The psychology of fonts
Any editor, designer or font enthusiast will agree how typography has more to itself than merely picking serif or sans-serif fonts. The way text is laid has a measurable impact on our mood. Well-designed layouts can help one set the mood for the text they are reading. It has a role in giving feeling and meaning to an otherwise static passage. It won’t be an understatement to make that often readers judge the credibility of an essay by the font.
Impact of a font
It is human instinct to anthropomorphise non-human entities, applying human characteristics and emotions to things that are distinctly non-human.
Taking in account the above fact, designers can manipulate psychological responses by their viewers. Therefore, application of psychology of fonts has started to become an important field of research in branding and advertising. Different fonts have proven to have flabbergasting effects on any individual.
This is primarily due to a phenomenon known as Picture Superiority Effect. Therefore, where Serif fonts have close association with feelings like stability, tradition, intellect and formality, sans serif fonts ignite feelings of progressiveness, is informal, open and friendly.
Here are a few fonts which are best for essays:
Times New Roman
It is a serif interface. Its posses a robust colour and influences European early modern and Baroque printing. It allows a tight linespacing and a relatively condensed appearance. It became popular in book printing and general publishing.
Its greatest advantage being economy of space, it is widely accepted as the best font for essays. Its readability(10point size) is 7.45 percent faster than that of verdona font and 40 characters per line and 120 percent like distance.
Calibri
It is a Sans font. It has almost the same fame as “The Times New Roman” font. It is not non- standard, easy to read, warmer and more friendly in style. It is also the default font in MS Word. It is one of the least ink-user fonts, grandview and comfortable. It is widely used by digital companies that make web pages.
Arial
Another great choice of fonts for essay writing is arial. It is the default form for Google docs because of its amazing characteristics. It has far more readability than any other font ik existence. Using less ink makes it environment friendly. It is incredibly adaptable and could be used for both setting in reports and presentations or advertisements and promotional materials. Despite its great power of readability, what serves as a detriment is its poor copy pattern.
Georgia
This serif font is much wider and larger than Times New Roman. Named after a mountainous country, its strokes are thicker and sharper. It comes out to be a clean, stylish, graceful, pleasant and lucid font. It is easy to read and is usually legible at all sizes. It is widely used in product packaging, background image and homework designs. It also succeeds in giving a traditional look.
Garamond
This font was invented as early as 1510 for it has orgins from human handwriting. It looks alluring and elegant. It comes out to be crisp, interesting, classical and luxurious. It makes the reader read long paragraphs in a shorter duration ot time. It was also used in Harry Potter books, making people call it a masterpiece. It offers readability and elegance.
Helvetica
It is used as a sans-serif type interface. It was invented by Swiss designers Max Miedinger and Eduard Hoffmann. Main advantage of this font is that it is a very “safe” font, that is in moments of unsurity, it could be a good fall-back option which would have a very little impact itself. It is primarily used by designers who are studying design.
Cambria
It is a transitional serif font. It has been designed for on-screen reading and to look good when printed in small sizes. It has even spacing and proportions which will give the essay a beautiful look. Diagonal and vertical serifs are relatively strong whereas horizontal ones intend to emphasize on stroke endings.
Conclusion
Essay writing could be a rather strenuous task. At times, the writer might get so much engrossed in the content that might dismiss the importance of presentation. It is important to note that, presentation of the essay should be such that it must look attractive to lure the reader’s attention and retain it during the process. Fonts, that is a text or character that is displayed in a particular style. Thus, right font and size is a key element in writing an essay.
Though numerous fonts can be found for writing when writing an essay, the above mentioned ones are best suited for the purpose. However, one needs to keep in mind that two similar-looking fonts must not be used in continuation otherwise it would be difficult to differentiate.
Apart from font types, another point of focus is, font size. Though digital systems provide different font sizes, it is wise to be conscious enough in selecting it as the text should not be too big or too small; MS Word has fixed 12 as the default font size. Accordingly, one can bring a variation by choosing the heading to be slightly larger in font size such as selecting 14 or 16 for the heading.
A presentable essay with good content are the only two requirements of a good essay. It leaves a good impression Ok the reader at the end of the day.
By: Anusha Srivastava
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