That font seems quite legible actually. The letters are all quite distinct and apart from the gaps and backward-slant, follow proper typographical conventions.
I would have made the letters monospaced at least (no kerning either), and would have used base letter shapes that look much more alike (e.g., the bowls of the d, a, q, and c should be the same, because slight differences in them help you identify letters more readily, which is precisely what proper fonts do).
Also, does that university actually own their own top-level domain? Those don't come cheap do they?
Not being sarcastic, learning the extra stuff related to managing a TLD sounds interesting to me, and it sounds like this program has someone on it that likes doing cool stuff like that.
A side note: I sometimes transliterate latin text to cyrillic.
This doesn't exactly help with remembering things, but by now I have a somewhat better understanding of the cyrillic alphabet, even without being able to speak any of the languages using it, and only fleeting experience with any slavic one.
> Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read than most typefaces – and that’s by design. The 'desirable difficulty' you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing.
But does the effectiveness of this hold up over time or will your brain get accustomed to the font after a while such that reading it eventually becomes no different than reading whatever font you used to use before?
I don't think it's true that all fonts eventually approach the same level of easy readability.
Yes, you will get better at reading this font than you were at reading this font initially, but probably you still won't be able to read it as fast as you can read some other font.
This font has easily distinguishable glyphs for all letters. Some fonts make "Ill" looks like ||| and it's still possible to read most texts written in such fonts easily. Considering that it's possible to learn to read a completely different alphabet, I'm not convinced that there's anything to font legibility besides familiarity, so long as all glyphs are distinguishable.
> But does the effectiveness of this hold up over time or will your brain get accustomed to the font after a while
I would posit that this might be true if everything was in sans forgetica, but since only your notes should be in that font, then it will likely retain it's utility over time.
Is the goal that you type these notes in SF and hope the font trains you to remember? There was a scene in the video where someone just "switched" the notes to SF en-masse... seems like that'd be not so useful.
I write notes to re-explain the material in my own words and test my understanding. Then, once I'm sure I've got it right, I read the notes and use them as reference.
Writing in a normal font and then switching to Sans Forgetica to read/study the notes would be my use-case.
One trick I have learned when I started writing articles on a computer, and I am still using it, is that always change to an unfamiliar font face when proofreading.
I will try to use this font for proofreading and see how it compares to my current favorite, Luminari.
It doesn't help you read but it does help you remember, so if you get better at reading it doesn't mean you'll forget easily
... Or at least that's what I think they claim.
Me too. Taking write-only notes was one of my best study weapons in college.
Though, just think of your memory retention if you take notes by hand-drawing this font. Sure, it's time consuming, but you're never going to forget those two sentences that you got through.
Been a long time since my Latin days and there's so much nominative/genitive overlap in those words I can't figure it out. "Writings of a fat snake" or something, I don't know. Help? :-)
It's "snake oil font". littera is a letter, and I hope that the plural form means "font" or "script". But litteræ definitely means "science" as well, so that's OK.
Good question. Is oleum used for liquid fat, no matter the source, or is it confined to plant-based oils? pinguis has definite animalistic qualities. You'd think it was oleum nucis indicæ [1], not pinguis nucis indicæ, except when used in a metaphorical manner.
I provided the link to google books to the Liber fundamentorum pharmacologia only to show that oleum serpentis was actually an ancient remedy, of course the Latin of a book translated from medieval Persian might be not exactly Cicero, still it should be much better than any translation I can do.
But most probably oleum was a synonym of olive or however vegetable oil in ancient Rome, and it is entirely possible that the actual Persian medicine was the extract of some plant and only called serpentis.
On the other hand, besides the name, we don't actually know if snake oil is actually made of snake oil or snake fat or something else.
You also have to factor in reading speed. If you can remember 7% more but end up reading more than 14% slower, you are better off reading more (or rereading) with the lower 50% retention rate.
That's not entirely valid. There is SOME number where it may not be beneficial because another learning technique would be more efficient, but having to read slower isn't a problem of itself if there goal is simply "get better at retaining this information".
