Started by Noor Rahman (@noor_reads) ·
Sans Forgetica, the font that was supposed to help you remember
5 sources · 29 min down the hole
How I got here
- Started with
- Does Sans Forgetica actually help you remember things?
- Ended at
- OpenDyslexic
The Trail
- “sans forgetica font memory” (google.com)
RMIT, 2018. back-slanted letters with gaps cut out of them
- Desirable difficulty (en.wikipedia.org)
- Processing fluency (en.wikipedia.org)
- “sans forgetica replication 2020 no memory benefit” (google.com)
- OpenDyslexic (en.wikipedia.org)
What I came away with
The idea was that slightly harder-to-read text makes you process it more deeply. A 2020 set of experiments found no memory benefit at all, and the 'hard-to-read fonts help learning' idea it was based on hasn't held up well in replications. Fonts marketed for dyslexia have a similar problem: lots of enthusiasm, little evidence they beat an ordinary clear font.
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