Reading ancient signals in a modern world

By Irina Matuzava

(Last of two parts)

The size of fonts also matters. Researchers Mareike Bayer, Werner Sommer, and Annekathrin Schacht measured cortical responses to words presented in large and small font sizes. The selected words were categorized as emotional or neutral, and the study found that emotional words in larger font sizes elicited earlier and longer-lasting neural responses than those in smaller font sizes. Thus, independent of the words’ semantic content, the physical presentation of the text influenced the brain’s emotional processing. “The power of large font size to enhance emotion effects may, for instance, be one reason why headlines written in big letters are popular and evidently successful in the yellow press media,” stated the authors in their study published in PLOS One.

A 2021 study by Renata Germano Bianchi, Kamila Rios da Hora Rodrigues, and Vânia Paula de Almeida Neris about emotional responses to font types and sizes on website pages found that Arial was more closely associated with positive attributes than TNR, and that larger font sizes were more closely associated with pleasant and comforting experiences than smaller ones.

These findings establish that fonts help shape emotional perceptions and modulate readers’ attention. Since they do so without a reader’s awareness, they also have significant implications for marketing, advertising, and persuasive literature, with the potential to sway our decision-making, behavior, and memory. As humans, we often store a plethora of information, especially since the advent of the information age. Once information forms part of our memory, the typographic form with which it was conveyed influences how much of it is retained.

A 2005 study on information recall by Michael Gasser and other researchers tested this finding. More specifically, they tested the influence of two common characteristics of font types: serif or sans-serif markings and proportional font or monospaced font. College students were given a one-page office memorandum that discussed tuberculosis and were tested on their ability to recall its key points. The variations in font conditions depended on whether the typeface contained serifs and how the letters were spaced. “Serif fonts have small markings at the bottom of many of the letters that suggest they are resting on a straight line,” stated the study, while sans-serif fonts have no such markings. The space used by proportionally spaced fonts for each letter is proportional to the size/shape of that letter. For example, an “L” takes up less space in width than an “m.” In monospaced fonts, each letter takes up the same amount of space.

The researchers found that serif fonts, regardless of spacing, produced a slight but significant improvement in recall (9 percent) over sans-serif fonts. They suggested that serif fonts help us clearly distinguish one row of text from the next, resulting in more attention focused on the content itself.

Previous research on reading aligns with this sentiment: attention is a limited resource, and the effort required for the physical act of reading draws energy and capacity away from comprehending and remembering the content. In 1989, Ruth Kanfer and Phillip L. Ackerman developed an attentional resources theory according to which humans have limited attentional resources that they can devote to a task. In accordance with this theory, if less attention is given to the reading process, then more attention can be given to the message. When distractions are randomly included in text, marked disruptions in comprehension take place, as studied by researchers S. Lisa Connelly, Lynn Hasher, and Rose T. Zacks in 1991. They also found that older adults are less able to ignore irrelevant stimuli, such as words set in a different font randomly interspersed throughout the text. In 1992, John R. Surber established that when readers were given shorter passages, they spent more time per word, consistent with more effortful processing. These studies show that readability and comprehension are negatively affected when the reading process requires more attentional resources.

In 2019, Elizabeth Dressler tested whether a harder-to-read font improves memory. Her study aimed to better understand the effect of fonts on reading comprehension and information recall, noting that previous studies relied on short passages and unlimited time, which may have restricted their accuracy. In her study, students read long passages printed in either TNR (a serif, easy-to-read font) or a font called Haettenschweiler, which was selected specifically for its difficulty, under both fixed time limits and no time limit at all. Dressler’s results demonstrated that students who read the TNR text scored better than those who read the Haettenschweiler text. In addition, participants who were given unlimited time outperformed those with a time constraint. Originally, she had predicted that the more difficult font would improve recall by requiring more effort to process. Instead, students who read the easier text outperformed those who read the harder text.

Though the serif advantage is small and inconsistent across studies, serifs may be useful when the information is important, such as materials and manuals for worker health and occupational safety. In general, the effects of fonts have been shown to influence choices in website and software interfaces, packaging, legal documents, and more.

Jianlong Zhou and colleagues tested font choice in the context of digital news interfaces in 2022, making changes to the font style and color of keywords in news passages and measuring the readers’ perceived cognitive load before reading. They found that under low cognitive load, when the reader is not yet mentally taxed, keywords styled in italic or bold text, especially when paired with blue text, increased the burden on readers. Under high cognitive load, italic styling and red text significantly decreased it, since the words served as visual anchors when readability was already demanding. In other words, the value of emphasis depends on how taxed a reader already is.

The persuasive power of fonts shows up in branding as well. It has been established that different typefaces vary in “appropriateness,” or the “fit” between a product and a font due to its connotations: bold and simple fonts more often convey “economy” or “strength,” while scripted and ornate fonts are associated with words like “luxury” and “dignity.” A 2004 study by John R. Doyle and Paul A. Bottomley had participants choose between two versions of a brand name across 10 product categories. The versions were identical aside from their typeface; brands written in a font judged more “appropriate” for a product type were chosen twice as often compared to the same brand name in another font. A follow-up field study using real chocolate boxes found that people reached for the box with the appropriate font 75 percent of the time. Typefaces inherently carry personality attributions. Thus, a brand’s font selection serves as another sign of why a product may belong to a particular category.

Researcher Sandra Moriarty argued in 1994 that visual communication should be treated as a primary system of meaning, not as a secondary illustration of the verbal content it accompanies. While her point mainly applied to images, photographs, and other visual material, the argument also extends to font types. A font changes what a reader recalls, how satirical a passage reads, and what brand a shopper picks up, independent of the text and words themselves. In each of these cases, visual communication influences the reader without their knowledge.

The zigzag patterns from Trinil and crosshatching from Blombos Cave were made hundreds of thousands of years before any script existed. Yet the desire to deliberately shape a surface never disappeared. This impulse carried into the first writing systems and persists in the typefaces we read today. A font, then, carries meaning that words alone do not provide and influences how we remember, feel about, and trust written content.

Irina Matuzava is a writer and researcher. She is a contributor to the Human Bridges project. This article was produced by Human Bridges.

Read Part 1 here.