Though this may surprise you, how you read this text – be it on a laptop, a desktop or a mobile device – will influence how you receive it. For example different fonts can influence how the writing is perceived, with times new roman being seen as both angrier and funnier than Ariel. Similarly, if a font is more readable people are more likely to interpret the instructions as easy to carry out – for example, if furniture assembly instructions are given in Ariel they are seen as easier to do than if they’re presented in a san serif font (Just to clarify, ‘Serif’ means that the words have tails above and below the text, ‘sans serif’ means they don’t).
And it isn’t just the font that matters. For example research has demonstrated that when people read text in a book, they absorb more than if they read the same text on an e-reader. What that means is that you can’t just take text written for laptop reading and assume it will be just as accessible from a mobile device. You’ve got to chance things just to keep the readability the same.
Here are a few things to consider: