Switching to Tufte CSS

July 14, 2021

Tufte CSS seems pretty popular, and I like a lot of what Tufte advocates about communicating visual information clearly, succinctly and (though this is possibly something of a side benefit) beautifully.

So I’ve switched this thing over to a Tufte-inspired layout. Tada!

You might have noticed some differences from the usual “Tufte” look. I’ve been learning a bit about dyslexia recently, and decided to make a few adjustments to the style of the site in the name of accessibility.

• I changed the default serifed fonts to non-serifed. This was simply a matter of taking the non-serifed fonts that were already part of Tufte CSS and making them the default.

• I also removed italics from the stylesheet entirely. Italics are known to be confusing to many dyslexic readers, because they change the shape of letters, which makes letters harder to recognise.

I have to confess, though, I found the lack of bullet points rather painful, particularly when it came to posts from times long past. I get the reasoning, I just didn’t have it in mind when I wrote those posts long ago, and I’m not entirely certain that the writing I do here is the kind on which ET focussed his work.

So I changed the rules and put them back.