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.
They argue that schools could boost results by simply changing the font used in their basic teaching materials.
read more at : making things hard to read
That’s interesting and actually makes sense. I was a typesetter back in the dark ages before personal computers, and that was actually the reasoning behind doing headers for articles in bigger bolder type faces, so that the reader would not only be enticed by the headline, but that they would at least remember that part of it for later reference.
I am always telling my students that the headline of an article is a snapshot and hook for the article and now you have given me an extra point of importance – thank you!
That is pretty fascinating stuff. I would never have thought about it twice.
I thought that it was preferable to make it easier to read – I guess this gives us pause to rethink for some text readers.
But it drives me crazy when things are difficult to read. Some of the script fonts are very hard to decipher. I suppose they don’t mean a font that is that difficult to read.
Very interesting information. I will have to ask my kids if there is a certain font that they are supposed to use on the papers they turn in.
Hmmm. Isn’t there one called fourteen-year-old-girl cursive?