I’ve had it up to here with all the grey text on web sites. It seems each year the text keeps getting lighter and lighter and soon it will be white fonts on white backgrounds. I have been garnering a petition to make it a federal crime for web designers to use grey, light grey, or white fonts on a white background. I am amazed at the support I’ve been getting! I’ve already gotten over 14,000 signatures! People tell me that it’s the only thing they hate more than unsolicited telephone calls. And wouldn’t you know it I’m even having a hard time typing this because the text is grey on white! And don’t give me this crap about “Studies show that it’s easier on the eyes”. Bull! Show me the study then we can talk! And if it’s such a well known fact then why hasn’t the print industry heard about it! Take a look at your newspaper and what do you see? Black on White! Go down to the store and look at any magazine or book and what do you see? BLACK ON WHITE! Stop deluding yourself designers! Start using Black on White and inform your clients while you are at it that their customers are abandoning them because they can’t read their web sites! BEFORE IT BECOMES LAW!!!
I’d have to disagree with this.
hard time typing this because the text is grey on white!
Most people from my observation cant even tell this is a grey font on the Forum. I asked a friend the other day what color a website section looks like (it was a Navy blue color) and they said black. Unless you are a designer you won’t really be able to notice the slight color differences.
use grey, light grey, or white fonts on a white background.
Also, let’s not forget with technology moving fast and the quality of monitors progressing everything is having a much more distinct color. I use an iMac 4K and the slightest grey i can see the difference compared to white. Go on a regular monitor and both the grey and white will appear to be white.
why hasn’t the print industry heard about it! Take a look at your newspaper and what do you see? Black on White! Go down to the store and look at any magazine or book and what do you see? BLACK ON WHITE!
Well, they haven’t heard of it because they are old. 
Let’s be honest, all that you named are bound to go out of business in the next 10 years. Digital products will replace them.
I totally agree that it’s beginning to get out of hand. Most consumers don’t have displays with good color reproduction and what might look readable on one display might be too difficult to read on another. I do feel like sometimes black text is just too boring if it’s not done right. My old monitor poorly reproduced colors, and even professional websites could be difficult to read. I had to highlight any text just to read it.
It gets to a point where gray is too light. But as long as a design is simple and has surplus white space, gray text that is borderline too light isn’t really much of an issue.
Bring back the paragraph!
I agree that grey can look like black, but the thing is it looks like really bad black. If it’s hard to read (which it is!) and grey looks black, the why not just use black?
Print media will never be replaced by digital products as long as digital products continue to display text in grey!
Interesting you should say black can be boring when I rarely see black anymore, all the grey to me is WAY more boring, and again, more difficult to read. I just don’t get it with this grey movement. It’s a nightmare to me, like a bad virus that just won’t go away.
Yea, sorry. Got to typing so fast with my eyes closed so I wouldn’t have to see the grey.
I should have put more emphasis on “can be”. Imagine if all text on this page was black. The grays give guidance and hierarchical importance. Having some sort of accent color or grays for text is often boring. Having only black text can be boring. I think above everything I just want to be able to easily read what is important. My secondary monitor very poorly reproduces grays, and I have visited websites and been completely unable to see key styling or text because it was so light. There’s an odd jump and there are a lot of grays between white and some gray (haven’t tested it, I just know it’s a lot) that it can’t reproduce without diverting to white.
I worked in the print industry for 25 years. There are good reasons why most books are printed in black ink on white or very light paper.
Sorry but print has s few hundred years experience on the internet. Do you want to convey information to your readers? Do you want to sell products to your customers? Well, stop with the grey text for goodness sake!
I consider myself an old school desktop/web publisher and wouldn’t dream of using grey that isn’t very dark and big enough to bloody read if you are over 20. what are we doing to peoples’ vision!!!
Yes, SOME people have super big fancy monitors (to detect 50 shades of grey/gray) but many are on small phone/tablets and laptops and no longer have 20/20 vision. We need to cater to the biggest demographic and accessability not our style preferences people
I wear contacts and it is driving me insane that I cannot increase the contract on Chrome or Office365 email - believe me I tried. Life is too short after a busy day. I sync the settings to all my devices and sometimes it is so big it fills the tab and other times in my work cloud stuff it is 6 bloody point - at least the consumer should be able to change it quickly and for everything on their device without a PhD!
Fine if you have great vision or only use a desktop monitor. A small device is very fatiguing and we deserve to work where and on what we want and SEE. Please TEST your choice on someone over 40. This is a real problem for old people and with more and more services only on the web it is important.