Some "ugly" fonts | Image Credit: ealoha.com
A group of researchers has found that content written in difficult-to-read fonts is more readily remembered than content rendered in visually pleasing fonts.
This seems to be consistent with findings from other educational research groups. The underlying logic to it seems to be that the more challenging it is for people to learn new material, the more thoroughly they will ultimately understand that material. Perhaps because people learn better when it’s a struggle to do so. As we often see in the gym, “No Pain, No Gain.”
“More cognitive engagement leads to deeper processing, which facilitates encoding and subsequently better retrieval.”
The big question in my mind now is this: Does this apply to handwriting as well? That is, (for instance) if a teacher’s penmanship is ugly, will her students learn more? An interesting thought, isn’t it? Of course let’s not confuse ugly handwriting with ugly teachers. They don’t usually correspond, although they also may.
Image credit: guingel.livejournal.com
If the “ugly font” phenomenon applies to handwriting as well, does it also follow that a dudette with ugly henwriting — I mean handwriting — is smarter than the broad with more sophisticated cursive skills? If this proves to be true I won’t be surprised if all of a sudden a lot of people start to scribble like doctors do.
BTW, please remind me to change the font in my next blog font to Wingdings. That should make you, my readers, very smart fellows.
Click here to read more about this very thought provoking research.
