Path: utzoo!mnetor!uunet!lll-winken!lll-tis!ames!ucsd!sdcsvax!ucsdhub!hp-sdd!hplabs!hplabsz!taylor
From: ruffwork@orstcs.cs.orst.edu (Ritchey Ruff)
Newsgroups: comp.society
Subject: Re: Paper versus Computer Monitors
Message-ID: <1823@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM>
Date: 4 Apr 88 06:34:18 GMT
Sender: taylor@hplabsz.HPL.HP.COM
Organization: Oregon State University - CS - Corvallis, Oregon
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Approved: taylor@hplabs

I don't have the paper here in front of me, but a study was done
on why paper "seems" to be the prefered media for proof reading, etc.
They found that when there were errors in text on a monochrome
display with letters that were not anti-aliased, the number of errors
found was around 50%, with paper it was 99%, and with anti-aliased
letters on monochrome it was around 95% (the exact numbers might be
off some, but are in the right ballpark).  

Of course the big question is why?  

Is it because our vision system works better with "smooth" lettering 
(no jaggies), or because our vision system is used to smooth letters 
(it's we've trained our eyes to see, so they work best with smoothed 
lettering)?

Ritchey Ruff