Closed letter counters impair recognition

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Abstract

An often-repeated piece of advice when choosing fonts for great legibility is to use fonts with large counters and apertures. To identify effects of open and closed apertures on the letters ‘a’, ‘c’, ‘e’, ‘r’, ‘s’, ‘t’ and ‘f’, we ran an experiment using the serif font Pyke as stimulus. The letters in focus were designed for this experiment with three variations of open apertures (Open, Medium and Closed). The experimental paradigm was to present a letter either with or without flankers in the parafovea at 2◦ eccentricity. The findings showed that participants had more trouble identifying the letter if it was set in a font variation with closed apertures.
Original languageEnglish
Article number103709
JournalApplied Ergonomics
Volume101
ISSN0003-6870
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2022

Keywords

  • typefaces
  • Legibility
  • letter counter

Artistic research

  • No

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