Fonts that are too condensed or too extended impair readability.Script fonts or other fonts with special effects that draw attention to the font itself rather than the content should be avoided.The height of lowercase letters compared to the height of capital letters (also called the x-height) should be high so that the lowercase letters are larger.Especially when the eyes cannot focus that good anymore a font with an equal stroke weight is the best way to go.And since we are talking about handwriting let me answer another question that was asked very often: You still can type and order those notes later as part of a revision for archiving purposes or in case you would like to sell them (take a look at my article on how to do that). The process of moving your hand and actually “doing” something with the material increases your retention rate. When writing down your notes a piece of paper and a pen is still the way to go. So there is a reason while Garamond is one of the most popular fonts in print media. Garamond readers won by far with 66% followed by Times New Roman with 31.5% and the Helvetica readers came in last with only 12.5%. Still, according to a study from 1986 participants who had to read a text in Garamond (serif), Times New Roman (serif) and Helvetica (sans-serif) showed huge differences in the comprehension of the material. In times of retina displays and ever-improving screens, the readability advantage of sans-serif fonts slowly disappears. A couple of years ago these types of fonts were much more legible when it came to online publications because the screen resolutions of devices back then were not capable of displaying the little serifs. Examples for popular sans-serif fonts (sans means without) are Arial or Courier. Serif fonts are the ones with tiny little strokes and extras at the edges of the characters. Most newspapers and publishers use serif fonts like Garamond and Times New Roman. If your study includes news, background stories or another non-essential accompanying material an easy to read font is the better choice. When you study it is not always the best to have everything in a harder to read font. And so the saying goes:ĭifficulty builds mental muscle, while ease often builds only confidence What is the easiest to read font? According to the researchers, a familiar and easy to read font suggests familiarity to the brain which encourages us to assume we know the material presented to us already. To understand the meaning the unfluent font forces the learner to pay more attention to the words and their meaning. If a font is harder to read you can not just quickly skim over it. Between the 3 harder to read fonts no significant difference could be measured.īut why is that? When you think about it it makes perfect sense. Those students with unusual fonts did much better in their exams than the easy font learners. The result confirmed the findings from the first test. This much larger research took 222 students and half of them received English, history and science material in Comic Sans Italicized, Haettenschweiler or Monotype Corsiva. The surprising result was that the “harder to read font” group answered with 86.5% questions correctly while the control group with the Arial font only remembered 72.8% of the alien features. 14 participants got the material in a black 16-point Arial font while the other had to go through a text presented in more difficult and unfamiliar font Comic Sans MS and Bodoni MT, grey 12 points. The first study asked 28 students to try to remember the features of 3 alien species in 90 seconds. Let’s take a look at 2 studies that were conducted by psychologists at Princeton and Indiana universities. But how about font-size? And is there a difference between online and print fonts? Why harder to read fonts are better for your study This was very surprising to me but the explanation below makes sense. Using Comic Sans MS, Bodoni MT, Monotype Corsiva, Haettenschweiler or Comic Sans Italicized significantly improved the student’s performance because they were forced to think harder about the material. So what is the best font for study notes? The best font for studying and taking study notes is a harder to read, unfamiliar font researches have shown. I was quite surprised when I learned that this is not true. I always thought that the best font to study whether for your own notes or for your study material is the easiest one to read.
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