Legibility

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Legibility is the ease with which a reader can decode symbols. In addition to written language, it can also refer to behaviour [1] or architecture, [2] for example. From the perspective of communication research, it can be described as a measure of the permeability of a communication channel. A large number of known factors can affect legibility.

Contents

In everyday language, legibility is commonly used as a synonym for readability. In graphic design, however, legibility is often distinguished from readability. Readability is the ease with which a reader can follow and understand words, sentences and paragraphs. While legibility usually refers to the visual clarity of individual symbols, readability is more about their arrangement or even the choice of words. [3] [4] Legibility is a component of readability.[ citation needed ]

The legibility of text is most often examined by controlled deterioration of viewing conditions and determination of threshold detection. [5]

Not all writing benefits from optimizing for legibility. Texts that are supposed to be eye-catching or whose appearance is supposed to hold certain connotations could deliberately deviate from easy legibility for these purposes. Corresponding typefaces are called display typefaces . [6]

Influencing factors

The legibility of visual displays (e.g. text) depends on:

While a difference in viewing distance equally affects the angular size of symbols and their optical resolution, the former has a much greater effect on legibility. [5]

A few decades ago, screens were less legible than print on paper, but this is no longer true with newer screens. [5]

It has been shown that threshold legibility performance correlates inversely with the age of the readers. Older readers are disproportionately affected by other adverse factors in visual design, such as small text size. [9]

Typography

"The legibility of a typeface is related to the characteristics inherent in its design … which relate to the ability to distinguish one letter from the other." [6] Aspects of type design that affect legibility include "x-height, character shapes, stroke contrast, the size of its counters, serifs or lack thereof, and weight." [6] Other typographic factors that affect legibility include font choice, angular size (point size vs. viewing distance), kerning, cases used, tracking, line length, leading, and justification.[ citation needed ]

While readers may like or dislike fonts based on the familiarity of their appearance, they nevertheless achieve a comparable reading performance after a short period of familiarization with a new typeface, provided that the glyphs are equally clear and exhibit the essential features of the represented letter. [10]

Reducing the stroke width below a certain point impairs legibility. Italic type is read more slowly.

At the same point size, capital letters are easier to read in Latin script; but this is reversed if the cap height of the capitals is adjusted to the x-height of the lowercase letters (in which case the lower case letters take up more space due to their ascenders and descenders.) [5]

The relative legibility of words in uppercase vs. words in lowercase has long been debated. [11] [12] [13] [14]

Despite contrary opinions, serifs have little observable influence on reading speed. At low resolution, the additional spacing between letters required for the serifs seems to improve legibility, whereas otherwise they have a slightly adverse effect. [15] For special groups, the picture may look different: the dyslexics community[ clarification needed ] seems to be convinced that serifs are unnecessary visual clutter, which makes the text less accessible and makes the letter shapes deviate more from the simpler forms known from school. Another study found serifs to be detrimental for reading speed at low resolution. [16]

Eye tracker studies support the theory that increasing complexity of shapes reduces legibility. [17] The addition of vowel marks in Arabic script has contradictory effects, but appears to be detrimental to legibility overall. [17] Freestanding letters are easier to recognize than ones with adjacent elements; this is known as crowding effect. [5]

Common measures to improve legibility at lowest resolution include the use of wide apertures/large open counters, large x-height, low stroke variability, big features, etc., while some improvements like ink traps [ clarification needed ] are specific to different presentation media. [18] The positive effect of more open apertures could be experimentally confirmed for the opening of the lowercase e, but not for the larger opening of the lowercase c. Narrow letter shapes such as f, j, l and i usually benefit from larger tails that widen their shape, except for the lowercase f. [10]