Also, there's a certain point where the delta is relevant enough to justify the extra effort invested (things involving safety/security for example).
I rarely re-read things, at least immediately. If it's something interesting (e.g. a link from HN), I'll bookmark it and hopefully come back to it later, but I frequently never get back to it. Something that forces me to stop skimming & forgetting would be helpful.
Doesn't "get better at retaining this information" have an inherent assumption of "in a certain amount of time"? If not, you could always just keep rereading the text until you memorize it.
Yes, but that's included in my point. Maybe the slow-reading with this font is less overall time than the number of rereads required in order to hit the same retention levels. It's also possible that reading something slower allows for greater mental association or memory building than just speed reading something 10 times.
There's a bunch of reasons why this could be either better or worse, depending on a myriad of different factors. I think it's a cool tool to have in your kit.
Not to be the usual skeptic, but "scientifically designed" doesn't really-really mean (at least to me) "designed by scientists" (which this thingy is).
I mean, nice and all, but what about some actual tests/reports of it actually being noticeably better at remembering what you have read?
The concept is very nice and interesting, but besides it:
>The science of Sans Forgetica
>Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read than most typefaces – and that’s by design. The 'desirable difficulty' you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing.
I would like to have something more than a video by the scientists that designed it.
If it wasn't a UNI backed thing, I would have thought that the video was a sales pitch for Kickstarter or similar.
I had some expectations for the .pdf inside the downloadable .zip but basically all there is in it is:
>Learn more about the science behind Sans Forgetica at
sansforgetica.rmit
I tried to find a paper or something on it, nothing (don't actually know how to search for papers, no scientist).
I checked the credits on https://mumbrella.com.au/naked-creates-font-for-rmit-which-i... where i see no psychology anything but maybe Behavioural Business Lab. Granted, this was no list of the scientists working on it, but there sure seems to be a lot of marketing and brand management involved.
I can't be sure on this one, but it seems adding science to a claim is just a good marketing practice.
Are there science news sites that add paper references or something to fact check against, to their articles?
This reminds a lot of the hype around traffic signs and the font "Clearview" being better for driving. The data collected was the legibility of old signs vs new signs but never accounted for the control of replacing the worn/faded signs with new signs using the old font, or other types of signs.
Turns out it was simply replacement of old signs, and that Clearview actually had reduced legibility in negative-contrast (black on white, instead of white on green).
I'd bet that research would show something that the benefits of this come with cons.
It seems plausible, studies have shown that students who handwrite notes retain more information than students that type notes. The reason for this is because handwriting is slower than typing, so your mind spends more time thinking about what you're writing, vs just being a stenographer that writes everything the professor says, giving no thought to whether it's important or not. I can't speak to the validity of Sans Forgetica, but on the surface it at least makes sense.
Sure it seems plausible, but from "plausible" to "scientifically" there is IMHO a huge leap.
It may make sense, and personally I hope/wish that it actually works as intended, but that's far from being OK with the font to be tagged as it is.
Even the paper mentioned in the article you linked to that should be this one (the original link in the article is to SAGE journals and I cannot access it):
> The reason for this is because handwriting is slower than typing, so your mind spends more time thinking about what you're writing
Yeah, but this is about a typeface that's intentionally harder to read, not write.
I agree with the idea that handwriting notes is more beneficial, to a degree. I prefer taking notes by hand, but once I reach a certain threshold (over 3 pages, usually) , I need to organize the notes digitally.
You are speculating without evidence. Handwriting may be more effective for memorization than typing because forming letters by hand is a more memorable act than typing, nothing to do with "choosing what's important to write". Since handwriting is so laborious, it leaves LESS time for thinking about what to write down, not more.
You can test this yourself by making a fair comparision:
* Copy entire documents by handwriting vs typing, with no regard to choosing "what's important", and test which strategy leads to better recall.
* Take notes from a lecture by handwriting vs typing, setting a goal of say 10% of the total material note-taken, choosing what's important to write down, and giving yourself as much time as needed to write or tye everything
* Similar comparisons, writing all vs writing selections, typing all vs typying selectionsl
"Since handwriting is so laborious, it leaves LESS time for thinking about what to write down, not more."
