The effects of subpixel addressing on users' performance and preferences during reading-related tasks

Abstract

Subpixel addressing is a font-rendering technology that triples the apparent horizontal resolution of liquid crystal displays. Four experiments measured the effects of subpixel addressing (Microsoft's ClearType) relative to standard (aliased) font-rendering techniques. Participants preferred, and gave higher readability ratings to, text that had been rendered using subpixel addressing. Subpixel addressing also significantly improved the accuracy of lexical decisions and the accuracy and speed of sentence comprehension. Subpixel addressing did not affect word-naming performance or reading speed during pleasure reading. Taken together, these findings suggest that subpixel addressing provides substantial benefits to users while adding no costs to display hardware.