Dyslexics and learners

While a large x-height is generally considered helpful for legibility at low resolutions, the dyslexics community holds the theory that short ascenders/descenders tend to cause confusion. Dyslexics and learners also seem to prefer less regularity between individual letterforms, especially further differentiating features in glyphs that are often just mirrored versions of other letters, as in the group b, d, p and q, since the human brain seems to have evolved to recognize (symmetrical) three-dimensional objects regardless of their orientation in space. [19] [20] This is the basis for some of the most devout endorsements of the otherwise much hated Comic Sans typeface. [21] Other important aspects seem to be the familiarity of the glyph shapes, the absence of serifs and looser spacing. [22] [23] While textbook versions perform better with inexperienced readers/learners, most experienced readers seem to be more comfortable with the traditional two-story print forms for a and g. [24] [25]

Further reading

See also

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Typography</span> Art of arranging type

Typography is the art and technique of arranging type to make written language legible, readable and appealing when displayed. The arrangement of type involves selecting typefaces, point sizes, line lengths, line spacing, letter spacing, and spaces between pairs of letters. The term typography is also applied to the style, arrangement, and appearance of the letters, numbers, and symbols created by the process. Type design is a closely related craft, sometimes considered part of typography; most typographers do not design typefaces, and some type designers do not consider themselves typographers. Typography also may be used as an ornamental and decorative device, unrelated to the communication of information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Type design</span> Art of designing typefaces and fonts

Type design is the art and process of designing typefaces. This involves drawing each letterform using a consistent style. The basic concepts and design variables are described below.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Verdana</span> Humanist sans-serif font

Verdana is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Matthew Carter for Microsoft Corporation, with hand-hinting done by Thomas Rickner, then at Monotype. Demand for such a typeface was recognized by Virginia Howlett of Microsoft's typography group and commissioned by Steve Ballmer. The name "Verdana" is derived from "verdant" (green) and "Ana".

In typography, a serif is a small line or stroke regularly attached to the end of a larger stroke in a letter or symbol within a particular font or family of fonts. A typeface or "font family" making use of serifs is called a serif typeface, and a typeface that does not include them is sans-serif. Some typography sources refer to sans-serif typefaces as "grotesque" or "Gothic", and serif typefaces as "roman".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Typeface</span> Set of characters that share common design features

A typeface is a design of letters, numbers and other symbols, to be used in printing or for electronic display. Most typefaces include variations in size, weight, slope, width, and so on. Each of these variations of the typeface is a font.

In typography, leading is the space between adjacent lines of type; the exact definition varies.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Johnston (typeface)</span> Sans-serif typeface

Johnston is a sans-serif typeface designed by and named after Edward Johnston. The typeface was commissioned in 1913 by Frank Pick, commercial manager of the Underground Electric Railways Company of London, as part of his plan to strengthen the company's corporate identity. Johnston was originally created for printing, but it rapidly became used for the enamel station signs of the Underground system as well.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">All caps</span> Text with all capital letters

In typography, text or font in all caps contains capital letters without any lowercase letters. For example: THIS TEXT IS IN ALL CAPS. All-caps text can be seen in legal documents, advertisements, newspaper headlines, and the titles on book covers. Short strings of words in capital letters appear bolder and "louder" than mixed case, and this is sometimes referred to as "screaming" or "shouting". All caps can also be used to indicate that a given word is an acronym.

x-height Measurement of letters in a typeface

In typography, the x-height, or corpus size, is the distance between the baseline and the mean line of lowercase letters in a typeface. Typically, this is the height of the letter x in the font, as well as the letters v, w, and z. One of the most important dimensions of a font, x-height defines how high lowercase letters without ascenders are compared to the cap height of uppercase letters.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Corbel (typeface)</span> Typeface

Corbel is a humanist sans-serif typeface designed by Jeremy Tankard for Microsoft and released to consumers in 2007. It is part of the ClearType Font Collection, a suite of fonts from various designers released with Windows Vista. All start with the letter C to reflect that they were designed to work well with Microsoft's ClearType text rendering system, a text rendering engine designed to make text clearer to read on LCD monitors. The other fonts in the same group are Calibri, Cambria, Candara, Consolas and Constantia.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Counter (typography)</span>