A bit in undergrad but quite a lot in grad school, I ended up stopping taking notes. I discovered I was better off engaging completely in class, and consulting the textbooks if necessary, than trying to multitask learning and taking notes. YMMV; I can easily believe there are people who had the exact opposite experience, that note taking radically improved their retention. I'm just saying that such experience is definitely not universal.
I was the same way for the most part, I'd skip taking notes unless a teacher was making a very important point that I knew I wouldn't remember or wouldn't be able to look up later. But most of the time if it was important the teacher wouldn't just say it once and never touch on it again!
It makes a lot of sense to me. You want your primary public facing site with a TLD that people know about. .edu immediately confers legitimacy by assuring the visitor that its a legitimate educational institution (I’m assuming .edu.au is the Australian equivalent).
But when it comes to sites and services students and professors would want to use, go for the TLD, (e.g.s alumni.rmit, bursar.rmit, athletics.rmit). It’s a much more pleasing (I don’t know whether rmit actually does that or not).
Man, my learning process had very little to do with reading the notes that I wrote down. I can maybe remember one or two tests where I actually read over my notes, but most of the time it was just the original writing down that seemed to help with learning.
I'm inclined to think someone behind this was having a lot of fun, and it looks nice.
If it turns out not to be a joke/hoax/psychology/social experiment, I will be sure to remember - I made a note to check back later, using this special font that aids memory.
If “more difficult to read” indeed implies “better retention”, we need a browser extension that shows a captcha on every page load that uses text phrases supplied by the user.
The mediating factor for these studies is going to be reading time. Similarly I would presume reading a mathematics text out of order will also boost recall on a test.
Err, the 'n' resembles 'η' (the greek letter eta). The 'W' looks like 'Λ' (a capital alpha with quotes). Maybe there are other confusing similarities. I wouldn't use that font for maths, if it means I end up remembering an incorrect formula.
The basic idea has to do with a concept called processing fluency. Studies have shown that the harder your brain has to work to process the information, the more likely you are to absorb it -- at least to a point.
One recent study that manipulated processing fluency using a hard-to-read font is "Fluency and the detection of misleading questions: Low processing fluency attenuates the Moses illusion," Social Cognition, 2008.
The study found that people who read information in a hard-to-read font were better at spotting a certain category of error than people who read the same information in an easy-to-read font.
(Incidentally, this study is one that I adapted for my book "Experiments for Newlyweds: 50 Amazing Science Projects You Can Perform With Your Spouse," due out in April. So if you know any couples who'd like to try it out together, it makes a great wedding gift!)
When I was a student, I used multilinguality for a similar purpose.
When I was studying from notes or a book in Spanish (my native language), I would review in English. Actually, my review consisted in presenting the contents to an invisible audience in English (yes, I've never been able to study in libraries or other places where you need to remain silent, most of my time studying consists in standing and talking...)
Conversely, when I studied from material in English, I would review it in Spanish, also by presenting to an invisible audience.
I always found this to be very effective (even before learning about the cognitive science concept you point out). Of course, it's just anecdotal evidence with sample size of 1. But it's a fun way to study anyway, it also lets you practice a foreign language, and you're more likely to not get bored and set "autopilot" on (maybe this was also a big factor why it worked for me...)
175 comments
[ 1.4 ms ] story [ 155 ms ] threadhttps://www.news.com.au/national/victoria/sans-forgetica-rmi...
https://www.theage.com.au/education/the-new-font-that-promis...
https://mumbrella.com.au/naked-creates-font-for-rmit-which-i...
I would have made the letters monospaced at least (no kerning either), and would have used base letter shapes that look much more alike (e.g., the bowls of the d, a, q, and c should be the same, because slight differences in them help you identify letters more readily, which is precisely what proper fonts do).
Also, does that university actually own their own top-level domain? Those don't come cheap do they?
A mono space version, with all the appropriate symbols, would be interesting to try out as a daily coding font.
