Improve Your Reading Comprehension With These New Google Doc Fonts
When you write papers, remember that it can be difficult for your readers to understand what you have printed – an issue that affects up to 70 percent of the general population. You are a good writer; it could be your choice of font.
Google Docs now supports the Lexend font family, developed by Thomas Jokin and educational therapist Bonnie Shaver-Troop, designed to address fluency (speed, accuracy, and expression) issues with fonts with improved shapes, sizes, and spacing. …
While your readers will benefit most when you choose the version of the font that suits their reading speed, you will need to pass a ” fluency test ” to optimize, switching to Lexend is still a great option if you’re trying to make your document easier to view for audiences. … With seven different Lexend fonts to choose from, this is a good choice for parents looking to give their kids the ultimate boost in reading comprehension.
As for what it looks like in real life, here is a regular Google doc using the default Arial font:
And here’s what the same document looks like using the heaviest Lexend font:
The seven Lexend fonts you can choose from all come in different configurations and can add a lot of extra space to your document – for understanding – depending on your reader’s needs.
To install new Lexend fonts, click the font drop-down menu in Google Docs, click Additional Fonts, locate the Lexend fonts and select each one you want to install. You will get a small preview of what the fonts might look like:
If you are interested in learning more about the Razor-TROUP research that led to the creation of Lexend, I recommend checking out this white paper that goes into more detail on his work with reading skills. Jocken, who created the Lexend font family with Shaver-Troup, also gave a recent interview worth reading on Medium :
“… The education system is built on the assumption that students learn to read before the 3rd grade. From this point on, reading is expected to be learned, and reading is now a learning aid. But what happens if the student does not acquire this reading skill? They are left to fend for themselves or are classified as developmentally disabled because they find it difficult to read. There is a confluence of reading and intelligence because the field of education does not understand this influence of the material conditions of typography on reading and comprehension. “