More About Fonts

by Dr. Bob Bailey

March, 2002

Tom Tullis and his colleagues (1995) used a proofreading task to evaluate the differences in reading rate between type styles and sizes. They had subjects use Arial, MS Sans Serif, MS Serif and Small Font type styles all at 6, 7, 8, 9 and 10 points. The reading material in this and all of the following studies used a black font on a white background. There was no difference between serif and sans serif fonts; however, the 9-point and 10-point fonts elicited reliably faster performance than the smaller sizes. Subjects preferred the 10-point Arial and MS Sans Serif fonts rather than the MS Serif fonts.

Boyarski, et.al. (1998) at Carnegie Mellon University evaluated the reading speed of people using Georgia (serif), Times New Roman (serif) and Verdana (sans serif) fonts. Georgia and Verdana were specifically designed for reading from a computer monitor. All text was set at 10 points. They used a comprehension task (Tinker Reading Speed Test) rather than a proofreading task. Participants included faculty, staff and graduate students who ranged in age from 20 to 53. The subjects read the text on a 17-inch screen with a resolution of 640x480 pixels. They reported no reliable performance differences in reading speed.

Over the past couple of years, Michael Bernard, Melissa Mills and their colleagues at Wichita State University have conducted a series of studies on font sizes and styles. In their first study (Bernard and Mills, 2000) they evaluated 10-point and 12-point Arial and Times New Roman fonts. They had participants read Encarta passages.

The words were presented on 17-inch monitors with a resolution of 1024x768 pixels. The test subjects were asked to read each passage “as accurately and as quickly as possible.” As they read, they were to find some randomly placed “substitution words” in each passage (e.g., “fun” replaced “sun”). The researchers reported no reliable differences among the passages in reading speed or in the detection of word errors. However, the 12-point fonts were reliably preferred over the 10-point fonts.

In a second study (Bernard, et.al., 2001a) they used a similar procedure to evaluate three different font sizes (10, 12 and 14-points) used with eight different fonts types:

Serif fonts

Sans serif fonts

They found that Arial and Times New Roman were read reliably faster than Courier, Schoolbook and Georgia, and that the 12-point fonts were read reliably faster than the 10-point fonts. All of the fonts except Century Schoolbook were reliably preferred over Times New Roman.

In a more recent study (Bernard, et.al., 2002) they used only 12-point fonts, but extended the number of font styles by adding Goudy Old Style (a serif font) and Agency (a sans serif font) to their original eight font styles. Like in previous studies, participants read 2 to 3 page passages located at a fixed distance from their screens. They found no reliable differences between the major fonts in reading efficiency; however, Arial, Verdana and Comic Sans were reliably preferred.

The studies just discussed used participants that were young or middle-aged. Bernard and his colleagues (2001b) examined font characteristics that could assist older adults when reading from the Web. The older users had an average age of 70, with a range of 62 to 83 years. The study used 15-inch monitors that had a resolution of 800x600 pixels. Again, all of the readers were required to remain 22 inches (56 cm) from the screen. They evaluated 12-point and 14-point versions of Times New Roman, Georgia, Arial and Verdana. All the 14-point fonts produced reliably better reading efficiency, and both of the 14-point san serif fonts were reliably preferred over all four 12-point fonts.

What can we conclude from these studies?