Against PDFs
If you are unlucky, you might get me started explaining why I am so annoyed by PDF files. This is a quick note to explain myself, so that next time somebody brings up this pet peeve of mine, I can send them this link and not talk their ear off about it.
The short answer:
- PDFs have fixed layout which makes them very annoying to read on anything other than printed paper
- PDFs often make it difficult to copy text out of them, making quoting, note-taking, or reformatting very annoying
- PDFs do not allow the reader to easily change their style to accommodate reading preferences (e.g. increasing font size)
Don’t believe me? Here’s the Australian government:
Only create PDFs if your research shows there are specific needs for this format.
https://www.stylemanual.gov.au/content-types/pdf-portable-document-format
And NN/g, a user experience consultancy:
Participants in several of our recent usability studies on corporate websites and intranets did not appreciate PDFs and skipped right over them. They complained woefully whenever they encountered PDF files and many who opened PDFs quickly abandoned them.
https://www.nngroup.com/articles/pdf-unfit-for-human-consumption/
The long answer:
PDF is a file format commonly used for transferring “finished” files around. It is difficult and tedious (but not impossible at all) to edit PDF documents. This leads some people to consider PDFs more “secure” or somehow more “permanent” than other file formats.
However, I think they are vastly overused. PDFs are great if you need to print something, but they’re not a great way to communicate information to other people in today’s world.
While designers like the ability to lay things out just so on an exactly-determined page size, this isn’t how I, or a lot of people, want to read your content.
I often read on a mobile device like a phone or e-reader. Even when I’m reading on a laptop or desktop computer, I often find the design choices made in some documents distracting. And I don’t even (currently) have any visual or cognitive impairment that means I have especially demanding needs when reading.
What to do instead?
If you are publishing content on a website, just make an HTML page. Whatever website publishing platform you are using is spitting out HTML pages all day; use it!
HTML pages, when not trying to imitate highly polished print design like a PDF, are responsive to users’ preferences, device sizes, font size and contrast preferences, etc. And, as a bonus, web browser features like “reader mode” allows the user to strip away distracting styles and focus on your content.
If you aren’t publishing for the web, but maybe communicating information privately, consider what other file formats you can share. If you use e.g. Google Docs to produce documents, consider sharing a read-only link to the Google Document itself instead of publishing it to a PDF. This allows some customisability for the reader. If you must, you can share a Microsoft Word document. This will at least allow your audience to more easily select text, or even export the document in their preferred format.
Something you may not know is that HTML files are just files, and can be shared the same way you share a PDF. You can try it now - in your browser, right click this very page you’re reading, select “Save page as…”, choose a filename, then email it to a friend as an attachment!
Ultimately, I wish more users were familiar with plain-text formats like Markdown, or even Rich Text Format, for writing simple documents. I also wish there was a popular text editor, like a Microsoft Word, focused on documents with simple, accessible content, and using HTML or similar as its file format.
A special place in the underworld is reserved for:
Anybody sharing data which should be machine-readable as a PDF file. If your PDF contains lots of tables and numbers… consider sharing them as CSV files instead. You can even zip them all up together to keep them from going astray.
(Microsoft Excel files are no good, for a whole other set of reasons I am not going into in this post about PDFs.)