It's about $200k.
This doesn't exactly help with remembering things, but by now I have a somewhat better understanding of the cyrillic alphabet, even without being able to speak any of the languages using it, and only fleeting experience with any slavic one.
It definitely takes away the alienness of it.
But does the effectiveness of this hold up over time or will your brain get accustomed to the font after a while such that reading it eventually becomes no different than reading whatever font you used to use before?
Yes, you will get better at reading this font than you were at reading this font initially, but probably you still won't be able to read it as fast as you can read some other font.
ƃop ʎzɐʃ ǝɥʇ ɹǝʌo sdɯnɾ xoɟ uʍoɹq ʞɔınb ǝɥʇ
I used the converter I found here: https://www.fileformat.info/convert/text/upside-down.htm
𝖀𝖓𝖎𝖈𝖔𝖉𝖊 𝖈𝖆𝖓 𝓫𝓮 𝓪𝓫𝓾𝓼𝓮𝓭 𝕚𝕟 𝕞𝕒𝕟𝕪 𝙞𝙣𝙩𝙚𝙧𝙚𝙨𝙩𝙞𝙣𝙜 𝙬𝙖𝙮𝙨
works on chrome + ubuntu though, apparently
If it needs more CPU usage maybe the reinforcement is stronger.
I'd love to see some studies on the effect to give something a little more concrete than a pretty graph.
I would posit that this might be true if everything was in sans forgetica, but since only your notes should be in that font, then it will likely retain it's utility over time.
Is the goal that you type these notes in SF and hope the font trains you to remember? There was a scene in the video where someone just "switched" the notes to SF en-masse... seems like that'd be not so useful.
Writing in a normal font and then switching to Sans Forgetica to read/study the notes would be my use-case.
I will try to use this font for proofreading and see how it compares to my current favorite, Luminari.
I always thought the use of study notes was just in writing them to stimulate memory, not actually reading them (for me at least).
Though, just think of your memory retention if you take notes by hand-drawing this font. Sure, it's time consuming, but you're never going to forget those two sentences that you got through.
> "Students remembered 57 per cent ... written in Sans Forgetica, compared to 50 per cent .... in Ariel"
7% delta retention isn't so much, is it?
Tufts University has Lewis & Short online: http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/resolveform?redirect=tru...
https://books.google.it/books?id=pdFLAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA85&lpg=PA...
Paging Reginald Foster, Father Reginald please!
[1] nux indica is the coconut
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/morph?l=pinguis&la=la&ca...
I provided the link to google books to the Liber fundamentorum pharmacologia only to show that oleum serpentis was actually an ancient remedy, of course the Latin of a book translated from medieval Persian might be not exactly Cicero, still it should be much better than any translation I can do.
But most probably oleum was a synonym of olive or however vegetable oil in ancient Rome, and it is entirely possible that the actual Persian medicine was the extract of some plant and only called serpentis.
On the other hand, besides the name, we don't actually know if snake oil is actually made of snake oil or snake fat or something else.
Also, there's a certain point where the delta is relevant enough to justify the extra effort invested (things involving safety/security for example).
There's a bunch of reasons why this could be either better or worse, depending on a myriad of different factors. I think it's a cool tool to have in your kit.
I mean, nice and all, but what about some actual tests/reports of it actually being noticeably better at remembering what you have read?
The concept is very nice and interesting, but besides it:
>The science of Sans Forgetica
>Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read than most typefaces – and that’s by design. The 'desirable difficulty' you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing.
I would like to have something more than a video by the scientists that designed it.
If it wasn't a UNI backed thing, I would have thought that the video was a sales pitch for Kickstarter or similar.
I had some expectations for the .pdf inside the downloadable .zip but basically all there is in it is:
>Learn more about the science behind Sans Forgetica at sansforgetica.rmit
I checked the credits on https://mumbrella.com.au/naked-creates-font-for-rmit-which-i... where i see no psychology anything but maybe Behavioural Business Lab. Granted, this was no list of the scientists working on it, but there sure seems to be a lot of marketing and brand management involved.
