My post today poses the question about how important the use of certain fonts, CAPS, and textual styles relate to our processing ability especially on the short term side of memory. The article I've included refers to New York City receiving federal money to replace over a quarter-million street signs within the city limits. The signs will be replaced by using lower case letters with one capital letter and therefore making it easier to read. That's right 250,000 signs, even ones in great shape, to be replaced. Why? because these street signs use ALL CAPITAL LETTERS, and in doing so create more of a hazard for motorists reading the signs to take longer in processing the information. Readability is the key element here and the idea is to reduce traffic accidents through this.
Please read the short article here = NYC to Spend $27.5 on Changing Street Signs (opens in new tab)
- Aside from the political implications, what do you think about this?
- Is it worth changing all of those signs just for readability?
_________________
Check out this graphic from despair.com.
Another reason for not using the caps lock
Woman Fired for USING ALL CAPS...
__________________
Finally, considering fonts, have you ever thought about what fonts are used most commonly and why? Many, many documents, corporations, signs, and other things use the Helvetica font. Why? It is a very plain and very clear font that is one of the easiest to read. Everything from Target to street signs uses Helvetica as part of their font choice.
The following link from Wikipedia provides some more information of vendors and commercial enterprises who use this font too.
Who uses Helvetica Font?
___________________
In all, using text is quite a deliberate choice by many as illustrated by the NYC street sign change. What is your take on this idea?
