When we study for a difficult test, we try to go all out. That means making review guides, reading your textbook, and seeing the same fonts over and over. But making a few changes to the text you look at can make a huge difference. Researcher Connor Diemand-Yauman suggests that “when we find something easy to read, we tend to take it as a sign that we already have mastery of the material. But when fonts make reading slightly harder, we often doubt whether we instantly ‘get’ it.”
Size Doesn’t Matter
A common belief is that we remember information better when the text is bigger. Well, the truth is we don’t. People have conducted studies where they presented information to different groups in different sizes of text. The result? No significant difference was found, meaning the larger lettering made it no easier or harder for people to recall information. “Typical fonts are very familiar so we glance over them and no memory trace is created. On the other hand if a font is too different then our brain can’t process it and no memory trace is created either,” says Janneke Blijlevens, founder member of RMIT Behavioural Business Lab.
Style Is Important
Comic Sans may be the target of the Internet’s jokes, but this font style can help you remember notes better than common fonts such as Arial. While font size doesn’t help improve one’s memory, font style can actually influence such. Surprisingly, it’s the difficult-to-read kind of fonts that you’ll want to choose.
The reason behind this is a concept that experts call processing fluency or the ease by which a person processes information. When you read something in a familiar font such as Arial, you can quickly skim through it. While this may sound positive, it’s a bad thing when you’re trying to retain the information.
The opposite of this concept is disfluency, which pertains to the difficulty in processing information. When you read a passage in a difficult-to-read font such as, say, Monotype Corsiva, it takes more time for you to read the text. Because of this, your brain is forced to slow down, helping you think deeper and remember information better.
Using this concept, the School of Design and Behavioral Business Lab in RMIT has come up with a new font style to help you remember more. Aptly named Sans Forgetica, the font does so by increasing disfluency.
The catch is that once you do get used to reading in other font styles, your processing fluency increases. It means it won’t be as effective in helping you learn. Because of this, researchers suggest switching between fonts now and then for this trick to still work.
Color Me Curious
Whether we’re aware of it or not, colors affect our daily lives in many ways. Specific colors can represent traits and can even influence our mood.
But colors do more than just that. They can also help us learn better. It does this in multiple ways: color can catch our attention and aid in memory retention and recall. It means it can be easier to recognize critical points when they are colored instead of just being regular black text. Colored text can also help us memorize concepts, terms, and numbers better. Researchers conducted a study that showed people tend to recall information better when it is in color. According to psychologist Stephen Peate, “While most people are familiar with the concept of colour psychology, and how certain shades can make us think and behave differently, what you may not know, is that we’re also affected by font psychology.”
As mentioned earlier, colors also affect one’s mood. It means reading text that is in a specific color can help put you in a better disposition for learning. For instance, experts say that using blue ink can help calm you down and aid in reading comprehension. The color orange also helps lift your mood, and it’s also a high contrast to blue, grabbing your attention better.
It may be tempting to print out another neat review guide in black, 11-pt Calibri with keywords made larger. However, it’s better to go for Bodoni MT colored in blue or orange. After all, experts found that all these factors help you remember better and understand deeper.
So don’t let the internet fool you: Comic Sans is here to stay.