In typography, a counter is the area of a letter that is entirely or partially enclosed by a letter form or a symbol. The stroke that creates such a space is known as a "bowl". Latin letters containing closed counters include A, B, D, O, P, Q, R, a, b, d, e, g, o, p, and q. Latin letters containing open counters include c, f, h, s etc. The digits 0, 4, 6, 8, and 9 also possess a counter. An aperture is the opening between an open counter and the outside of the letter.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Roboto</span> Sans-serif typeface family by Google

Roboto is a neo-grotesque sans-serif typeface family developed by Google as the system font for its mobile operating system Android, and released in 2011 for Android 4.0 "Ice Cream Sandwich".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Didone (typography)</span> Classification of serif typefaces

Didone is a genre of serif typeface that emerged in the late 18th century and was the standard style of general-purpose printing during the 19th century. It is characterized by:

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Font</span> Particular size, weight and style of a typeface

In metal typesetting, a font is a particular size, weight and style of a typeface. Each font is a matched set of type, with a piece for each glyph. A typeface consists of various fonts that share an overall design.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Line length</span> In typography, width of a block of typeset text

In typography, line length is the width of a block of typeset text, usually measured in units of length like inches or points or in characters per line. A block of text or paragraph has a maximum line length that fits a determined design. If the lines are too short then the text becomes disjointed; if they are too long, the content loses rhythm as the reader searches for the start of each line.

Typeface anatomy describes the graphic elements that make up letters in a typeface.

Form and Document Creation is one of the things that technical communicators do as part of creating deliverables for their companies or clients. Document design is: "the field of theory and practice aimed at creating comprehensible, persuasive and usable functional documents". These forms and documents can have many different purposes such as collecting or providing information.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Metro (typeface)</span>

Metro is a sans-serif typeface family created by William Addison Dwiggins and released by the American Mergenthaler Linotype Company from 1929 onwards.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Atkinson Hyperlegible</span> Sans-serif typeface

Atkinson Hyperlegible is a freely available typeface built around a grotesque sans-serif core, intended to be optimally legible for readers who are partially visually impaired, with all characters maximally distinguishable from one another. It was developed by the Braille Institute of America in collaboration with Applied Design Works and is available under the SIL Open Font License. It won Fast Company's Innovation by Design Award for Graphic Design in 2019 and was shortlisted for a graphic design award by Dezeen in 2020.

