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Hard-to-Read Fonts Improve Learning
arkenian writes "Difficult-to-read fonts make for better learning, according to scientists. The finding is about to be published in the international journal Cognition. Researchers at Princeton University employed volunteers to learn made-up information about different types of aliens — and found that those reading harder fonts recalled more when tested 15 minutes later. The article goes on to note a second test in a real school environment: 'Keen to see if their findings actually worked in practice, the Princeton University team then tested their results on 222 students aged between 15 and 18 at a secondary school in Chesterfield, Ohio.'... 'Students given the harder-to-read materials scored higher in their classroom assessments than those in the control group. This was the case across a range of subjects — from English, to Physics to History.'"
But Comic Sans still makes you look stupid.
Large print giveth, and the small print taketh away
This does seem counter-intuitive: when I lay out text I try to make it as easy to read as possible to avoid getting in the way of absorbing the content...
Rgds
Damon
http://m.earth.org.uk/
you'll be called a dingbat.
I'd like to know the long term effect of this. What if the brain develops a better comprehension of the hard-to-read fonts, rendering all the re-printing meaningless?
Lets just write all text books in captchas.
...
i can't see if the school study was a long term one or not. and i think it's relevant for the conclusion.
new sig
nuf sed
Table-ized A.I.
Instead of skimming, you are forced to actually read every word.
Skimming is for getting an idea of what to expect to learn. Reading is for the actual learning.
So will be be running all learning material through CAPTCHA generator ? :-)
New things are always on the horizon
If you're asking someone to absorb fluff (like nonsense about aliens) then perhaps it's a good idea to manufacture 'disfluency' with odd fonts and the like.
If you're asking someone to absorb difficult material (like Knuth or advanced physics) then you want to minimize other sources of 'disfluency'.
The comparative readability of Arial is not the same on-screen and on paper. Here's the account in the Economist: Learning difficulties. It mentions "tests" that had determined readability, but alas no reference to the specific study.
Set your phasers on "funky"!
Lots of people can remember things that were written in fancy script, like parts of the Declaration of Independence and Constitution*.
Come to think of it, this bodes well for my kid's lousy writing - people will at least remember what she wrote, once they decipher it.
*Exception made for Christine O'Donnell
Village idiot in some extremely smart villages.
Am I the only one here who can't stand the Arial font and has always found it difficult to read? The extremely tight spacing makes it very hard to separate letters (particularly with the mouse) and it is also tough to make out Ifijlt. Comic Sans is actually a pretty easy to read font. As is Bodoni, although I'd never heard of it before now.
I think their study may actually point to the opposite conclusion, that you learn better with easier to read fonts.
This must be why people listen to death metal and avoid that easy listening garbage. They are aspiring musicians.
Slashdot please allow me to post in Wingdings font and Symbol font. Posting in Italics TT does not make it not hard enough to read.
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- - You can't take something off the Internet! That's like trying to take pee out of a swimming pool.
There are a few more questions to answer. (1) How long did subjects spend reading the Comic Sans documents vs. the Arial documents? If they spent more time reading the Comic Sans documents, that could explain the difference. (2) If they spent longer reading the Comic Sans versions, what was their net learning productivity after factoring the additional time in? (3) Could novelty explain the effect by obtaining greater attention? If we reprinted all textbooks in Comic Sans and similar fonts from hell, would the effect go away? (4) What would be the effect on children of a childhood spent reading books in Comic Sans? Would they be willing to put up with reading if all their books were printed in fonts designed to slow and torment the reader?
The only way you'll get my Arial is by prying it out of my cold, dead hands!!!
The invention and proliferation of Comic Sans was essentially an accident. This study takes "unintended consequences" to a whole new level!
Wait until your 50. The only thing small fonts do is make your head burn out in 2 hours, and oh yeah that DTV Channel Master, I can't read a damn thing unless I am two feet away from the set. But your test was 18 yr old kids, they'll have perfect vision and be awake three days at a time. The whole premise here is BS , next you'll be telling us Graffiti Fonts are the best for working with the asm disassembler..
So should I make my web sites hard to read in the hope that potential customers will remember more about what is being shown to them ? Or will they just leave earlier as it is too much hard work; or perhaps remember the stuff but not where they saw it ?
I'd hardly think so.
I need serifs and find 12-point Bodoni MT at 75% greyscale is much easier to read and perhaps comprehend. The Kindle 3 still has about the same contrast and just as "horrid" a font as Bodoni @ 75% greyscale, but it has serifs and therefore is easy enough to read.
Maybe I'll try Bodoni MT at 12 point on the Kindle. I would also opt for Cambia.
