Make It Big! The Effect of Font Size and Line Spacing on Online Readability

Eye-tracking study of Wikipedia reading at 10–26-point font sizes and 0.8–1.8 line spacing.

Rello et al. (2016)Conferencedoi:10.1145/2858036.2858204

Citation

Rello, L., Pielot, M., & Marcos, M.-C. (2016). Make It Big! The Effect of Font Size and Line Spacing on Online Readability. Proceedings of the 2016 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems, 3637–3648.

Method

Eye-tracking experiment involving 104 participants.

Claims used

Readability increased significantly with font size.
Comprehension improved at sizes 18 and 26; long-form websites should use font sizes of 18 or more.

Limitations: One typeface (Arial) and one website (Wikipedia).

Extracted principles

Reading text should be at least 18 pxNot tested
Long-form text that users need to understand should use a font size of 18 px or larger.

Typography