I can't be sure on this one, but it seems adding science to a claim is just a good marketing practice.
Are there science news sites that add paper references or something to fact check against, to their articles?
No idea how much better, or if the test was terrible. At least they're on the right track.
Turns out it was simply replacement of old signs, and that Clearview actually had reduced legibility in negative-contrast (black on white, instead of white on green).
I'd bet that research would show something that the benefits of this come with cons.
https://www.npr.org/2016/04/17/474525392/attention-students-...
It may make sense, and personally I hope/wish that it actually works as intended, but that's far from being OK with the font to be tagged as it is.
Even the paper mentioned in the article you linked to that should be this one (the original link in the article is to SAGE journals and I cannot access it):
https://linguistics.ucla.edu/people/hayes/Teaching/papers/Mu...
seems like proposing a theory that makes a lot of sense more than anything else.
Yeah, but this is about a typeface that's intentionally harder to read, not write.
I agree with the idea that handwriting notes is more beneficial, to a degree. I prefer taking notes by hand, but once I reach a certain threshold (over 3 pages, usually) , I need to organize the notes digitally.
You can test this yourself by making a fair comparision:
* Copy entire documents by handwriting vs typing, with no regard to choosing "what's important", and test which strategy leads to better recall.
* Take notes from a lecture by handwriting vs typing, setting a goal of say 10% of the total material note-taken, choosing what's important to write down, and giving yourself as much time as needed to write or tye everything
* Similar comparisons, writing all vs writing selections, typing all vs typying selectionsl
A bit in undergrad but quite a lot in grad school, I ended up stopping taking notes. I discovered I was better off engaging completely in class, and consulting the textbooks if necessary, than trying to multitask learning and taking notes. YMMV; I can easily believe there are people who had the exact opposite experience, that note taking radically improved their retention. I'm just saying that such experience is definitely not universal.
Interesting that the university's website is not on that TLD but rather https://rmit.edu.au
But when it comes to sites and services students and professors would want to use, go for the TLD, (e.g.s alumni.rmit, bursar.rmit, athletics.rmit). It’s a much more pleasing (I don’t know whether rmit actually does that or not).
Anyone can apply for their own gTLD. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Generic_top-level_domain
Interestingly, one of the major promoters of gTLDs is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Melbourne_IT a neighbor of RMIT
Using that student tuition fee wisely. (ICANN's website confirms this is still the initial cost + deposit, and more fees can pile on)
Maybe if the textbook was printed in this font...
What would be cool is if they conducted a larger study via the Chrome plugin.
If it turns out not to be a joke/hoax/psychology/social experiment, I will be sure to remember - I made a note to check back later, using this special font that aids memory.
Instead of simply deleting messages after a short time, Snapchat should render them in Forgetica Light, so you can't even remember them!
I fear that’s a fairly fat if, though.
One recent study that manipulated processing fluency using a hard-to-read font is "Fluency and the detection of misleading questions: Low processing fluency attenuates the Moses illusion," Social Cognition, 2008.
The study found that people who read information in a hard-to-read font were better at spotting a certain category of error than people who read the same information in an easy-to-read font.
(Incidentally, this study is one that I adapted for my book "Experiments for Newlyweds: 50 Amazing Science Projects You Can Perform With Your Spouse," due out in April. So if you know any couples who'd like to try it out together, it makes a great wedding gift!)
When I was studying from notes or a book in Spanish (my native language), I would review in English. Actually, my review consisted in presenting the contents to an invisible audience in English (yes, I've never been able to study in libraries or other places where you need to remain silent, most of my time studying consists in standing and talking...)
Conversely, when I studied from material in English, I would review it in Spanish, also by presenting to an invisible audience.
I always found this to be very effective (even before learning about the cognitive science concept you point out). Of course, it's just anecdotal evidence with sample size of 1. But it's a fun way to study anyway, it also lets you practice a foreign language, and you're more likely to not get bored and set "autopilot" on (maybe this was also a big factor why it worked for me...)