Questions tagged [readability]
The ease in which text can be understood (based on content, not formatting). Readability is not to be confused with legibility, which is the ease with which text can be read (based on formatting, not content).
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Displaying an input field for building lengthy equations
In the application I am designing, there is a requirement to allow the user to build an equation by hitting buttons, depicting operators and variables. This equation builder must be displayed within a ...
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Reasoning for highlighting a sentence in the middle of an article
I noticed a trend in many news websites where a sentence from the article is duplicated and highlighted somewhere else on the page, for example:
Personally, while I think it is visually pleasing as ...
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Museo Sans readability for desktop
Is there a way to measure readability for desktop? We are currently using Museo Sans 14px for body text and are wondering if increasing it to 16px would help pages being read more easily? Is there any ...
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Should I use a single or double space after a period?
In a paragraph of multiple sentences, should there be one or two spaces after each sentence's period for readability?
The paragraph is typed in Arial font. It is size 11 font. The monitor it is being ...
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Is it better for readability for links where link text equals document title to both be in title case, or both be in the usual capitalization?
To pick one example of a class of links I'm considering changing, https://CJSHayward.com/library/ has a link text of "Ajax Without JavaScript or Client-Side Scripting". The link points to https://...
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Why are messages on the road printed in reverse?
After reading this question, something occurred to me that I've always wondered - but never thought to ask.
Why are road messages/signs printed in reverse?
(source https://xkcd.com/781/)
Anytime I ...
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How to display a large quantity of (read-only) fields?
I have a page in a site I'm working on that requires we show the user a large amount of field information when the user requests it. This is an account information page, so will list their personal ...
JonW♦
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Why are news sites articles one big block of text instead of broken down with subheaders?
I have noticed something about sites like cnn, reuters, cbsnews etc. All of these have long blocks of text. They don't try to break it up with sub-headers even visually.
http://blogs.reuters.com/...
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How to style table headers?
Default styling in popular CSS framework such as Bootstrap styles headers with title case and bold text.
Question
Is there any proof to sustains this choices as it makes the headers more salient ...
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Displaying text on camera feed
I am developing a iOS app, for which the main screen is used to scan a QR code. I want the camera to cover the screen, and at the same time display several text elements.
My main strategy so far has ...
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Why show the reading time for an editorial article?
I noticed that while reading on medium.com every article has a suggested reading length.
Reasons this might be good UX include:
It adds relevance/timeliness (just as we list author/date of ...
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How long should a feature tooltip be displayed before fade-out?
I have a tooltip with 5 words like "Try out some custom options" in my application.
My goal is to get people to interact more with options. Is there any basis to calculate how long to leave that ...
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The Ideal Typographic Measure
If you read a lot about typography, you probably have read that the ideal measure (also called line length) that is recommended is between 45-75 characters (somewhere around 2-3 alphabets) including ...
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Readability of overlaid text on images
Text on images seems to be very popular these days, and it does look nice. However, it can be hard to control the legibility of the text. I have darkened the background, and added text-shadow, and it ...
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Ideal breaks for long numbers?
Is there any rules-of-thumb or actual research on how to make long numbers more legible?
We are dealing with 14 digit numbers:
12345678912345
This can be hard to read back over the phone as it's ...
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Reading continuous vs interrupted text mobile on IM
after an argument with my wife where I missed to notice to buy the milk out of a short message she sent me, the following question came to mind.
Reading an interrupted message (where each line of ...
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What is the latest research on Serif vs. Sans Serif fonts for readability and retention esp. for those with vision issues [duplicate]
I've been told by someone who worked with a researcher that Sans Serif fonts have lots of ambiguity in things like i, 1, l and this causes the eye to need to back and forth (more, presumably than the ...
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What is the most dyslexia friendly colour combination
Following on from this question I asked a while ago:
What is the most dyslexia friendly font?
I'd like now to know whether there are any colour combinations (or sets of colour combinations from ...
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Should UTC timestamps, such as those in Stack Exchange hover-texts, include day of the week?
There is a proposal on Meta Stack Exchange to add the day of the week to the hover-texts for timestamps on Stack Exchange, which currently show a raw UTC timestamp, of the form YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SSZ, ...
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Can text shadow enhance readability?
CSS font shadows are often used to help make text stand out (or in, or colorful, or many other fancy things.) I'm wondering if it can be used to aid readability.
I know finding the right amount of ...
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How easy to read are small caps vs lower case?
I'm well aware that text in ALL CAPITALS is harder to read than text in lower case or mixed case, for whatever reason.
But what about Sᴍᴀʟʟ Cᴀᴘs? With a bit of Googling I can't find any references ...
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Is it more usable to display information in a table-like display?
I am trying to display information about the last time a remark has been changed.
For this I have to display the Author, the region, the date and time. This information will appear in a tooltip on ...
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For a wall of text, is a lot of columns or one long column better? [closed]
I'm designing a website, and it's probably going to have some long walls of text because it'll be an info site. I have two design ideas that would make it easier to read, but I can't decide.
Both ...
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When is it appropriate to publish ebooks vs. PDF?
Our company has a series of printed publications that need to be added to our website. These publications are strictly informative in nature - no marketing, no advertising, no product features or help....
