Quadraat

Although my recent decision of changing the default font of my documents to Calibri may have been affected by Microsoft, I have been looking for a better font to replace Times New Roman for quite some time.

And, in 2004, I was at one time very close to settle myself with one.

It is Quadraat – a Dutch newspaper font designed by Fred Smeijers. It is shown by some psychometric experiments to be able to increase the speed of reading. (It looks remotely similar to Book Antiqua – another serifs type of font which I have also considered and is often used for printing by accounting and business firms.)

Once again, my preference is easily explained: The New England Journal of Medicine began using Quadraat for its body text since early 2003, and I really find it comforting to read.

PS. Why didn’t I end up using Quadraat?

Simple: In those days Microsoft Words did not regularly support Quadraat, and I didn’t want to pay!