Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site dciem.UUCP
Path: utzoo!dciem!ntt
From: ntt@dciem.UUCP (Mark Brader)
Newsgroups: net.followup
Subject: Re: Readability
Message-ID: <639@dciem.UUCP>
Date: Thu, 19-Jan-84 16:32:50 EST
Article-I.D.: dciem.639
Posted: Thu Jan 19 16:32:50 1984
Date-Received: Thu, 19-Jan-84 20:52:05 EST
References: <2298@fortune.UUCP>, <493@bbncca.ARPA>
Organization: NTT Systems Inc., Toronto, Canada
Lines: 31

bbncca!keesan (Morris Keesan) writes:
	      There was some research done on this some time ago, which was
	mentioned in the Arpanet Human-Nets Digest. Briefly, the results were
	that justifying right margins appears not to improve readability, and
	can even impair readability. Subjects tended to read as easily or more
	easily material with a ragged right margin.
	      This matches my own experience, which is that the variation in
	spacing necessary to achieve justification tends to interfere with the
	smooth flow of the eye over the content. This is especially true in
	this medium, where there is no variable sizing of spaces.

      Perhaps it is simply a variation between readers, but *I* definitely do
not find ragged-right type more readable, and the reason is that I *can't find
the paragraph breaks*.  The conventional symbol for a new paragraph is,
after all, *a line that is not justified against the right margin* followed
by an indented line.  It is true that a whole blank line between paragraphs
solves this, but that's simply too much whitespace for my taste.

      All this is much more true, for me, in typeset text rather than
fixed-char-width text such as you are now reading.  Actually, I would say that
on my own screen I find it pretty close to a toss-up.  But in typeset matter
my complaint stands.  Try it yourself.  Compare the new-style CACM (who quoted
the same research and punned that "ragged right is justified") with a newspaper
or another magazine that uses narrow columns.

      So if that's how I feel, why is *this* item ragged-right, and
with blank lines between paragraphs?  Because it seems to be the convention
for netnews, whether reasonable or not, and reading one item that doesn't
follow the convention is simply jarring.

Mark ("but I know what I like") Brader