May 2012
Beginner
272 pages
6h 8m
English
You’ve probably heard that words in uppercase letters are harder to read than those in mixed case or lowercase. You’ve probably even heard some kind of percentage cited, such as “between 14 and 20 percent harder.” The story goes that we read by recognizing the shapes of words and groups of words. Words in mixed-case or lowercase letters have unique shapes. Words in uppercase letters have the same shape—a rectangle of a certain size—so, in theory, they’re harder to distinguish (Figure 44.1).

Figure 44.1. The word shape theory
This explanation sounds plausible, but it’s not really ...
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