Headlines set in Times New Roman upper and lower case have a 92% comprehension rate. However, headlines in sans serif type, all caps cause a 59% drop in comprehension rate. (By the way, if you set your headline in all caps, in pretty much any type, you’re going to cause a fair bit of readability problems (See example below)
Example 1: See how the upper-lower case is just so much easier to read than all caps?
And here’s another example: Reverse type, such as white lettering on a black background, has 0% good comprehension. Zero as in nada. Ink colors, such as bright red on a white background, aren’t much better at 10% good comprehension. (Is that why they stopped having blackboards? 
)
Una mas example: 80% of readers will look at a vertical shape or graphic before they’ll look at a horizontal one.
So hey, if you’re trying to attract, would you or would you not pay attention to the above facts?
And do you agree that this information, which no doubt was written for the print media, applies to the Internet? Or not? And why?
(Info courtesy: Marketingsherpa, who in turn got it from the Newspaper Ad Bureau of Australia, who printed this information in 1984–that’s like the last century!)
5 responses so far ↓
1 Peter // Apr 4, 2007 at 2:54 am
Is the grammatical error in the headline part of the attention grabbing?
Does your text detract?
2 Julie // Apr 4, 2007 at 2:37 pm
Why then do you use sans serif fonts? It’s because they are much easier to read on the web!
3 Sean D'Souza // Apr 4, 2007 at 2:58 pm
Well, it wasn’t meant to be part of the attention-grab, but amazingly it does prove a point, doesn’t it? That the error did cause a burr in your brain.
I wish I’d made the ‘error’ on purpose
but the truth is I didn’t. But it proved a point all the same, so I’ll leave the error in place.
4 Sean D'Souza // Apr 4, 2007 at 3:00 pm
Serif fonts are indeed easier to read on the web. And I’m not sure why. Probably it’s what we’ve been exposed to for so long. I’ve changed to serif online, and in many cases had clients who want it to go back to sans-serif. Now the interesting part, is that they read it in sans-serif, but as soon as they print it, they prefer serif.
Ah, what a strange world we live in. And luckily that problem can be solved with technology.
5 Gabor Wolf // Apr 10, 2007 at 7:58 am
Re: negative type
Can I disagree? Reverse type works very well if you use it for the headline only, but the rest of the text is “normal.”
Also: reverse type is practically a must for powerpoint slides, so that when you project it on the wall, the background doesn’t “overshine” the text.
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