Text comprehension research

Jasper de Waard

Hello all,

For as far as I know, legibility research largely focusses on the speed with which a text can be read, since that's easy to objectively measure. Has there been any research in different degrees of text comprehension depending on the typeface?

Stephen Coles

I think both Ann Bessemans and Kevin Larson have run studies that include measurements such as reading comprehension and preference/appeal.

Scott-Martin Kosofsky

If you do a search for "typography and reading comprehension" you'll find a lot of material. A good place to start, if you don't know the literature and need a further bibliography, is this article, by Eva Brumberger, from a 2004 issue of the journal Technical Communication:

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/233516698_The_Rhetoric_of_Typography_Effects_on_Reading_Time_Reading_Comprehension_and_Perceptions_of_Ethos

or here: https://katepedavoli.files.wordpress.com/2013/06/w7-rhetoric-typography.pdf

You will find that the researchers in this field have such a primitive notion of typography that the research does not tell you much that is important. What is almost universally missing from the discussions are the critical elements that make or break typography: intercharacter spacing, leading, type size, and line length—and their interaction.

I'd like to think that all good typographers read a lot—a very great lot—and that much of what they practice is a conglomeration of their own self-examination over time, experience with how their work has been received and perceived by others, and a sense of the cultural traditions of their work. (Different reading cultures have different typographic expectations.) By the way, what I mean by "typographer" is someone who designs and composes typographic pages, not type designers, as the term is often used around here.

It should be noted that this sort of research is conducted most often by quantitative psychologists and various sorts of educationists (and occasionally engineers), never by people who have any real-world experience setting type, let alone designing type. While they come into these studies with laudable goals, they lack many of critical criteria with which to design or judge them. Worst of all, some of these studies are well funded with money that would be better spent on any number of other things.

What this tells me is that typography may well be some kind of art—or at least a high craft, whose elements are not easily quantified.

Jasper de Waard

Thanks for the insights/tips, guys!

Nick Shinn

Colin Weildon was a designer who did some research in this area.

Nick Shinn

And of course David Ogilvy, from an advertising and writing perspective, with response rates—and sales—as the measure of “comprehension”! I can’t recall offhand which of his books is best on this topic.