# How We Read  ## Metadata - Author: [[Jason Santa Maria]] - Full Title: How We Read - Category: #articles - Summary: insert summary - My notes: - Summary: Reading is a complex yet familiar experience shaped by our surroundings and design choices. Typography plays a crucial role in how readers interpret and engage with text. Good typography enhances readability and keeps readers engaged with the content. - URL: https://alistapart.com/article/how-we-read/ ## LLM Chats ## NotebookLM ## LLM Audio ## Highlights > Type and typography wouldn’t exist without our need to express and record information. Sure, we have other ways to do those things, like speech or imagery, but type is efficient, flexible, portable, and translatable. This is what makes typography not only an art of communication, but one of nuance and craft, because like all communication, its value falls somewhere on a spectrum between success and failure. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j23bn0r7ych9a4pqqgan64np)) > What you *see* and what you’re *experiencing* as you read these words is quite different. > As our eyes move across the text, our minds gobble up the type’s *texture*—the sum of the positive and negative spaces inside and around letters and words. We don’t linger on those spaces and details; instead, our brains do the heavy lifting of parsing the text and assembling a mental picture of what we’re reading. Our eyes see the type and our brains see Don Quixote chasing a windmill. > Or, at least, that’s what we hope. This is the ideal scenario, but it depends on our design choices. Have you ever been completely absorbed in a book and lost in the passing pages? Me too. Good writing can do that, and good typography can grease the wheels. Without getting too scientific, let’s look at the physical process of reading. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j23br3wqp8f5yt20spby2zdq)) > There have been many studies on the reading process, with only a bit of consensus. Reading acuity depends on several factors, starting with the task the reader intends to accomplish. Some studies show that we read in *word shapes*—picture a chalk outline around an entire word—while others suggest we decode things letter by letter. Most findings agree that ease of reading relies on the visual feel and *precision* of the text’s setting (how much effort it takes to discern one letterform from another), combined with the reader’s own proficiency. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j23bvw4hyvw0qg6ayfzjss03)) > Realizing that the choices we make in typefaces and typesetting have such an impact on the reader was eye-opening for me. Small things like the size and spacing of type can add up to great advantages for readers. When they don’t notice those choices, we’ve done our job. We’ve gotten out of their way and helped them get closer to the information. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j23bxewvgc2ae2yse472vvyz)) > Once we start to subconsciously recognize letters and common words, we read faster. We become more proficient at reading under similar conditions, an idea best encapsulated by type designer Zuzana Licko: “Readers read best what they read most.” > It’s not a hard and fast rule, but close. The more foreign the letterforms and information are to us, the more slowly we discern them. If we traveled back in time to the Middle Ages with a book typeset in a super-awesome sci-fi font, the folks from the past might have difficulty with it. But here in the future, we’re adept at reading that stuff, all whilst flying around on hoverboards. ([View Highlight](https://read.readwise.io/read/01j29ysjfw6wh0qvtq9fmdsqwn))