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Is it a good practise to put Ellipsis on H1
I'm designing a blog with big typography, and was wondering, since I couldn't find a thing on the web about that, if it's a good practice to shorten long titles with Ellipsis. It seems logical that it ...
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Spice up UI with Black Text on White Background
I've got a smaller banner ui (think 300 x 300px) which currently has solid black text on a white background. The text corresponds to new article titles, so it's really hard to place color on them that ...
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What is the reason for small, lightly coloured text?
We are all familiar with the concept of fine print for text that is to be discouraged from being read. However, lately I've been finding many websites whose main content is in tiny, lightly-coloured ...
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Most readable standard web typeface
Are there any recommendations/studies on text readability comparisons among the standard web typefaces? The conventional wisdom for serif vs. sans-serif is that serif is better for readability (which ...
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How best to display truncated links?
I'm working on a Q&A platform, and I was wondering.
Within My Account you can check your questions, answers and comments such as
[Your answer]
Date: [XX-XX-XX] Number of answers:[XX]
...
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How can redicle technology speed up reading up to five times or more?
I’m usually a slow reader, and it takes me 40 effective hours to shoot through a standard size book. My colleague gave me a tip to read books using redicle technology developed by Spritzinc (where you ...
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How can I determine how large of a font size and how wide of a container to use?
Usually I just choose this spontaneously and without much thought, but I have a feeling that's not the best idea: How can I size my font and its container for an optimal reading experience to my users?...
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Should we use hash tags (with a #) in content titles when that content is often shared on Twitter?
On our website, we have a widget to share our articles on Twitter. Our marketing expert recently explained that when we write the article titles, we should include hash tags in them so they get ...
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Currency formatting for transactions in another country's currency
This is a really simple question, but the answer is stumping me: How do you format another country's currency correctly?
Specifically, this answer, quoting from Wikipedia, has a great survey of how ...
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Does the Oxford Comma increase readability?
There are many puns online where not having the Oxford comma (Serial comma) can be interpreted as something other than intended, such as the infamous Sky News notification:
It’s hilarious, I know, ...
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Is a colour contrast compliant if it passes WCAG but fails the earlier W3C test used on Snook.ca?
There are some colour contrasts that, when checked using a tool like snook.ca, give results like this (testing #003354 and #00D5BD):
According to every one of the newer WCAG criteria, this passes.
...
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Idea to enhance the UX and the legibility of an internship report
I am in the last month of my last internship of my IT studies. And as in the five last years, I have to write an internship report (that almost nobody will ever read). The last one. And to give a ...
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Website Layout - different background colour sections with full width
Recently I have seen a lot of new websites have been redesigned that each paragraph or section have different background colour with full width.
For example: http://theme-fusion.com/avada/
What is ...
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Hyphens or en dashes—which are more readable when used in number ranges (for North American web users)?
Is there evidence to show that number ranges are more readable using hyphens or en dashes (on digital screens for North American web users)?
Wikipedia notes that, according to your style choice, you ...
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Music Duration counter view
I 'm working on a android application, this app may list your songs.
so the developers put the default counter as singular digit like ""0:4:0 ""
is it better to display it as a double digit format ...
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Where to place the Y axis label
I would like to improve the readability of the label on charts.
At the moment there look like this
download bmml source – Wireframes created with Balsamiq Mockups
What is the best placement ...
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Basic color scheme for great readability [closed]
Are there any good recommendations for web site color scheme that provide good readability
e.g.
body text color (body)
main heading color (h1)
sub heading color(h2, h3 etc)
background color
border ...
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Font size for e-commerce
Recently during a usability tests almost all of our customers complained about the small font size on our website.
We use:
26px for headlines
13px, bold, for navigation, product names, etc.
11px ...
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Driving users attention through opacity masks (reading rhythm)
I was reading this handy answer about Light on dark vs. dark on light: which is better for attention span? in the Graphic Design SE site and while reading the most voted answer I discovered that my ...
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Faces within text. Usability issue?
Many blog posts display their authors portrait within or next to their text. I suppose the idea behind this is to let the user feel the author is talking to her or to personalize the environment when ...
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Should I use pagination for longreads?
I'm working on a website redesign where a lot pages have long content (economical analysis) that the user comes to read.
They spend between 5 and 10 minutes on those pages
I was wondering I should ...
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How to optimally place time, temperature and icons in a grid?
I am coding a personal dashboard which includes, among others, weather forecast. I have a hard time optimizing the structure of the weather forecast. The constraint I have is that the time, ...
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Probabilities: Fractional Odds, Decimal Odds or Percentages?
There are at least 3 ways to express the probability of an event occurring:
fractional odds, e.g. '5-to-2' or '5/2' or '5:2',
decimal odds, e.g. '2.5', and
percentages, e.g. '29%'.
In the UK, it is ...
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What is considered optimal word spacing, letter spacing, characters per inch etc. for best readability?
What is considered optimal word spacing, letter spacing, characters per inch etc. for best readability?
Are there studies with results that anybody can cite?
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How to deal with extra space
I'm developing a web application that already use a responsive design(bootstrap) and play well within any small resolution. But that's common that nowadays desktop screens go up to 1920px wide, and ...
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Is there any science way to find out the suitable contrast for text and background colour?
Here is the four text with different level of grey:
As you can see, the first line is very difficult to read, and the last one is the best to read. So, is there any science number behind this ...
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