Preferences for Capital Letters of the Alphabet

The relationship between preferences for capital letters and the lineal extent of the letters (i.e., the sum of the lengths of the lines constituting them) was investigated in three complete paired-comparisons experiments. In Experiment 1, letter pairs were presented on a computer display to 96 university undergraduates who were instructed to select as quickly as possible the more attractive letter of each pair. Results showed that 71% of the variance of preferences was explained by a nonlinear function of lineal extent and that there was a consistent increase in the speed of judgment as the absolute difference in lineal extent between letters increased. Experiment 2 showed that the conclusions of Experiment 1 are generalizable to another letter font. In Experiment 3, 40 undergraduates were asked to indicate the more complex letter of each letter pair, and letter preferences covaried more strongly with the lineal extent of the letters (r = .76) than with the judged complexity of the letters (r = .51); also, about 50% of the variance of judged complexity was explained by lineal extent. The results suggested that preferences for letters reflect perceptual processes of considerable generality.