Legibility

Readability is a measure of the reading speed of text. A text with a good legibility can be read faster than a text with low legibility. The legibility is related to the design of letters, lines and area directly together (typography ) and is a dimension within the readability of a text.

Factors

Legibility is determined by several factors as the pure configuration of the characters. The measure of recognition of single characters is the recognizability. For legibility but wear factors surrounding the character to the design of the entire area in (see Macro typography).

Important factors for the legibility are:

• Font, and font size Auszeichnungsart
• Lines leading ( line spacing ), set width ( line length ) and line breaks ( block or ragged )
• Materials such as paints and surfaces such as screen, paper or other backing material.

In contrast to the readability make no substantive factors, such as text understanding at the readability. For example, one could examine the legibility of typographic design for a book series by juxtaposes passages from various books in different fonts and measures the reading speed of a group of subjects.

Serif

When selecting fonts for a document, the better recognition can be an important influencing factor.

A rule of thumb for Typography beginners says that serif fonts have better visibility than sans serif. This rule is true, however not always. For example, there are specially designed for workstations writings that have with regard to the low image resolution no serifs. Even on paper (see pressure being) are serif fonts do not always have the advantage. For readability, some fonts without serifs cut very well ( for example, Gill Sans ), while some serif fonts jewelry not for a continuous text ( cf. body type ) are designed.

Justify and ragged

When reading a print text, the eye wanders not uniform but in jumps ( saccades ). These do not take each word by word, but as far as a sequence of letters is to be processed at once.

The simulation shows about how and how fast to follow the individual eye fixations on each other when no recesses are necessary for understanding the text, to correct any read errors. The blurred text corresponds to the peripheral perception. The line has an influence both on the case, to read the individual words as well as the jumping to the next line.

The block set ensures a rather undisturbed, liquid read. The particular advantage of the block set in the multi- column set with a short line length is that the eye for the line change must always perform the same movement. A disadvantage, however, arises when increasingly hyphenation must be used.

The ragged makes reading through his consistent word spacing and less word division, but complicated by unequal eye movement during line changes.

Since the control of eye movements is beyond the consciousness when reading, the legibility depends primarily on the reading habits of the reader.

Central axis set as well as right-justified ragged right are for this reason not suitable for fluent reading longer texts, but can be used for the intentional influence of attention.