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Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

sansforgetica.rmit

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Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#151

> Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read than most typefaces – and that’s by design. The 'desirable difficulty' you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing. But does the effectiveness of this hold up over time or will your brain get accustomed to the font after a while such that reading it eventually becomes no different than reading whatever…

It doesn't help you read but it does help you remember, so if you get better at reading it doesn't mean you'll forget easily ... Or at least that's what I think they claim.

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#152

I like Sans Forgetica. The idea that difficult reading and writing can help you remember something is very fresh and real to me because 𐑲 𐑿𐑟 ·𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯 𐑓𐑹 𐑨𐑤 𐑥𐑲 𐑯𐑴𐑑𐑟 𐑯 𐑑𐑨𐑕𐑒 𐑤𐑦𐑕𐑑𐑟 𐑑 𐑣𐑧𐑤𐑐 𐑥𐑰 𐑒𐑺𐑮𐑓𐑳𐑤𐑰 𐑕𐑧𐑤𐑧𐑒𐑑 𐑢𐑳𐑑 𐑑 𐑢𐑮𐑲𐑑 𐑯 𐑮𐑰𐑥𐑧𐑥𐑚𐑳𐑮. In both cases, I notice it's easier to memorize things in this fashion. Although I suppose with the ·𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯 that effect will wea…

What's that shorthand?

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#153
post #152

I like Sans Forgetica. The idea that difficult reading and writing can help you remember something is very fresh and real to me because 𐑲 𐑿𐑟 ·𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯 𐑓𐑹 𐑨𐑤 𐑥𐑲 𐑯𐑴𐑑𐑟 𐑯 𐑑𐑨𐑕𐑒 𐑤𐑦𐑕𐑑𐑟 𐑑 𐑣𐑧𐑤𐑐 𐑥𐑰 𐑒𐑺𐑮𐑓𐑳𐑤𐑰 𐑕𐑧𐑤𐑧𐑒𐑑 𐑢𐑳𐑑 𐑑 𐑢𐑮𐑲𐑑 𐑯 𐑮𐑰𐑥𐑧𐑥𐑚𐑳𐑮. In both cases, I notice it's easier to memorize things in this fashion. Although I suppose with the ·𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯 that effect will wea…

What's that shorthand?

It's Shavian (·𐑖𐑱𐑝𐑾𐑯) which was linked here a little while ago. It's a phonetic english alphabet (so it's not shorthand, but often is shorter) with pretty good font support and a unicode allocation.

The Shavian Reddit has links to a Linux keymap and more details if you'd like it. I used Memrise's Shavian course to memorize it in about a week, and I've been reading and writing ever since.

It's delightful for task and note taking right now because the extra effort of writing to it helps me remember things.

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#155
post #105

Recalling the recent "how to smell BS papers" article, this doesn't pass the grandma test. More specifically, you would imagine that if such a simple hack existed, we would be well aware of it in 500 years of printed press.

That can really change though just depending on how long we've bothered systematically studying $SUBJECT.

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#156
It looks like a pretty artistic stencil font, which is to say I don't believe it's all that much harder to read nor helps memory --- certainly I've seen a lot of text in stencil font in various places, but I don't really remember what that text was now.

Looking at paragraphs of text in it, I feel like it actually encourages me to read faster because of the missing pieces; maybe it is harder to read but that triggers "skim mode" so I pay less attention to each word.

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think it's pretty cool! Would definitely matter to me from a "what school should I go to" standpoint.

Honestly, I can't tell if you're being serious or sarcastic... Both cases sound reasonable to a degree.

Not being sarcastic, learning the extra stuff related to managing a TLD sounds interesting to me, and it sounds like this program has someone on it that likes doing cool stuff like that.

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#158

> Sans Forgetica is more difficult to read than most typefaces – and that’s by design. The 'desirable difficulty' you experience when reading information formatted in Sans Forgetica prompts your brain to engage in deeper processing. But does the effectiveness of this hold up over time or will your brain get accustomed to the font after a while such that reading it eventually becomes no different than reading whatever…

I bombed exams as a freshman because my notes were too hard to read. Learning to write legibly greatly improved my test results.

Re: Sans Forgetica, a font designed to help you remember your study notes

#160
post #123

My favorite "desirable difficulty" from cog psych is to practice recall . I recall a study with 3 groups of students: 1. read essay 4 times 2. read and take notes, study notes 3. read once, then have to write out (a few times) what can be recalled on a blank piece of paper The groups were from most to least confident in their learning but the actual success on a test for concepts (which requires recall) was opposite.…

Your method (3) is a great way to study, and it's very similar to the "Feynman Technique": https://mattyford.com/blog/2014/1/23/the-feynman-technique-m... The Feynman Technique is basically alternating between writing a description of a concept on paper from memory, and looking up whatever you couldn't remember.

It's not my method, I was recalling something I learned elsewhere. I've told lots of people about it, so I recall the points that mattered for telling people. I haven't practiced recalling the study authors and name of the study, so I can't recall that stuff.
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