Legibility

Legibility is the ease with which a reader can decode symbols. In addition to written language, it can also refer to behaviour[1] or architecture,[2] for example. From the perspective of communication research, it can be described as a measure of the permeability of a communication channel. A large number of known factors can affect legibility.

legibility

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In everyday language, legibility is commonly used as a synonym for readability. In graphic design, however, legibility is often distinguished from readability. Readability is the ease with which a reader can follow and understand words, sentences and paragraphs. While legibility usually refers to the visual clarity of individual symbols, readability is more about their arrangement or even the choice of words.[3][4]Legibility is a component of readability.[citation needed]

Not all writing benefits from optimizing for legibility. Texts that are supposed to be eye-catching or whose appearance is supposed to hold certain connotations could deliberately deviate from easy legibility for these purposes. Corresponding typefaces are called display typefaces.[6]

It has been shown that threshold legibility performance correlates inversely with the age of the readers. Older readers are disproportionately affected by other adverse factors in visual design, such as small text size.[9]

Despite contrary opinions, serifs have little observable influence on reading speed. At low resolution, the additional spacing between letters required for the serifs seems to improve legibility, whereas otherwise they have a slightly adverse effect.[15] For special groups, the picture may look different: the dyslexics community[clarification needed] seems to be convinced that serifs are unnecessary visual clutter, which makes the text less accessible and makes the letter shapes deviate more from the simpler forms known from school.

Eye tracker studies support the theory that increasing complexity of shapes reduces legibility.[16] The addition of vowel marks in Arabic script has contradictory effects, but appears to be detrimental to legibility overall.[16] Freestanding letters are easier to recognize than ones with adjacent elements; this is known as crowding effect.[5]

Common measures to improve legibility at lowest resolution include the use of wide apertures/large open counters, large x-height, low stroke variability, big features, etc., while some improvements like ink traps[clarification needed] are specific to different presentation media.[17]The positive effect of more open apertures could be experimentally confirmed for the opening of the lowercase e, but not for the larger opening of the lowercase c. Narrow letter shapes such as f, j, l and i usually benefit from larger tails that widen their shape, except for the lowercase f.[10]

While a large x-height is generally considered helpful for legibility at low resolutions, the dyslexics community holds the theory that short ascenders/descenders tend to cause confusion. Dyslexics and learners also seem to prefer less regularity between individual letterforms, especially further differentiating features in glyphs that are often just mirrored versions of other letters, as in the group b, d, p and q, since the human brain seems to have evolved to recognize (symmetrical) three-dimensional objects regardless of their orientation in space.[18][19] This is the basis for some of the most devout endorsements of the otherwise much hated Comic Sans typeface.[20] Other important aspects seem to be the familiarity of the glyph shapes, the absence of serifs and looser spacing.[21][22]While textbook versions perform better with inexperienced readers/learners, most experienced readers seem to be more comfortable with the traditional two-story print forms for a and g.[23][24]

We should take legibility as historical process rather than a generic quality. This way something illegible is something you have not got acquinted to yet. Some stuff are easy to, some take more time and effort.

Definitely provide benefits to users. Why else have a website? But you also need to reduce the barriers to using it (i.e., lower the cost). For online copy, the barriers to use fall into 3 categories: legibility, readability, and comprehension, each of which is defined and discussed below.

The main way to test legibility is to measure reading speed in words per minute for a sample of users, as they read some simple text. Because people read at drastically varying speeds, this is best done as a within-subjects test, where the same test participants test multiple systems. If users are, on average, say, 20% slower when reading from your design than when reading from a reference design, then you know that your site has poor legibility. (See our course on Measuring User Experience for more on within-subjects vs. between-subjects study designs.)

Although the power primarily lies in the administrator class, the engineers are not powerless. By participating in the legibility efforts, they have the opportunities to make the measures work for them. For example, ensuring that impactful work is appropriately visible to the group that can decide promotions is important. Similarly, by making legible all the effort to develop new systems, maintain existing ones and so on, it is easier to make the case for additional headcount.

Seeking mutual benefit from these legibility efforts, from both the administrator and the engineer, is the primary way to make the trap work for all involved and to make sure everyone is along for the ride.

Corporate legibility efforts are typically well intentioned, to make sense of the complex and complicated world of software development. As with all attempts at such abstractions, they result in a transfer of power that can chafe against autonomous groups and in extremes, be harmful to the effectiveness of these groups. By ensuring the efforts work on both sides, we can reduce frustration and reduce the asymmetries that result in potentially unfair power balances.

Another potential drawback of serif typefaces is that the legibility of individual letters suffers when serifs have exaggerated shapes. Long serifs, those that are exceptionally heavy and those with unusual shapes all detract from legibility. Ideal serifs are somewhat short and slightly bracketed. They are also heavy enough to be obvious yet not conspicuous. Typefaces such as Monotype Sabon and ITC Stone have great serifs.

Specific situations or contexts can also affect typeface legibility. For example, if copy has a lot of numerals, a sans serif face may be the best choice. The reason? Sans serif numerals are simpler and have more recognizable character shapes than their roman counterparts.

While legibility is a responsibility of the designer or shared responsibility among various designers, in most cases, readability is a shared responsibility between the content writer and the designer.

This shared responsibility does not apply in all cases, though. For instance, if you are a graphic designer creating a text logo, you will be the sole person responsible for the legibility and readability of the logo.

In the meantime, feel free to let us know which of these tips you found the most helpful and whether you have any other tips that you would recommend to improve legibility and readability. We're all ears!

Weight: Extremely light and extremely heavy weights are more difficult to read, so if legibility is your goal, stick to something in the middle. Book weights (also called regular weights) are so named because their legibility means they are most often used to typeset books for that very reason.

Design traits: The overall shapes and design traits of a typeface, if too quirky or fussy, will reduce legibility. While this might be acceptable for shorter display settings, stick to simpler typeface designs for lengthy text settings.

Stroke contrast: Extreme stroke contrast (that is, the ratio of thick to thin strokes) can reduce legibility as well. This is especially true of modern designs such as Bodoni and Didot, whose thin strokes can appear so thin when reproduced in print or on the web that they can become challenging to read when used too small, at lower resolutions, or for lots of text.

Serifs or lack thereof: While serifs are generally believed to enhance legibility, this is not always the case. All of the above factors contribute more to legibility than serifs: a sans serif design with neutral features can be more legible than some serif typefaces. In addition, many professionals believe that what you read most, you read best. Therefore, in the U.S., where running text in books, magazines, and newspapers is typically typeset using serif text fonts, readers are most comfortable and familiar with them and therefore find them more legible. By contrast, sans serif fonts may appear more legible to audiences in countries where they are more commonly used.

Cruxiness is a key part of epistemic legibility that perhaps could use some extra emphasis here. Don't just be clear about the evidence on which your beliefs are based - prioritize and weigh that evidence. Being explicit about some of the justifications for your beliefs is helpful. Far better, though, to be explicit about which of these justifications, if falsified, you would consider most damaging to your argument.

I also appreciate that you made the costs of legibility explicit. Duncan's essay Ruling Out Everything Else touches on a related theme, but I only realized some time after reading that essay that trying to be so precise in one's speech can result in written discussions getting much longer. Which imposes yet other costs.

Today, dynomight made an interesting nuance in Observations about writing and commenting on the internet. It seems that just optimizing epistemic legibility may cause people to fail to listen altogether: 2ff7e9595c