“Let’s say I were writing a book about the norgletti, a fictional extraterrestrial species, and had the choice of these four typefaces. If I asked you which one would make your reading experience most pleasurable, the choice would be obvious. The first three fonts are brash, clumsy, juvenile and just plain difficult to read. What if I didn’t care about the ease with which you flipped through my book, but with the amount of information you retained from it? In that case, the fourth option is actually the worst choice, according to a new study.
Attempting to reconstruct a biological taxonomy lesson, the researchers asked 28 adult volunteers to learn about the norgletti and two other kinds of aliens, each of which had seven features. The participants saw these characteristics listed in either gray, obnoxious Comic Sans MS, or gray, delicate Bodoni MT, or black, clear-as-day Arial font, and had 90 seconds to memorize the lists. They were distracted for 15 minutes, and then tested on their retention with questions such as What color eyes does the norgletti have?
The volunteers who learned the information in Arial answered 73 percent of the questions correctly, whereas those who read it in hard-to-read fonts had 87 percent accuracy. (There was no difference between the two annoying fonts.) The results have enormous implications for education. But would this font-switching strategy do any good in a real classroom?”
Read more at The Last Word On Nothing (Thanks Cathy)
This is not new knowledge. When I was a content writer, we had to bold words on the website to help keep people interested and memorise things. Also helped with google seo
I think its more like just high-lighting rather than the font that makes the difference.
I think it’s just a matter of paying attention to that which you’re not used to. I would predict, for example, that people would better remember the billboards along a journey they weren’t familiar with, than say, billboards displayed along their daily commute.
It is instinctively important for us to pay attention to change. So we feel comfortable with the final font because we do not think it as important.
It is an old effect which has to do with the time it takes to read something, it also probably realtes to the novelty of the font I think it is quite well known in advertising. Using it in education could work, to remember some speical factsm words or phrases, but just changing the font in a textbook would not work. It would be too bothering, and you would not learn more. Also I am not persuaded that education is so much about learning facts as is often assumed.
The more difficult something is for the brain to process, the more likely that pattern of activity is to be recalled?
Interesting. But perhaps this just means that horrible old Arial is 14 percent more off-putting than any other font. Need more tests done with a range of fonts such as Frutiger, DIN, Thesis and Olde Bastard Uglyface Grotesk.
i like the caps, myself.
but isnt this just perfeck fer the internet!
What amazes me most of all is if anyone posts something of interest on a blog or forum, there tends to be a lot of people who.
say its not new, they new about it a long time ago,
It is wrong
or they know better.
It doesn’t matter if it is someones off the cuff remark, result of a survey or a bit of fun.
I guess it is human nature for some people to try and make out they are better than others and have a greater intelligence or knowledge.
Amazing.
Nic
Ps I guess some people had worked that out a long time ago
Does this mean that my almost illegible handwriting is actually what been making my notes so useful in getting good grades?
What is “obnoxious” about Comic Sans SM?
Someone once told me that it was the best font for people who are dyslexic & I have to say that I’ve never found an easier font to read.
By the way, of those four fonts shown, the third is completely illegible, the first not much better, the last jumps about too much & my choice would be the second one.
I hate the Ariel font as I have to read it with my finger on the screen to stop it moving about. That’s embarrassing enough on the page, but I look toally retarded doing it on a computer!
I suppose that makes it the one I’m more likely to remember
the second line I find the easiest to read if that’s any help
oh guys don’t read billboards while driving new studies show there the cause of some accidents, it might be a billboard you never forget 