Easy to read? Must be easy to do…

by Ruth Thompson on Feb.08, 2010, under Behaviour, Cause & Effect

How much of an effect does the print font we use have on the reader?  Does the ease or difficulty of reading text have an impact on our view of the information?  How do we process information?

Recent experimental research shows that the print font we use can have a profound effect on our understanding of information.  This happens because the print fonts influence how fluently we process the information, even though the font has no actually relationship with the information it is displaying.  How much consideration do you give to the font that you use?

Take for example a recipe…how easy the steps are to read will have a significant effect on how easy we presume the recipe is to follow and meal is to prepare.  This is above and beyond the link we place on complex recipes being difficult to prepare.  A recommendation than would be for restaurants to display their menu in a harder to read font as customers will presume that they are more difficult to prepare, taking additional skill and effort.  It might even prevent the hobby cook from trying the dish at home.

Another point is highlighted with regards to how quickly the reader will make a decision related to the information.  The more difficult to read, the longer the reader will take to make a decision based on it adn they may not make a decision at all.  Novemsky and colleagues presented the same information about two cordless phones in easy to read or difficult to read formats.  They observed that 17% of their participants deferred choice when it was easy to read whereas 41% did so when the font was difficult to read.  Pretty clear results!  So if you want your reader to act on what you are writing about, you need to ensure the print font is clear and easy to read.

The effect is also evident when the name of a product or offering is difficult to pronounce.  For example, amusement park rides with difficult to pronounce names are perceived as being more adventurous than rides with easy to pronounce names…and are also perceived as more likely to make you sick!  The fluency of the name having a effect on how we understand the product.

Taking this knowledge into the stock market the effect is repeated.  Companies that had difficult to pronounce names were seen as more risky than company names that were easy to say.  In fact Exchange, Alter and Oppenheimer found that companies with easy to pronounce ticker symbols actually performed better than those with difficult to pronounce ticker symbols.

Next time you need to present written information…how much care will you take to make it easy to read…and thus be seen as easy to implement and understand?

PS. If in doubt use Ariel print font…its known to be the easiest to read!

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5 Comments for this entry

  • Dawn Baird
    February 8th, 2010 on 3:11 pm

    I also love this site, for learning about new fonts: http://typography.com/.

  • Ruth Thompson
    February 8th, 2010 on 3:35 pm

    Thanks for the link Dawn…good to have these resources on hand!

  • CR
    May 24th, 2010 on 7:59 am

    I can’t be the only one who finds Comic Sans an unreadable distraction, can I?

  • Ruth Thompson
    May 27th, 2010 on 2:46 pm

    hehe… funnily enough Comic Sans is a font (along with Arial) that is reccommended to be used to aid those with Dyslexia. It’s described as a plain, evenly spaced font and alternatives would be Verdana, Tahoma, Century Gothic, Trebuchet. Also in a small study (there were only 12 participants) to judge which font is the preferred font for childrens books….Comic Sans won out in terms of ease of reading and attractiveness. Arial and Courier were second in preference.

    Personally I think Comic Sans looks childish and isn’t appropriate if professionalism is something you are trying to put across. You may be pleased to hear that there is a “ban Comic Sans” campaign, which has attempted to get legislation enacted in Canada. To read more about viewpoints on the various font types check out this BBC news article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/6638423.stm

    Thanks for the comment Clarke, always interesting to hear other perspectives!

  • CR
    June 3rd, 2010 on 8:37 pm

    Ah yes, the ‘it’s good for dyslexics’ argument. Several times have I asked people promoting this to provide proper peer-reviewed evidence and I am still waiting. It may well be good – I just haven’t seen the evidence. The fact it goes against 500 years of lessons learnt in readable typesetting doesn’t help it’s case.

    If I try reading it, the irregular sizing of letters causes my eye to start scanning at line 1 and be around line 4 by the time I get to the right. However, I do warn students on day 1 – any work in Comic Sans will be deemed illegible and given 0%. While they are boring, Times New Roman / Arial work! Though personally, I like Garamond…

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