Is there a sans-serif font that appears different for I (capital i) and l (small L)?

Question

Is there a sans-serif font that appears different for I and l? If we are not familiar with "Kim Jong Il", we might spell his name as Kim Jong Two or other incorrect ones.

Answer 1

From the LaTeX2e Font Catalogue: Sans Serif Fonts, there is venturis:

\documentclass{article}
\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[lf]{venturis} %% lf option gives lining figures as default; 
              %% remove option to get oldstyle figures as default
\renewcommand*\familydefault{\sfdefault} %% Only if the base font of the document is to be sans serif
\begin{document}
Kim Jong Il
\end{document}

Answer 2

Besides choosing fonts to be used in the document itself, it is also helpful to have a good font for doing the editing work. There it is equally helpful to be able to distinguish characters like o O 0 Q and l I | easily. My recommendation is neither free nor cheap but after switching editing fonts for some time I have setteled with PragmataPro.

Answer 3

A true sans-serif font might opt to add a finial to the lower case L, such as
http://www.fonts101.com/search/din+mittel

With the usual caveat involved in using truetype fonts in LaTeX.

Answer 4

Some examples for fonts in T1 font-encoding

Found in a full MiKTeX installation, but also in my (portable) TeX Live installation:

\documentclass[12pt]{article}

\usepackage[T1]{fontenc}
\usepackage[english]{babel}
\usepackage{lmodern}

\newcommand*{\test}{W. H. Gates III. | Ill Bill}
\newcommand*{\testfont}[2]{#1: \textsf{\fontfamily{#2}\selectfont\test}}

\setlength{\parindent}{0pt}
\linespread{1.5}

\begin{document}

\testfont{Cabin}{Cabin-TLF}

\testfont{Cantarell}{fca}

\testfont{Comfortaa}{fco}

\testfont{Iwona}{iwona}

\testfont{Kp-Sans}{jkpss}

\testfont{PT-Sans}{PTSans-TLF}

- * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * - * -

\testfont{Tahoma}{tahoma}

\testfont{MS Trebuchet}{trebuchet}

\testfont{Verdana}{verdana}

\end{document}

If used alone or with their family companions, most of them are called with a \usepackage command. For the three fonts below the starred line one needs to manually install the winfonts package.

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Just for comparison some fonts with no or only a little distinction between big i and small L:

Answer 5

What about the new Source Sans Pro by Adobe?