This factor determines when you should use Segoe UI.

Without ClearType enabled, Segoe UI is only marginally acceptable. With ClearType enabled, Segoe UI is an elegant, readable font. Segoe UI is optimized for ClearType, which is on by default in Windows. It was designed to be a humanist sans serif with no strong character or distracting quirkiness. The typeface is meant to give the same visual effect on screen and in print. It has the characteristics of a humanist sans serif: the varying widths of its capitals (narrow E and S, for instance, compared with Helvetica, where the widths are more alike, fairly wide) the stress and letterforms of its lowercase and its true italic (rather than an 'oblique' or slanted roman, like many industrial-looking sans serifs). Microsoft tells us Segoe UI is an approachable, open, and friendly typeface, and as a result has better readability than Tahoma, Microsoft Sans Serif, and Arial.

(The fourth line in my screenshot is a transcription of the Zulu phrase isicathulo nesigqoko ‘a shoe and a hat’.) I’m not really satisfied by the proportions of the implosive-g symbol - hook too big, bowl too small - but it’ll do. The dental click symbol extends below the line, making it easily distinguishable from lower-case L. The diacritics sit nicely in their proper places. You will see that its small-cap i (the lax close front vowel) has the serifs I pleaded for last week (blog, 6 July) so does the ordinary upper-case I. Here’s what it looks like, with a screengrab of how Word 2007 displays some phonetic text in 10-pt size. As far as I can see, it contains the full complement of IPA symbols (excepting only the labiodental flap, U+2C71). It is called Segoe UI, and comes bundled with Windows Vista, Windows 7, and Office 2007. What is more, it is the current Windows system font.

In my recent discussion of fonts that include the IPA symbols I overlooked one that I now think may be the best of all of those currently available.

Get segoe ui font