Times = Arial > Comic > COURIER: Which of These Fonts Can Be Read Out Loud the Quickest?

Overview

Objectives/Goals I was trying to see if there was an easiest font to read out loud. There are so many fonts that there would be no easy way to test them all. I decided to test three of the most common fonts and one unusual font, comic. Methods/Materials I carefully selected four paragraphs that were the same length when read. The way I determined that was to count the number of syllables and spaces in an excerpt and look for ones of the same length. I created four unique packets for my test subjects to read that had one different paragraph of each font with each paragraph on its own page. I instructed my test subjects to read the paragraphs each out loud at their normal pace and I timed and recorded each paragraph they read individually. I entered the data from my log book into my computer to process the data in a spreadsheet. Results Of the four fonts that I tested Arial and Times performed similarly and were the fastest being read out loud. Comic was on average about two percent slower than Arial and Times. The last font I tested was Courier in all caps and it was the slowest, by four percent. Conclusions/Discussion Although Arial turned out to be the fastest font, it wasn#t faster by very much. Of the four fonts I tested there didn#t seem to be very much difference. This small difference would only make an impact when reading large amounts of text like a long speech.

Competition history

• CSEF 2005 Behavioral Sciences · Entry J0344

Resources

• CSEF project summary ↗

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