References

  1. ↑ Dragan, Anca D.; Lee, Kenton C.T.; Srinivasa, Siddhartha S. (March 2013). Legibility and Predictability of Robot Motion (PDF). ACM/IEEE International Conference on Human-Robot Interaction. Tokyo, Japan.
  2. ↑ Weisman, Jerry (March 1981). "Evaluating Architectural Legibility". Environment and Behavior. 13 (2): 189–204. doi:10.1177/0013916581132004. ISSN   0013-9165. S2CID   107939568.
  3. ↑ Tracy, Walter (1986). Letters of credit : a view of type design. London: David R. Godine. pp. 30–32.
  4. ↑ Lieberman, J. Ben (1967). Types of typefaces and how to recognize them. New York: Sterling Publishing Co. pp. 85–127.
  5. 1 2 3 4 5 Sheedy, James E.; Subbaram, Manoj V.; Zimmerman, Aaron B.; Hayes, John R. (December 2005). "Text Legibility and the Letter Superiority Effect". Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. 47 (4): 797–815. doi:10.1518/001872005775570998. ISSN   0018-7208. PMID   16553067. S2CID   207496095.
  6. 1 2 3 Strizver, Ilene (2010). Type Rules: The Designer's Guide to Professional Typography (3rd ed.). New Jersey: John Wiley & Sons. p. 73. ISBN   978-0-470-54251-4.
  7. ↑ Mustonen, Terhi; Olkkonen, Maria; Hakkinen, Jukka (2004). "Examining mobile phone text legibility while walking". Extended abstracts of the 2004 conference on Human factors and computing systems - CHI '04. New York, New York, USA: ACM Press. p. 1243. doi:10.1145/985921.986034. ISBN   1-58113-703-6.
  8. ↑ Smith, Sidney L. (December 1979). "Letter Size and Legibility". Human Factors: The Journal of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society. 21 (6): 661–670. doi:10.1177/001872087912210604. ISSN   0018-7208. S2CID   110208067.
  9. ↑ Dobres, Jonathan; Chahine, Nadine; Reimer, Bryan; Gould, David; Mehler, Bruce; Coughlin, Joseph F. (2016-03-04). "Utilising psychophysical techniques to investigate the effects of age, typeface design, size and display polarity on glance legibility". Ergonomics. Informa UK Limited. 59 (10): 1377–1391. doi: 10.1080/00140139.2015.1137637 . ISSN   0014-0139. PMC   5213401 . PMID   26727912.
  10. 1 2 Beier, Sofie (May 2009). Typeface Legibility: Towards defining familiarity (PDF) (PhD thesis). Royal College of Art.
  11. ↑ Michael S. Wogalter, editor. "Handbook of Warnings". 2006. p. 395.
  12. ↑ Kevin Larson. "The science of word recognition".
  13. ↑ Susan Weinschenk. "It’s a Myth That All Capital Letters Are Inherently Harder to Read".
  14. ↑ Diana C. Reep. "Technical Writing: Principles, Strategies, and Readings". 1997. p. 455.
  15. ↑ Arditi, Aries; Cho, Jianna (2005-11-01). "Serifs and font legibility". Vision Research. 45 (23): 2926–2933. doi:10.1016/j.visres.2005.06.013. ISSN   0042-6989. PMC   4612630 . PMID   16099015.
  16. ↑ Robert A. Morris, Kathy Aquilante, Dean Yager, Charles Bigelow, 2002: Serifs Slow RSVP Reading at Very Small Sizes, but Don't Matter at Larger Sizes, DOI: 10.1889/1.1830242, http://cs.umb.edu/~ram/rsvp/publications/serifssubmittedv2.doc
  17. 1 2 Campbell-Dollaghan, Kelsey (2013-01-30). "Could Good Type Design Promote Literacy In The Middle East?". Fast Company. Retrieved 2020-03-26.
  18. ↑ Alpaca, U. X. (2016-11-01). "What to watch out for when working on typography for print and web". Medium. Retrieved 2020-04-02.
  19. ↑ "Legibility and readability issues". EUfont.eu. Retrieved 2020-03-26.
  20. ↑ Broschüre: Schriftarten für legasthene Menschen (in German). Erster Österreichischer Dachverband Legasthenie. 2013-07-19.
  21. ↑ Baer, Drake (2017-03-07). "The Reason Comic Sans Is a Public Good". The Cut. Retrieved 2020-03-26.
  22. ↑ Zorzi, M.; Barbiero, C.; Facoetti, A.; Lonciari, I.; Carrozzi, M.; Montico, M.; Bravar, L.; George, F.; Pech-Georgel, C.; Ziegler, J. C. (2012-06-04). "Extra-large letter spacing improves reading in dyslexia". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. 109 (28): 11455–11459. doi: 10.1073/pnas.1205566109 . ISSN   0027-8424. PMC   3396504 . PMID   22665803.
  23. ↑ Rello, Luz; Baeza-Yates, Ricardo (21 October 2013). "Good fonts for dyslexia" (PDF). Proceedings of the 15th International ACM SIGACCESS Conference on Computers and Accessibility. pp. 1–8. doi:10.1145/2513383.2513447. ISBN   9781450324052. S2CID   4953793 . Retrieved 17 November 2022.
  24. ↑ Sassoon, Rosemary (1993). "Through the eyes of a child: perception and type design". Computers and typography. Oxford, England: Intellect. pp. 150–. ISBN   1-871516-23-4. OCLC   27468183.
  25. ↑ Beier, Sofie; Larson, Kevin (2010-06-01). "Design Improvements for Frequently Misrecognized Letters 1". Information Design Journal. John Benjamins Publishing Company. 18 (2): 118–137. doi:10.1075/idj.18.2.03bei. ISSN   0142-5471.
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