Keeping Your Readers' Eyes on the Screen: An EyeTracking Study Comparing Sans Serif and Serif Typefaces

An exploratory eye-tracking study was designed to compare the onscreen legibility of sans serif and serif typefaces. The typefaces selected for this study included the serif font Times New Roman and the sans serif font Arial-both originally designed for printing on paper-and the serif font Georgia and the sans serif font Verdana-both designed in recent years especially for reading onscreen. Six participants read four short news stories, each displayed in a different typeface, while their eye-movement behavior was recorded. Overall, Verdana performed best. Participants were able to read more quickly and experienced fewer regressions (backward movements) when the type was set in Verdana. They also expressed a strong preference for this font on the computer screen.