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- Burt's statements about the supposed superiority of serif fonts turned out to be nothing more than idle conjecture dressed up to sound scientific.
I never believed the readability claims of pro-serif folk. It struck me long ago that “comic” was the most readable font in the world and I create all my course material in that font. My students mock me.
What would be a valid test of font readability? Data gained from dyslexic studies might be applicable only to dyslexics. It might be that for 90% of the population, Times New Roman (or some such serif font) is as easy to read as Ariel (or some such sans-serif font). Could we measure how much brain activity it takes or how many calories are burned? Could one font lead to more fatigue?
- Word shape is no longer a viable model of word recognition. The bulk of scientific evidence says that we recognize a word’s component letters, then use that visual information to recognize a word.