Information in hard-to-read fonts was better remembered than easier to read information.
Is this a sight for sore eyes? As reported in a recent New York Times column by David Brooks:
“People remember information that is hard to master. In a study for Cognition, Connor Diemand-Yauman, Daniel Oppenheimer and Erikka Vaughan found that information in hard-to-read fonts was better remembered than information transmitted in easier fonts.”
So let’s read the fine print. The study from Princeton University says, “information in hard-to-read fonts was better remembered than easier to read information in a controlled laboratory setting.” And furthermore, “in some cases making material harder to learn can improve long-term learning and retention (Bjork, 1994). More cognitive engagement leads to deeper processing, which facilitates encoding and subsequently better retrieval.”
Now they warn you that if you can’t read it, or it’s really too hard-to-read, then most people will not read it at all. But apparently, learning is taking place in the struggle. Essentially the use of hard-to-read fonts slows down readers, forcing them to spend more time deciphering the content and that leads to better retention and comprehension.
My daughter, Rachael, was doing improv acting at our local Barnes & Noble where they were soliciting input from the audience. She was handed a message written in crayon that she found impossible to read. She spent more time and effort trying to determine what it said but eventually she gave up and just improvised a response and continued the performance. Later that evening when she was telling me about the performance it was the hard-to-read message that dominated her recollection of the evening.
