Visibility and legibility of five-letter words in different experimental conditions

Abstract

The length of a word depends on the number of characters that make it up. Since we are constantly confronted with words (information), a suitable typeface should be chosen to make reading comfortable and easy. The number of characters can affect how visible a word is and, more importantly, how quickly the word can be read and understood. For this reason, we conducted tests with five-letter words randomly displayed at the four positions on the screen. The study examined the minimum time required to recognize five-letter words. Five different typefaces (Calibri, Georgia, Swiss 721, Trebuchet, Verdana) were included in the study to determine which of the screen typefaces read the fastest. The Georgia typeface performed the best regardless of the other conditions. The time to read upper-case letters was much shorter than lower-case and sentence-case letters. For words presented in the upper positions of the screen, the recognition time was shorter than for the lower positions of the screen. Different combinations of variables showed that some were better suited for on-screen use.

Keywords

• reading time
• typography
• usability testing
• visual performance