Submission details
Default fonts that make 'I' (upper-case i) look like 'l' (lower case L)
This is SO ANNOYING - I just had a client who lost a contract worth tens of thousands of dollars because they couldn't find the phone number of their business associate. His name is Illington (iLLington) so they searched and searched everywhere, only to find somebody had accidentally typed his name into Address Book (and subsequently Apple Mail, which uses Addess Book) as (LLLington), but it showed up as lllington. Eventually I suggested searching for a partial match of the name, and they found the mistake. Anybody who read lllington wouldn't know if it was LLLington or iLLington, hence the confusion.
I have a Thai friend named Pii, but people sometimes call her Pll (PLL) because it looks like Pll when it's written in upper case.
This also makes phishing a lot easier on websites, because a website can look legitimate when in fact it's not. apple.com and appIe.com look the same, but one is appie.com, a totally different website. People also have problems with passwords when it's impossible to distinguish 'I' (upper-case i) from 'l' (lower case L.)
By contrast, most fonts make 0 (number zero) and O (letter o) look different so it's harder to confuse them.
This isn't an issue that affects most people, but if you've ever been affected by it (or you have a name like 'Illington') you'll understand the problem. At school we are taught capital i has two horizontal lines at the top and bottom. Why do graphic designers think they are being creative and smart by excluding them?
Solution 1: Make important fonts like the default system font LEGlBLE (did anybody notice I misspelt it?). These fonts are used by Address Book, Mail, Safari and other Apple applications so should be the best suited to the task.
Solution 2: Allow us to change the System Font to something else which is more readable, preventing confusion for those who are affected.
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High
Not fixed
Discussion (6 comments)
Your client sounds a lot like a friend of mine who blamed facebook for ruining his marriage.
PS: TinkerTool (http://www.bresink.com/osx/TinkerTool.html) is what you need.
TinkerTool only changes fonts in Cocoa applications, everything else ignores the changes. I've tried it on a few occasions to change system and application fonts with absolutely no success whatsoever.
This is actually the most rubbish I have ever read. Blame Apple for fonts? What? Do you know anything about typography?
The I does look like an L, but if you're searching for Illington, you can notice a very obvious difference: Lllington would be looking very different. I'm sorry, but this is rubbish. If you lose thousands of dollars because you can't find something than that's rubbish. There are search functionalities all around, and on a keyboard the I an L don't look different. When you type in a name, do you type one looking at the letters on the screen, or knowing where you're typing. This can hardly confuse.
You know the name Illington starts with a capital. It's a name, for god's sake. So you know that it won't look like Lllington. Sorry, but after studying quite a lot of typography in my years I cannot see this confusion at all. If you type, you can find, if you read, you can know. It's your own fault.
Helvetica is the most legible font in the sans-serif and one of the most commenly used. As said before, the capital I is a little thicker and recognisable using your eye. I'm really sorry if you don't like what I'm saying but a) it's hardly Apple's fault, Helvetica is the default for a lot of applications - it looks good, it's easy to read and good on the eyes. b) you should find the name, no matter what - YOU SHOULD KNOW WHAT YOU TYPE WHEN YOU SEARCH, and YOU SHOULD KNOW WHAT YOU TYPE WHEN YOU ENTERED THE NAME. Don't just go for the visual, but make damn sure you used the right keys on your keyboard, and you should be fine.
Again, you should know that surnames and names start with a capital - so it couldn't have been the letter L, only the letter I. I understand your confusion, but there are so many simple solutions other than just visually looking for that name.
(Microwavedave: this is nothing personal, it's not a reply I give because it's you - I didn't even read who wrote it untill I posted this, so please don't start getting all pissed, I just don't like the reasoning you have here... And I'm a graphic designer who is a great lover of Helvetica (although I prefer some fonts more) - it's just something that you can't really mistake. If you look for Illington, you look with the I and honestly, if you got through contacts a contact that reads 'Illington' can't be mistaken for Llinton and even if it could be your rational mind should be able to see that you made a typo there).
