If you want people to pay attention, use an ugly font like Comic Sans

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Tim Harford, economist and author of the book 'Messy: How To be Creative and Resilient in a Tidy-Minded World' believes that ugly fonts like Comic Sans or Monotype Corsiva help you concentrate on what you are reading.

"When you get something in these fonts – it's ugly, difficult to read, and it attracts your attention. When you have your attention, then you actually start trying to understand what it says," he told Business Insider.

Harford referred to a study run by psychologists at Princeton University where school teacher's handouts were reformatted in either easy to read or harder fonts.

"Those who got their handouts formatted in difficult, ugly fonts did better in their end of term exams across a variety of subjects."

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