Proof that you should pick a legible typeface

Picking a legible typeface is just plain common sense, right? If you want a client to earnestly read, word for word, a two-page cover letter, then you’re going to make sure that the chosen typeface is getting out of the way, doing nothing to impair your client’s ability to grasp your finely honed pitch.

While common sense has always told me that the wrong typeface will do nothing good for your reader, it was only recently that I encountered evidence that the typeface is truly important.

Hyunjin Song and Norbert Schwarz conducted a neat little study to demonstrate that the legibility of fonts is likely to have an impact on how a reader estimates the difficulty of a task. In their words: “If it’s hard to read, it’s hard to do.”

Song and Schwarz conducted three studies to arrive at this conclusion. Each study asked participants to estimate the time it would take to complete a task—an exercise route in one study and a cooking recipe in the two others—based on a set of instructions provided.

In each study, the participants were broken into two groups, with one receiving the instructions in an easy-to-read typeface (Arial) and the other group in a difficult-to-read typeface (Brush and Mistral). You can guess what happened:

As predicted, [students in Study 1] estimated that the exercise would take less time and feel ‘‘quicker’’ and more fluent when the font was easy to read than when the font was difficult to read. Accordingly, they reported a higher willingness to make the exercise part of their daily routine when it was described in an easy-to-read font than when it was described in a difficult-to-read font.

Obviously, this observation doesn’t map perfectly onto the goals of most writing. As Song and Schwarz point out, the main takeaway is for anyone publishing a set of instructions or directions—make sure you are using a legible typeface otherwise your reader may perceive the task more difficult and be less willing to complete it than they otherwise would be if say, you’d opted to avoid Papyrus.

But I think there’s implications outside of instruction-writing. With a little extension of meaning, I think there’s a straightforward extension from “difficult” to “difficult-to-work-with.” Don’t want to scare your potential client away with subconscious cues given off by your choice in typeface? Best to choose a legible one.