Sans Forgetica font doesn't actually boost memory

Ray Larabie

  

https://www.futurity.org/sans-forgetica-font-memory-2375842/

Stuart Sandler

To be sure, I'm still waiting for scientific evidence of elements that are required to create an effective dyslexia friendly font.

Andreas Stötzner

“Sans Forgetica font doesn't actually boost memory”

It was clear right from the beginning that this sort of pseudo-scientific nonsense will lead to nothing. ‘Sans Forgetica and Arial’ – oh dear. Those people should do basic learning about type first.

John Savard

Stuart Sandler said:

To be sure, I'm still waiting for scientific evidence of elements that are required to create an effective dyslexia friendly font.

I'm waiting for someone to design a typeface that's hard enough to read that it forces people to pay attention to what they're reading, and thus learn and remember it better... but which is no harder to read for dyslexics, because it's been designed with dyslexia-friendly features!

I think that will happen sooner than any scientific proof that this kind of typeface actually works.

Come to think of this, though, there is not a typeface, but a whole writing system, that is said to have utterly abolished dyslexia in the countries where it is used (although some recent research says, no, dyslexia exists there too, it just manifests in a different form) and is generally believed to be more demanding in the process of reading and writing. However, this writing system would be difficult to adapt to the English language, for two basic reasons:

• the English language has a lot of different syllables, because it has consonant clusters and a free choice of the final consonants of a syllable, and
• individual syllables in English words often don't mean anything.

So we might have to learn Chinese to accomplish both goals at once. However, it probably is possible, although it would require some effort, to adapt the Korean writing system of Hangul to English, and possibly this would produce (or at least appear to produce) some of the same benefits.

K Pease

I recall seeing the work of a letterer who had a system of arranging Latin letters of English syllables into blocks as in Hangul. I now sort of wonder if this would help anyone read, though not enough to believe someone if they told me it does.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

K Pease said:

I recall seeing the work of a letterer who had a system of arranging Latin letters of English syllables into blocks as in Hangul. I now sort of wonder if this would help anyone read, though not enough to believe someone if they told me it does.

Not just a letterer, a type designer. Hangulatin, designed by the brilliant Anita Jürgeleit in 2014. A personal favorite, not least since I entertained such thoughts myself back in 1999!



And I'm not sure I still agree with my last sentence...

Craig Eliason

It's only at the end of that sample sentence where the problem becomes clear: when consecutive words have the same number of groupings, the reading path becomes ambiguous.

Hrant Հրանդ Փափազեան Papazian

That rendering was a quickie by the book's editor. Jürgeleit has done a much better job (not least in that it's an actual working font) although it's all-caps.

John Savard

Oh, yes, I forgot about that. Here's where you can take a look at it.

https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/urw/hangulatin-en/

Wolf Böse

John Savard said:

Oh, yes, I forgot about that. Here's where you can take a look at it.

https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/urw/hangulatin-en/

dang, i love it. and yes, initially a little slow readíblity rises quickly once u get used to it.

André G. Isaak

I'd not heard of this face, but my first impression was not a very good one since I read the name as Sans Forge-etica which doesn't inspire confidence. Of course, I saw it in the forum font rather than in Sans Forgetica itself. Perhaps if this had not been the case forgery wouldn't have jumped into my head.