title: Why does the APA recommend the use of serif fonts?
abstract: BACKGROUND
  The publication norms of the American Psychological Association recommend the use of a serif font in the manuscripts (Times New Roman). However, there seems to be no well-substantiated reason why serif fonts would produce any advantage during letter/word processing.
  
  
  METHODS
  This study presents an experiment in which sentences were presented either with a serif or sans serif font from the same family while participants' eye movements were monitored.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Results did not reveal any differences of type of font in eye movement measures -except for a minimal effect in the number of progressive saccades.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  There is no reason why the APA publication norms recommend the use of serif fonts other than uniformity in the elaboration/presentation of the manuscripts.
authors: Universitat de València, Spain. mperea@uv.es
authors: Manuel
authors: M
authors: Perea
mesh_terms: D005133:Eye Movements; D017408:Guidelines as Topic; D006801:Humans; D011584:Psychology; D011932:Reading; D012958:Societies, Scientific; D014956:Writing / Q000592:standards*