How type influences readability (Fonts Knowledge)

Summary

This is an overview of how people read, focusing on how those with normal or corrected vision read letters, words, phrases and longer texts. It discusses readability, which is how easily a reader engages with and understands the message intended by the author, and how typographic decisions can influence the process.

It explains how people recognize individual letters, words, syntax, and how the ideas in the text relate to each other and the reader. It gives advice on how to choose a typeface that supports people learning to read and write, as well as how to make texts more readable.

Explaining the word superiority effect, the article explains why it’s easier to read a string of words that are meaningfully related in a sentence rather than those not in a grammatical structure. It further discusses how typefaces can convey emotions and how readers have different motivations for why and how they read.