It depends, sometimes you don't want to express anything, but still make the reader free to read in between the lines, plus you can consider how print designers differ from the web.

This is impossible to measure. I would say that the odds of our readers "getting" exactly our reason for a typeface choice is not very high unless the target audience is the design/typography crowd. That does not mean our loves' labours are lost, it just means audiences can't verbalize intangible effects.

ChrisL

Thank you for you posts,

Would you think that your choices are based more on the legibility of the typefaces or their expressive qualities? I would presume that for the web our choices are much more limited and detrimental to the readers experience. But is this the case?

Tanya

"how much of this awareness do you think is shared by the reader?"

It depends on the reader.

"Would you think that your choices are based more on the legibility of the typefaces or their expressive qualities"

It depends on the project.

"I would presume that for the web our choices are much more limited and detrimental to the readers experience. But is this the case?"

Fewer options can be a good thing as much as a bad thing.