A Preliminary Study of Children’s Reading

This study examined passages containing the fonts, Times New Roman, Courier New, Comic Sans MS, and Arial at 12and 14-point sizes for differences in perceptions of ease of reading, attractiveness, desire to be used in schoolbooks, as well as general font preference when read by children. A significant main effect of font type was found in that Comic Sans MS was perceived as being the easiest to read, most attractive, and was the most desired to be used in schoolbooks. A marginal effect of font size, favoring the 14-point size was found for schoolbook preference. The 12-point Comic Sans MS was the most preferred font type. INTRODUCTION Many children today are reading large amounts of text on computer screens. In fact, currently there is a drive to supplement or even replace some traditional pen and paper lectures and tests with computer-based ones. However, to date there has been very little research specific to a younger population investigating preferences for different types and sizes of fonts for reading online. This study sought to address this need by examining four types of fonts at 12and 14-point sizes in order to help determine the font combination that is perceived as most readable on computer screens and most preferred by children. Participants Twelve participants (5 males, 7 females) volunteered for this study. They ranged in age from 9 to 11 years old and attended 4 and 5 grade. All participants had 20/20 or 20/20 corrected vision. Most participants (91%) had at least some experience reading text on computer screens. Font Type/Size Combinations This study examined fonts that are commonly seen in children’s text. To do this, we used the serif fonts, Times New Roman (Times) and Courier New (Courier), as well as the sans serif fonts, Arial and Comic Sans MS (Comic). Times and Arial are very common fonts for their respective font type. Courier is a common non-proportional font, whereas Comic has become a popular font for child-related reading material. The different font types and sizes are shown below in Table 1. Table 1. 12and 14-point serif and sans serif fonts studied 12-point size 14-point size Times New Roman Times New Roman Courier New Courier New Arial Arial Comic Sans MS Comic Sans MS