Legibility

• Legibility is the ease with which a reader can recognize individual characters in text.
• Legibility should be examined when selecting type and creating layouts for publication such as books, magazines, brochures, etc. or wherever text must be clear.

Text Type

• Legibility is the job of text type. To make text type more legible.
• Use regular or normal weight fonts. Bold and light fonts will be harder to read.
• Font size and column width are ideal size and measure is somewhere between 13px–15px font size and 50–65 characters per line.
• Make type decisions invisible don’t try to draw attention to text type as the reader should be reading and not thinking about your type decisions. The below figures shows the legibility of text.

• The below figure shows the less legibility in text.

Readability

• Readability is the ease with which a reader can recognize words, sentences, and paragraphs. Legibility is a component of readability.

Display Type

• Readability is generally the job of display type. Display type includes:
• Headings.
• Subheadings.
• Captions.
• Breakouts/pull quotes.
• Decks—a line or two of text below and expanding on the main heading.
• Understanding the reader’s self-interest—use display type to make the value of your main body of text clear to the reader.
• Keeping small display type short and brief—don’t make captions, decks, etc. several paragraphs long. It’s difficult to read smaller sized text and that text will be skipped unless it’s relatively brief.
• The below figure shows good readability in a web page.