Arial may be clear and discernible at great distances but I'd not say Arial is a reading font (especially at 16 pt). Everyone I hand papers to needs serifs and ask for Times New Roman 12 pt. Even my excel sheets must be 12pt Times New Roman. There is no doubt Helvetica, Ariel, and Verdana (And perhaps Calibri) are humanistic, clear when printed or read. But clarity does not equate to readability.
On the topic of Fonts: Does anyone else love Consolas? I love it in Terminal and TextEdit!
Does this mean that cursive/script is actually useful? Because if we all have easy to read printed materials from now on, we might be dumbing ourselves down?
Ok, what about having to read all courses in illegible fonts. will the time allotted suffice?
It's rather obvious that slowing down the reading gives better retention, this fact is well known within psychology and cognitive science. But using this method of slowing students down may impact their overall score, as they don't have time to read everything they are supposed to.
110 out of 100 in history, 5 out of 100 in psychology because you only managed to read the first chapter..
It improves learning now ..
Skimming is for getting an idea of what to expect to learn.
I agree with what you meant. I find myself affected by this phenomenon as well.
When you have education/knowledge, it becomes easy to fill in the blanks.
The human mind is under a two-edged sword.
It is our greatest strength, and our greatest weakness.
We can adapt and overcome, but we can also become adapted to some of the most fscked conditions.
I rationalise it as 'survival instinct'/evolution.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
Arial? Verdana, my friend. Arial is a cheap whore compared to the lady Verdana. Guess why Arial was created by Microsoft originally?
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
My Linux fonts are beautiful...
Java fonts are another matter.
Information wants to be beer.
bu7 i g07 b4d gr4d35 w|-|3|\| i 4pp1i3d my k|\|0w13dg3.
Thinking that Arial is a good print font whereas Comic Sans and Bodoni aren't, is one point of view. Maybe Comic Sans and Bodoni are better suited for printing, so they do boost learning by more fluid reading of the text?
I like the way the title equates short/mid term memory to learning. Realllllly good.
This is why I insist on doing all of my reading in Runic :D
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Runic_alphabet
All those moments will be lost in time, like tears in rain.
I'd assumed Asians were better students because of cultural differences; never figured it was because of kanji etc.
Wasnt it because the 'harder to read' fonts made the 'aliens' linked to that sample look more 'authentic' and therefore increased interest in their information.
Read radical news here
Arial? Verdana, my friend. Arial is a cheap whore compared to the lady Verdana. Guess why Arial was created by Microsoft originally?
It wasn't created by Microsoft. It was originally made for IBM by Monotype in the early 80s, when it was known as Sonoran Sans (similarly, Times New Roman was originally called Sonoran Serif). Microsoft then licensed these from Monotype and renamed them Arial and TNR, respectively. But don't let little facts get in the way of your hatred of Microsoft.
Here comes a bunch of textbooks in Comic Sans.
Helped me very much in my learning!
It's now on sale in big discount... anyone interested?
In a recent press release The Fine Printers Assosiation of America announced that it has been much maligned by the popular press. Mr Ucant R Eadme, their spokesman said, "Our members, mostly lawyers, food ingredient label designers and medical commercial copy writers have been engaged in a long standing and diligent effort to improve the reading comprehension of Americans. But they have been systematically mischaracterized by the popular media as selfish people helping malefactors to bury incovenient gotchas. Now that scientific research is showing that our activities are improving the reading skills of Americans, we are planning to claim it charitable in-kind donation. We expect to cut our onerous tax burden by several billion dollars."
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
Use obscure unreadable custom fonts. Infinite learning. Great stuff.
apple/linux fanboi loses once again, epic win!
... gray type on a black background may actually improve what I learn? Is /. planning a change?
Finally science proofed that my handwriting is superior. I will te this my most ikely long gone first grade teacher.
Is why I write all my emails in Wingdings...
I've got better things to do tonight than die.
The authors of the study confused "easy to read" with "easy to read at a distance". Big fonts are for signs and titles that you might read from far away. The easiest font to read is the one most similar to what you read every day, which in this case, is the 12 point fonts, not the 16-point Arial. Correcting for this mistake, the conclusion becomes the opposite, "Easy-to-Read Fonts Improve Learning", which should come as a surprise to no one.
Everything I know I've learned from Wired magazine.
- For the complete works of Shakespeare: cat
The story omitted the finding that although the harder to read font improved a students ability to comprehend and retain information, allowing for higher in class assignment scores. The unintended consequence was the lost ability to regurgitate context-less and useless dates, numbers and names on state tests. With the lost ability to understand the standard academic font: (Bulimic A,B,C,D) aka (Bulimic A,B,C,D-all of the above-), the student test subjects failed state exams.
