Fonts for reports

AndyRichards

Hi all!

What fonts do you use in your reports? I'm looking to give our reports a summer makeover and am looking for a nice, clean professional font which is easy to read.

Thanks

arongunningham

Arial 10pt

Suse1969

Arial 10pt

richallum

Roboto 11

arongunningham

sub question: Does anyone explicitly (in the report and/or engagement letters) offer the facility to receive the report in a larger font?

Clients are commonly older and less able to see smaller fonts and we've been debating whether or not to add one of those big bold paragraphs that you see in some documentation offering a different version of the report.

richallum

@arongunningham we've done larger fonts but the adviser has asked the client at some stage in the process if they have any accessibility issues. Also done a recorded suitability before!

Mattclegg

Calibri 11

Andy_Schleider

I use Calibri 11 too. I changed from Arial when Microsoft changed

amarshall

Gill Sans MT 11

richardgough

Verdana 10

Jona

Avenir Book
Don't offer larger font as email reports as encrypted PDF - they can then zoom in or out to their hearts desire (and saves us postage and stationary costs as well as being GDPR compliant).

Suse1969

That's what our aim is @Jona - using the client portal to send secure documents. Currently we offer the client whether they want bigger font (or background colour).

AndyRichards

Thanks all! I've gone with Segoe UI 10pt as really easy to read and looks professional.

Never thought about offering a 'large font' report before, I might suggest that to our adviser!

Nath

Calibri 11, changed from Tahoma a while back.

Jamie_Barnes

Gil Sans Mt here as well.

sm2000p

calibri 11

Rcaisley

Segoe Semi-light 11pt.

harpoon

Perpetua 12

Clare_Weight

Remember it's not just font size, from the point of view of someone without sight difficulty you can make a lot of difference by:

Increase line spacing (I use 1.15)
Use left alignment (not justified)
Make sure your margins aren't too wide
I rarely have more than 500 words per page
Use Bold + white space + boxes rather than underline or italics (the worst!)

In terms of font, I'm a boring Calibri 11 person, didn't want to come in and make changes for the sake of it but I've got everyone to adopt the first 3 in that list - for me, they were definitely the things to prioritise.

Just let me know if you want to talk STYLES. Probably my favourite geek subject!

Clare_Weight

Hi @Jona

Encrypted PDF, is that where you password protect using the PDF software's functionality or something more techy?

Clare

arongunningham

no one said comic sans, so that's good

Jona

@Clare_Weight - yes it's a bit more techy - we have software in our database that turns word docs into an encrypted web page which can be accessed by the end user who has the associated password (also system generated via random password creation); they can then download as pdf.

There is probably a more accurate and technically correct way to describe this - but that's how I see it in my IT illiterate mind..........

Gustavo_Fring

@Clare_Weight said:
Remember it's not just font size, from the point of view of someone without sight difficulty you can make a lot of difference by:

Increase line spacing (I use 1.15)
Use left alignment (not justified)
Make sure your margins aren't too wide
I rarely have more than 500 words per page
Use Bold + white space + boxes rather than underline or italics (the worst!)

In terms of font, I'm a boring Calibri 11 person, didn't want to come in and make changes for the sake of it but I've got everyone to adopt the first 3 in that list - for me, they were definitely the things to prioritise.

Just let me know if you want to talk STYLES. Probably my favourite geek subject!

Hi Claire, this is interesting. What is the rationale for the left-alignment. Is it a readability preference?

benjaminfabi

It's not a readability preference, justified text is more difficult to read than left aligned, especially for those with physical problems related to vision and those with dyslexia.

Suitability reports, which are already dealing with complex concepts and language for most readers, should not be made more difficult to read because justifying text 'looks nicer'.

As an experiment, for the next 24 hours make a note of the text alignment being used on everything you read. You will find that it we live in an overwhelmingly left aligned world.