s type-faces, Cloister and Centaur, two of
the most beautiful types of any age or country, and both, if we may
judge by comparison with the types approved by the Clark University
experiments, also among the most legible. Fortunately in type design
there is no essential conflict between beauty and use, but rather a
natural harmony. Already a high degree of legibility has been attained
without sacrifice; the future is full of promise.

In respect to books, we may congratulate ourselves that printing has
made real progress in the last generation towards meeting the primary
demand of legibility. The form of print, however, which is read by the
greatest number of eyes, the newspaper, shows much less advance. Yet
newspapers have improved in presswork, and the typesetting machines have
removed the evil of worn type. Moreover, a new element has come to the
front that played a much more subordinate part three or four decades
ago--the headline. "Let me write the headlines of a people," said the
late Henry D. Lloyd to the writer, "and I care not who makes its laws."
It is the staring headlines that form the staple of the busy man's
newspaper reading, and they are certainly hygienic for the eyes if not
always for the mind. While the trend towards larger and clearer type
has gone on chiefly without the consciousness of the public, it has not
been merely a reform imposed from without. The public prefers readable
print, demands it, and is ready to pay for it. The magazines have long
recognized this phase of public taste. When the newspapers have done the
same, the eyes of coming generations will be relieved of a strain that
can only be realized by those who in that day shall turn as a matter of
antiquarian curiosity to the torturing fine print that so thickly beset
the pathway of knowledge from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century,
and, in the twentieth, overthrown in the field of books and magazines,
made its last, wavering stand in the newspapers.

EXCEPTIONS TO THE RULE OF LEGIBILITY

Since print is meant primarily to be read, the first law of its being is
legibility. As a general principle this must be accepted, but in the
application certain important reservations must be made, all relating
themselves to the question _how_ the print is to be read. For
straightaway, long-time reading, or for reading in which the aim is to
get at the words of the author with the least hindrance, the law of
legibility holds to its full