Although correcting the grammar of the test and writing many pages of detailed analysis of each question gained the students sympathy from administrators, there was nothing that could be done. One administrator is quoted: "Do I feel awful? Pained for letting this happen? Responsible for letting damage happen that could haunt them for all their life? All of the above, without a doubt, All of the above."
"In God We Trust, All Others Pay Cash"
The Comic Sans is much easier to read than the Arial in the example.
I think it's obvious (heh heh) that it forces you to think about the content in order to read it
This is why I program exclusively in brainfuck and ObjectiveC.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
Which incidentally is why Linux users are so intelligent - sigh
Yet another way that Iphone 4 is useless.
Maybe that's why all the bespectacled nerds tend to do better on tests, they're concentrating harder when they read?
This totally explains why academics love the shit text that comes out of LaTeX (not the layout; it's fine -- I'm talking about that awful default font).
My intelligence is growing too fast for my cranium to handle! If I read too many more CAPTCHAs I'll build a fusion powered flying saucer and start abducting trailer park trash for bizarre genetic experiments. http://www.theonion.com/articles/fbi-director-wishes-he-had-some-alien-thing-to-cov,2957/
http://www.theonion.com/articles/texas-ufo-identified,15644/
http://www.theonion.com/articles/vatican-okays-space-aliens,15465/
This talk by Kevin Larson at the MIX10 conference (applicable part starts at ~ 69:00) has some great stuff about the cognitive and emotional impact of good typography.
You might be familiar with the 'candle test' -- high monetary incentives induce better performance on mechanical tasks but significantly *worse* performance on creative tasks. Using a variant of that experiment they found that reading speed and comprehension were unaffected by type and layout, but people's mood and cognitive reserve were noticeably improved by the good typography.
I suspect this doesn't say as much about type as it does about school -- that the bad typography, by slowing down reading, improves rote mechanical recall; and that if they tested for synthesis and creativity, good typography would out-perform bad.
I wenodr if the smae appiles to the good ol' "the frsit and lsat ltteer of ervey wrod are in tcat thuogh the rset of the wrod is scrmblaed" mhetod.
The caveat is that all of those with English as a second language would likely die trying to read a textbook.
i am an extremely fast reader. so fast that it feels too fast for my own attentiveness and concentration. so i often turn the book upside down when i want to read having a hard time to concentrate.
try it. it's good. .~.
(yes, i think about the dubya joke very often when i'm reading like this. and yes, some co-commuters do think i was making fun of them and pretended i was reading. and yes, the guy who offered to land me one in the face because "i was listening to his private conversation with his girlfriend" at the bus stop, he was actually quite impressed when i started to read the book to him at a speed he perceived to be really fast.)
I'd like to see a study that tests learning via hard-to-read fonts over a long period of time. My hypothesis? The learning decreases as the person gets used to reading said fonts. After all. You might find a font hard to read initially. But it will become easier to read as you get used to the font's patterns.
If you need to trick kids into learning by making it even harder and more boring than it already is, you need to work on your teaching skills.
I suppose that this does support in a way the statement that people that have to wear reading-glasses are more study-types.
It is a cheap ripoff of Verdana, created to avoid paying license fees.
Shutting down free speech with violence isn't fighting fascism. It IS fascism!
That's funny - twext uses this exact idea to help people learn foreign languages.
Maybe a link between poor handwriting and intelligence.
When note taking in university and having to read back almost illegible notes. Also doctors have a reputation for terrible handwriting - maybe a causal relationship bad handwriting->better learning.
(Maybe I am just hoping as my handwriting is appalling...)
couretsy of BBC Radio . . reaction from Vinnie Connare, who designed Comic Sans for MS in 94 is here . .
here
About 30 minutes into the podcast.
It's not the same, but I don't speak english but and I can read it well. I read much in english, and I see that my compression and understanding levels, when I read something in english, is better that when I read it in my mother language.
It is a cheap ripoff of Verdana, created to avoid paying license fees.
Wow, now you're really showing how little you know of the subject. Sonoran Sans/Arial was created to be a metric-compatible replacement for Helvetica -- but yes, it was largely done to avoid paying licensing fees to Linotype. Verdana, on the other hand, was created in the 90s for Microsoft with its primary goal being to look good onscreen.
So if you're trying to tell me that a font that was created in the 50s (and cloned in the 80s) was made to avoid paying licensing fees on something originally created in the 90s, then I think you need to go back and study how time flows. Or just stop trying to chime in on a subject that you clearly know absolutely zero about.
Only 28 people to perform the test upon. Might be so the people who used the bad font were actually slightly better at retaining facts?
They should do this again with a larger amount of test subjects.
I'm sorry, I couldn't quite grasp what this article was about.
The font was too easy to read.
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