If you can’t read this (easily), that’s exactly what should happen.
This typeface has been named Sans Forgetica by some Jacques aficionado genius, because it’s supposed to help you not forget what you’ve read. It’s got gaps and is back-slanted so that it becomes difficult (though not impossible) to read. It’s been developed by researchers of psychology, cognitive science, and behavioural business people at RMIT University, Australia in 2018, and is freely available here.
The whole idea is based on a sizable number of experiments that explore how retention rate of information is higher if we have some kind of difficulty when acquiring it in the first place. So rather than just reading a text in a smooth highly legible font, it’s better for learning if our eyes and brain stumble a little, and are being teased just that tiny bit.
Quizzes do something similar, or difficult questions, paraphrasing a text, group work, problem-solving: all this helps students remember better and increase comprehension and interpretation of the material. That’s called ‘desirable difficulties’.
There are so many ways to use this for the class room, and I love that it goes against our modern grain of hyper smoothness, and hyper simplicity. Promises everywhere to learn a language in 30 days, and all that. Efficiency, efficiency, efficiency. But we just have to accept that some stuff is hard to get. That’s just the way it is, and it’s supposed to be like that.
It makes me think that, perhaps, we should not offer modern spelling editions of old texts, and perhaps we should not be afraid to use texts in the original blackletter, and even (shriek) secretary hand. I did change the spelling of the Tottel preface I am going to discuss with my students, but only grudgingly so. Will they really be thrown off balance because ‘words’ is spelt ‘wordes’? Or is it a (for now) unnecessary wall between them and comprehension of sense? Should we not say that, yes, universities are place that are supposed to challenge us? Maybe I should go back, and put the preface into Sans Forgetica at least.
Who knows, perhaps Wyatt would have been more successful, amorous-wise, if he had written his poems in the anti-oblivion font. But then again, we wouldn’t have much to remember and think deeply about today. This. Forgotten not yet. In any typeface.