I’ve been a fan of Kevin Larson’s writing about fonts, typography and online reading for some time. I mention him in my latest book, 100 Things Every Designer Needs To Know About People. Kevin is a reading psychologist that works with typographers at Microsoft. He’s part of a team at Microsoft with a goal to…
Category Archives: reading
100 Things You Should Know About People: # 91 — Size Matters When It Comes To Fonts
When it comes to fonts, size matters a lot. The font size needs to be big enough so that people can read it without strain. Not just old folks – For older people this is critical. Starting in their 40′s, most people have increasing difficulty reading small fonts. But it’s not just older people that…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #54 — The Average Reading Level In the USA Is Grade 8
If you are a biologist, then the paragraph below might make sense to you: “The regulation of the TCA cycle is largely determined by substrate availability and product inhibition. NADH, a product of all of the deydrogenases in the TCA cycle, with the exception of succinate dehydrogenase, inhibits pyruvate dehydrogenase, isocitrate dehydrogenase, a-ketoglutarate dehydrogenase, while…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #48 — What You See Is Not What Your Brain Gets
Can you read this?: Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, the oredr of lteetrs in a wrod is nto vrey iprmoetnt. Waht mttaers is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The ohter letetrs can be a ttoal mses and you can sitll raed wthuot mcuh probelm. Tihs is bcauseae yuor…
10 Best Posts of 2009
It’s that time of year — so here is my list of the 10 best posts from my blog in 2009. I chose the 10 that I believe have had the greatest impact/most thought provoking/most interest from my readers. #1: Dopamine Makes You Addicted to Seeking Information — I thought this was an interesting post…
100 Things You Should Know About People: #19 — It’s a Myth That All Capital Letters Are Inherently Harder to Read
WHAT YOU ARE ABOUT TO READ IN THE NEXT PARAGRAPH IS COMMONLY BELIEVED, BUT NOT TRUE – You read by recognizing the shapes of words and groups of words. Words that are in all capital letters all have the same shape: a rectangle of a certain size. This makes words displayed in all uppercase harder…