Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site dciem.UUCP Path: utzoo!dciem!mmt From: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) Newsgroups: net.cog-eng Subject: Re: right justification (correction) Message-ID: <1579@dciem.UUCP> Date: Wed, 19-Jun-85 09:29:28 EDT Article-I.D.: dciem.1579 Posted: Wed Jun 19 09:29:28 1985 Date-Received: Wed, 19-Jun-85 13:25:02 EDT References: <556@hou2b.UUCP> Reply-To: mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) Organization: D.C.I.E.M., Toronto, Canada Lines: 40 Summary: >> i took a psycholinguistics course once and the professor did an interesting >> experiment with us once. we read some text that had been right justified >> using some algorithm that put the necessary spaces between the words >> uniformly and an algorithm that grouped phrases together and put spaces >> uniformly around phrases. it turned out that our reading speed and >> comprehension was significantly greater (in the statistical sense) when >> the phrases were grouped together. this makes sense but its nice to >> see that common sense can be used for practical applications. >> >> danny chen >> ihnp4!hou2b!dwc >I think it would be interesting if books were typeset using a method >similar to the one you suggest. I am almost finished writing a booklet >for a speed reading course, and I tried to use something similar to >grouping the words in phrases on a line. > >It is actually two lines at but it is difficult like >possible to read the same time, to organize the text this. > >Anyone else think this is a better way to read? Or is anyone >interested in a free booklet on reading and study skills? (It isn't >quite done, but will be before June 30th.) > > Brian Reilly Both these typographical tricks have been suggested, the first by North and Jenkins (J.Applied Psychol., 1951, 35, 225-228), the second by Andrews (Tex. Outlook, 1949, 33, 20-21). They and a couple of other phrase-based typographies were studied by Coleman and Taylor (my wife, not me) (J. Applied Psychology, 1961, 45, 262-267). They found that in reading passages, conventional typography was faster but not significantly better in comprehension. But in a tachistoscope (rapid flash presentation) both the styles suggested in the Chen and Reilly notes (spaced and square-span) were better than conventional. They suggest that if people were trained to read these typographies, they might have significant advantages. -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmt