

Harder to read = easier to recall - chrisaycock
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/01/14/reading_fonts/

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endtwist
No, no, no, no, no! This tripe has been circulating the 'net for a while and
it really bothers me to see this gain some semblance of acceptance/traction.

Yes, studies show that poorly set text causes you to spend more time reading
it because it's _hard to read_. However, this is not the proper solution to
improve recall! This is a through-and-through design problem that can be
solved without destroying readability. There is most certainly a visual
solution here that would improve recall, but this is not it.

Can you imagine reading an entire textbook or novel that looked like it had
been printed on a greasy old photocopier? I certainly can't.

~~~
joshrule
So, are you saying, for example, we should get subjects with good copies in
these experiments to spend the same amount of time reading as those with bad
copies?

Or, do you think it's some other factor?

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pygy_
I think that one of his assumptions is wrong:

As far as I know, Comic Sans is actually easier to read than Arial, especially
in children and dyslexic people, and I'm not sure that a 60% grey is much
harder to read than a 100% black. IIRC, dark greys are more readable than pure
black (on screen at least). At last, once again IIRC, in the midrange, font
size doesn't impacts readability at all.

I don't have the time to look for citations right know, but I'm fairly sure
I'm right.

The author simply doesn't test whether that Comic Sans and Bodoni are less
readable, and doesn't provide any citation backing his assertion.

This is somewhat questionable, methodologically.

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KirinDave
Some people screamed and gnashed their teeth when one of my blog posts was
discussed on HN not long ago, and they discovered I use Museo 500 as my body
copy. (article: <http://fayr.am/41ns> commentary: <http://fayr.am/41wI>)

But now, I stand vindicated under the cold light of science. :)

(let the downmods and typography-forest-for-the-trees comments begin!)

~~~
Prisen
It's probably less effective when your audience isn't forced to read your
text.

~~~
KirinDave
And yet they acted like reading it was a horrifying, mandatory experience. And
then they _voluntarily_ extended that negative experience by talking about it
online. It seems inexplicable to me, but there it is.

Seems like another data point in favor of the theory in this article.

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nervechannel
The experimental noise band/art collective Throbbing Gristle used to
systematically mis-spell certain words in all their writings (e.g. "the" ->
"thee", "of" -> "ov") so people would have to concentrate to read them.

This reminded me of that (esp. the "salt:p_pp_r" thing).

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pama
This study was previously reviewed by the economist and discussed in this
comment of NH:

<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1810857>

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higglyndra
easier to read == easier to understand == less need to recall

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TheSOB88
The more you focus on decoding something, the more neurons are activated, so
more connections are made. But are these connections superficial, or are they
actually meaningful? They should have asked critical thinking questions rather
than easy "recall" crap.

