From: Freek Wiedijk
Subject: Re: Top five fonts used i
Newsgroups: comp.fonts
Date: 1994-08-27 07:28:09 PST

I want to return briefly to the original subject of `Top five
fonts used i...'

The original poster wanted the top five fonts for technical
publications.  I have no information about _that_ but I once
spent a pleasurable afternoon counting fonts for _literature_
in our public library.  As it was a lot of work, I'd like to
post the results.

I sampled dutch, english/american, german and french
literature in equal amounts (for each letter of the alphabet
the first few books on the shelf).  In a dutch library that
is.

Here are the results.  The most frequent fonts in literary
books turn out to be (in order of frequency):

   1. Times
   2. Baskerville
   3. Garamonds of the `Jannon' variety
 (lumped together; most notably Monotype and Linotype
 Garamond)
   4. Garamonds of the `Garamond' variety
 (most notably Stempel Garamond (german books!); Adobe
 Garamond is in this group too, but I didn't see it)
   5. Bembo
   6. Janson/Ehrhardt
 (lumped together: they're almost the same font)
   7. *Palatino*/*Aldus*
 (idem; *Aldus* turned out to be the more frequent font)
   8. Plantin
   9. Sabon
  10. Caslon
  11. Trump
  12. Walbaum

Times alone accounts for 1/5 of all books.  The first five
entries account for 2/3 of all books.  The whole list
accounts for 6/7 of all books.  If you add the two types of
Garamonds together they just pass Times and take the first
place.  I have made no distinction between pocket books and
bound books.  To my surprise I found almost no Caledonia (my
favorite font at the moment).

I liked my little investigation a lot.  I hope someone else
out there likes it too.

So, if you are a manufacturer of computers or printers, and
if you are wondering which fonts to bundle...

Freek
--
10 million lemmings can't be wrong.  Sure.
.