Best Font for Online Reading: No Single Answer
Study.
The authors note that there are 3 types of reading, of which they only studied one:
Glanceable reading of a few words, as found in notifications and on tiny screens like smartwatches “Interlude” reading: reading of short passages of prose like the ones used in the study and found on most websites Long-form reading, for example reading of a book
The three main metrics collected were:
Subjective user preference: which font did each person like the best? Reading speed in words per minute (WPM) Comprehension score: percent of questions answered correctly after the user finished reading a passage
However, this last metric was not very interesting, as the score was very close to 90% in all conditions. High comprehension indicates that (a) the content was easy relative to the users’ reading skills, and (b) people read the texts carefully. The first of these findings is not always true for web content, and the second is rarely true for web users.