---
name: F pattern
slug: f-pattern
category: layout
status: published
created: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
modified: 2026-08-21T00:00:00.000Z
definition: "The scanning shape eye tracking finds on text heavy pages: two
  horizontal sweeps across the top, then a vertical run down the left edge."
aliases:
  - name: F-shaped pattern
    source: nngroup
  - name: F-shaped reading pattern
    source: community
tags:
  - perception
relations:
  contrastWith:
    - z-pattern
    - layer-cake-pattern
    - spotted-pattern
    - gutenberg-diagram
  variantOf: []
  partOf: []
  seeAlso: []
implementations: []
sources:
  - title: Nielsen Norman Group
    url: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nielsen_Norman_Group
demo: inline
exhibit: false
useWhen: predicting how a text heavy page gets skimmed
---

Put an eye tracker on someone reading a dense page and the heat map comes out looking like a
capital F. A full-width sweep across the first line or two, a shorter sweep a little further
down, then a vertical drift along the left edge picking up the first word or two of each line
until something is worth stopping for. Jakob Nielsen published the finding in 2006 from
several hundred users and it has been replicated often enough since to count as a fact about
how people behave, not a theory about how they should.

The important half of the finding is usually left off. The F is not a good outcome. It is what
scanning looks like when a page has given the eye nothing better to do: no subheadings, no
lists, no bolded phrases, paragraphs that all begin the same way. Readers land, sample the
left edge, and leave. So the design response is not to arrange a layout in an F shape, which
is the standard misreading, but to break the F up by putting real entry points where the eye
is already going. The right-hand end of every line is where content goes to die.

Three habits follow from it directly. Front-load the first two or three words of headings,
links, and bullets with the words that distinguish them, because those are the only words
reliably seen: "Refund policy for damaged orders" survives the scan and "Information about
our policy on refunds" does not. Give long text visible landmarks, since a
[heading hierarchy](/heading-hierarchy), a bulleted list, and a bolded phrase each restart
the reader's attention and turn one F into several. And do not park anything unique in a
right-hand column, which is the same instinct that produced banner blindness. The pattern
mirrors under right-to-left scripts, where it is the same shape flipped, and it fades as
content becomes visual: an image grid or a card layout is scanned in a spotted, jumpy way
that no letter describes.

Its usual companion in a vocabulary list is the Z pattern, which describes a sparse page with
few elements, where the eye crosses the top, cuts diagonally down, and crosses the bottom.
The two are not rivals so much as different densities: F is what text-heavy pages get, Z is
what a landing page with four things on it gets. Both are descriptions of a starting point
rather than instructions, and the design lever in either case is
[visual hierarchy](/visual-hierarchy), which is what decides where the sweep stops.