Why does the APA recommend the use of serif fonts?

BACKGROUND

The publication norms of the American Psychological Association recommend the use of a serif font in the manuscripts (Times New Roman). However, there seems to be no well-substantiated reason why serif fonts would produce any advantage during letter/word processing.

METHOD

This study presents an experiment in which sentences were presented either with a serif or sans serif font from the same family while participants' eye movements were monitored.

RESULTS

Results did not reveal any differences of type of font in eye movement measures -except for a minimal effect in the number of progressive saccades.

CONCLUSIONS

There is no reason why the APA publication norms recommend the use of serif fonts other than uniformity in the elaboration/presentation of the manuscripts.