Trebuchet is a font that Microsoft has licensed extensively a a “core font for the web” since the early days of Internet Explorer. It still comes on all Windows and Mac computers. It's a lovely font, and a beautiful san-serif alternative to Arial/Helvetica or even Verdana. It the font that this article uses for body text. There's a problem with it—actually two. The lowercase g and the ampersand &. These characters are too fancy and eye-catching to be a part of a good, readable font. I suppose the g isn't too bad at some (small) sizes. But at larger sizes, you can see how stylized it is. This is a bad thing for readability.
g
The ampersand is even worse. It needs to be decoded every time I see it, and I always end up feeling annoyed. It is horribly ugly and prickly.
&
Because of these two rogue characters in an otherwise attractive font, I cannot use it. I suppose I could swap in the Arial characters for these instead.
g
The ampersand is even worse. It needs to be decoded every time I see it, and I always end up feeling annoyed. It is horribly ugly and prickly.
&
Because of these two rogue characters in an otherwise attractive font, I cannot use it. I suppose I could swap in the Arial characters for these instead.
Pure Trebuchet: gaggles of gazelles & geese; pack my box with five dozen liquor jugsHmm, not great, but then not bad. Certainly the ampersand is a welcome change.
Pure Arial: gaggles of gazelles and geese; pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs
Arial g and &: gaggles of gazelles & geese; pack my box with five dozen liquor jugs
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