As always, YMMV.