Do Fonts and Font Types Make a difference for Reading?

Paula Quiroz

1 year ago

Do Fonts and Font Types Make a difference for Reading?

I worked at Xerox for many years and when you’re in the imaging business you learn a lot about fonts and typography.

There are many many types of fonts and in the PC era we’ve gotten used to standard ones such as Ariel.

However there is more science to fonts and how pages of texts are displayed. This blog touches on the impact of fonts on reading including new approaches such as bionic reading.

The Impact of Bold Fonts

Bold italic and underline are all ways to add emphasis to a particular set of words in a sentence or in a headline.

Of these, bold can have the biggest impact and it almost always forces the eye to look at it.

That is why so many newspapers, magazines and ebooks use bold font headlines As a way to grab the reader’s attention.

Fonts, Line Spacing and Readability

Believe it or not, there is an art two page layout and how fonts and spacing can enhance the readability of written words. This is particularly true for books and even more true for magazines which are now increasingly fully online.

Manny enterprises have forgotten about the impact of fonts on readability, but that too is starting to change.

Introducing Bionic Reading and TorpedoRead

At least two providers–Bionic Reading and TorpedoRead–have introduced new ways to display texts that feature bold text at the beginning of each word.

Strong claims are being made of being able to read and comprehend text much faster. They basically use holding and brightness adjustments to increase readability.

I did a test using the bionic reading chrome extension and found that I could read extremely fast with very good comprehension. What these tools do is to mimic what your eyes actually do when you’re scanning letters and words for comprehension.

The bold font actually acts as a guide which is why you can often scan a paragraph much faster when the initial characters of the word are bolded.