Being a former science teacher, I still browse through several science magazines like Science News, Discover and Smithsonian. These normally ignore writing, except for a little article this month on choosing fonts to keep the readers’ interests.
What does font have to do with helping a reader remember a piece of reading?
Who Wanted to Know?
A psychology study compared how fonts affected a reader’s learning and memory when reading an article. I know. A psychology study. Highly subjective. Be skeptical.
However other experiments confirm this study’s conclusions.
Comparing Fonts
Anyone with a computer knows there are certain favorite fonts, default fonts. Times New Roman and Arial are very popular because they are easy to read.
These flunk the retention test.
Instead, fonts such as Bodoni, Comic Sans and Monotype Corsiva increase retention. They are harder to read and force a reader to pay attention to what they are reading. That gets the mind to focus on the article more.
Unfortunately, my favorite font, Georgia, is not the ideal font to use. It’s similar to Times New Roman only slimmer, cleaner looking to me. I happen to like serifs on the letters.
Perhaps I should change to Monotype Corsiva. It too has the serifs. And there is that hint of italic slant. Even better, people pay attention more when reading it.
Dressing Up Fonts
The study did check into Bold and Italics. Both did increase retention when used sparingly. It seems using these to emphasize something makes the mind pay more attention to the words leading to better retention.
Choosing Fonts for Me
In spite of this study, I will stay with my favorite font. When originally choosing fonts to use both on my website and in my writing, I looked at all of the ones available on my computer at that time. Georgia is still my favorite. Although I used Lucinda Calligraphy on the pages of my Dent County Flora project.
