Is there any reason I should not use monospaced typefaces for text in articles? Do they negatively affect the reader's ability to easily read long-form text?
Answer
Monospaced typefaces do reduce legibility, albeit by a margin.
In Universal Principles of Design, the entry on legibility states:
Proportionally spaced typefaces are preferred over monospaced.
One famous research on this is Beldie I. P., Pastoor S. & Schwarz E, 1983, “Fixed versus variable letter width for televised text”, Human Factors, 25, pp.273-277, where part of the results include:
The reading time (Task 1) with the variable-matrix character design was 69.1 s on the average, and the mean reading time with the fixed-matrix character set was 73.3 s, t (8) = 2.76, p < 0.02. The difference is 4.2 s or 6.1% (related to fixed-matrix characters).
It has to be said that latter research has shown more marginal differences, and that in some cases (dyslexia or programming code, for example) monospaced typefaces increase readability.
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