Is spreadsheet documents supposed to be no typography zone?

Since spreadsheet documents mostly contain numerical inputs, does it make sense to use typography rules in a standalone spreadsheet document?

Especially when the spreadsheet is to be viewed online and edited by anyone, system fonts like Arial and Calibri make more sense for this use case.

So, I’d say that spreadsheets are an odd case.

I have seen some truly godawful spreadsheets, that have been literal pains to read (as in, they caused me honest-to-goodness physical discomfort from small fonts and bright yellow highlights). Please spare your readers this.

Typography and its rules exist to support the text, whatever the text is. Typesetting a table in a book or an academic paper is different from a working document that needs to be editable and re-writable, which shouldn’t mean that it’s painful.

I’d suggest reasonable system fonts with tabular numbers, reasonable point sizes, and (for the love of $DEITY), reasonable column widths.

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Thank you for your recommendation. I have been thinking the same as well; system fonts with tabular numbers.