"I'm sorry, but this is rubbish."
No need to apologise, it's not your fault.
"When you type in a name, do you type one looking at the letters on the screen, or knowing where you're typing. This can hardly confuse."
I and L are VERY close on the keyboard. It's very easy to accidentally press the wrong button. If you think you pressed shift-i but accidentally press l, the screen shows the same result but the data entered was wrong. It's very easy to understand the problem. As it turns out, the people in the office didn't even cause the original problem, they copied and pasted from an email, and the email was wrong to begin with. Some fonts also have problems with '1' and 'l' and 'I', and 'O' and '0' so passwords can be confused with five different letters. I and l look a tiny bit wider on good monitors, but on older CRT monitors they are identical. Also when printed on inkjet printers with poor quality paper the ink blots a little, blurring everything so they again look identical.
I know a lot about typography, and know that it has the potential to suck. Picking the wrong font can win or lose you a contract, can make it hard to read your product's name, can make people angry and annoyed and can lead to problems with people reading it. The wrong font can also be difficult to transfer from one format to another (some fonts just don't work in 3D logos and some don't work well on TV) and some fonts can make a normal word look rude or obscene (because it changes i to L, or rn to m.) People sometimes take incorrect medications because they can't read the labelling and it looks almost identical to a different drug name with a different effect.
The letter I (capital i) is supposed to look like a stretched 'H' turned sideways. That's it, period. Anything else is an L. Another similar example, often in newspapers I see the word BUM and think What?!? then realise it's actually 'burn' but the worn-out printing press blurred the letters so it's definitely printed as 'bum'. r and n should not be too close together so they look like 'm' - but a lot of font designers ignore these rules.
I was discussing this with a friend named Iona (iONA, not LONA) who won a lucky-door prize at a conference, but couldn't collect her prize because the people were calling out for 'LONA' the entire night and she didn't pick up on it. Her name sounds like 'EYE-Oh-Na' which is nothing like 'LO-Nah.' Because she didn't come to collect the prize, somebody else won an $8,000 holiday package, so she was quite understandably upset. All because some idiot never learned how to write when he was back at school, and inflicted his crappy fonts all over society as some type of revenge. There's some myth that they make I look like l to save printer ink (it saves 1c per million pages printed or something) but I just think it was caused by people who never thought far enough ahead to see a potential problem.
"I understand your confusion, but there are so many simple solutions other than just visually looking for that name."
As usual, you didn't read my post. You really should read the ENTIRE post before commenting - *I* was the one who *solved* the problem, it was my clients who couldn't read the name. You should know yourself that it's easy to skip important details when you don't read things properly. You just said I was confused, if you'd read the post properly you'd know that my CLIENT'S were confused, not me. Anyway. the problem is not the person's name, it's the font issue. They were under pressure, on a deadline, and couldn't find the guy's name amongst the thousands of other names in their address book. It's only one example of confusion caused by this problem, and there are many many more examples, this was just the most recent one I've heard. I wouldn't have got myself into that situation myself, because I don't use Apple Address Book, I despise it. I use a different address book package and select Times as the default font. As you said, there are many simple solutions, one is changing the default font to something better suited to the task.
You prefer Helvetica, I prefer Times. It's personal opinion. You prefer screen fonts, I prefer more legible fonts that also print out better on paper. Each to his own.
Could be, but still: who's fault is it if they send you the wrong info? Not apple's for choosing the wrong display font. Helvetica is a good screen font - serif doesn't cut it on scclreen, but i'm through with this. It's a matter of taste, and not something to lose money on. If you're not paying attention, then you lose. If there's much money at stake, double check and don't complain and blame it on one of the worlds best fonts.
Kelta wrote on January 13, 2009, 11:13pm
Actually "I" (i) is a bit wider than "l" (L) I think the difference is big enough. But they are very similar.