A quick comparison of various monospace typefaces for text-heavy applications, anti-aliased.

Now, I am fully aware that similar comparisons have been done before, including this , featured on reddit not too long ago. However, the essence of this article is slightly different, as the focus is not on programming, but instead more on text-heavy uses, such as chat and word processing.

Now, why would I use a monospace font for words?

Monospaced fonts have an advantage over non-monospaced fonts in certain niches. Being a heavy IRC user, alignment is very important to me since it makes text a lot more readable (this is also why I use xchat, but that is another story for another time). In addition, the numerous ASCII art I see in chat channels also require alignment - things get ugly very quickly when a variable-width font is used.

I've tried various fonts this month in my quest for the best font, starting with the venerable classic Fixedsys, and its free variant, Fixedsys Excelsior.

I've used Fixedsys for years, when I was still using mIRC. It was the default font then - and maybe is still - and it is a clear, utilitarian font. My only complaint with it is that it looks crass anti-aliased, and that is one of the reasons why I decided to change it.
Fixedsys Excelsior is available here.


Note: I've decided to turn anti-aliasing off for certain fonts for clarity reasons. At such smaller font sizes anti-aliasing blurs them pretty badly.

The first font I tried was Andale Mono, which I believe most users will have present in their system. It's a decent font, I suppose, but it just didn't really look optimal anti-aliased.


I then chose Courier New, another beautiful font. It is a serif monospace font, an uncommon sight. I found that the serifs degraded readability at smaller font sizes, but if it works for you, it works.


Onwards to Monaco, a font default in Apple's systems. I didn't really enjoy the condensed look of it, but some programmers swear by it. Apparently it is one of the nicer-looking 9pt fonts out there.


Upon recommendation, I then checked out Inconsolata, a free font inspired by Consolas. It's a very nice font, and furthermore, free. Clean, clear and monospaced - that's how I like it.
Inconsolata is available here.


However, I did not stick with Inconsolata, since I found the font it was inspired by a slightly better match for my needs. Indeed, both fonts look similar, but Consolas comes across to me as a slightly cleaner, more professional font. Hardly surprising, since it was made by a paid professional unlike Inconsolata. The font thickness of Consolas, which emanates a sense of 'lightness', made switching to it a refreshing change from the heavy Fixedsys. It was designed for Microsoft's ClearType, and comes pre-packaged with more recent versions of Windows.


Consolas shouldn't be used without anti-aliasing, however, since it does look ugly without it.
I foresee myself using Consolas for a long time to come, and perhaps you might be inspired to seek out the perfect typeface for you.

This quick font reference I created not too long ago might also warrant your interest.

Labels: fonts, typefaces