Gary J. Kipping’s research while affiliated with University of Reading and other places

Describes two experiments that explore the effect of line length and paging versus scrolling on reading from screen. Finds that long lines were read faster than short lines with no change in comprehension and that subject's judgment of reading ease did not correlate with performance. Concludes that further study is needed. (PA)

This paper briefly examines the nature of information available to people designing for the screen and proposes that applied research into factors that affect the legibility of text on screen is required. Comparisons of reading from paper and screen do not identify the optimal typographic conditions for reading from screen, and it may be more fruitful to abandon such comparisons. A series of experiments that investigate the effect of typographic layout on reading from screen are summarised. The description aims to be accessible to practitioners and therefore to provide a basis for informed design decisions. The inappropriateness of formulating simple guidelines is illustrated by the results of these experiments. Peoples' subjective views of what are the easiest layouts to read are not those read fastest.

This paper describes an experiment that tested the ease of reading specific formats that could be used for on-line publications, such as magazines. A single scrolling column with a relatively long line length, the format in which browsers frequently display web pages, was compared with a three column paged format. No differences in reading rate were found, but faster readers had better comprehension scores when reading the three column format, compared with slower readers. A single paged column, that was introduced to separate the effects of the number of columns from the method of movement (scrolled vs paged), showed that paging is faster than scrolling. In addition, with paged movement, a single wide column is read faster than three columns. This result was attributable to subjects within the age range 18–24 years. In contrast to reading performance, subjective judgements of ease of reading rated the three column format as easier to read. The results are discussed with reference to the familiarity of text formats in print and on screen and some possible differences between user's reading patterns are suggested.