Scientists Offer New Way to Read Online Text 404
An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at a small startup called Walker Reading Technologies in Minnesota have determined that the human brain is not wired properly to read block text. They have found that our eyes view text as if they're peering through a straw. Not only does your brain see the text on the line you're reading, but it's also uploading superfluous information from the two lines above and the two lines below. This causes your brain to engage in a tug of war as it fights to filter and ignore the noise. The result is slower reading speeds and decreased comprehension. The company has developed a product that automatically re-formats text in a way that your brain can more easily comprehend."
Dr. Seuss (Score:5, Insightful)
The only downside I can see (if this gets used in print) is the waste of paper compared to current methods.
Re:Dr. Seuss (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2, Offtopic)
What might help with reading long lines - and be much simpler - is to print the alternate lines on a slightly different shaded background. But that would never catch on.
Re:Dr. Seuss (Score:5, Funny)
Then Myspace would have to be invented.
Re:Dr. Seuss (Score:4, Insightful)
Then Myspace would have to be invented.
Or Wired.
Yeah, they've gotten better, but they still spin the random color wheels every now and again.
Seuss - No, it's Code Formatting! (Score:5, Funny)
Now someone needs to invent a variant of English that requires indentation as a part of the syntax. It would be the Python of natural languages. Pyglish?
Re:Seuss - No, it's Code Formatting! (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Seuss - No, it's Code Formatting! (Score:5, Interesting)
(On the flip side, this seems to suggest that the engine needs to work entirely differently based on what language you're reading.)
I'm kind of impressed, actually, in that the engine makes any kind of text look and read like non-rhyming poetry, implying that poets figured this technique out centuries before anyone actually codified it.
Exactly! (Score:3, Insightful)
Smalltalk Rubish (Score:4, Funny)
Also, Rubish has excellent automatic garbage collection. PC Magazine was impressed when they saw a draft of The Complete Works Of John Dvorak in Rubish: a single exclamation mark in the middle center of an otherwise blank sheet of paper.
And let's not forget its other features: four levels of variable article, exception handling (one Rubishist summarized this as the "no ifs or buts" rule), advanced punctuation overloading (exclamation marks aren't just for shocks), and something I can't believe English STILL doesn't support: regular expression (say one thing, mean another. The RIAA and MPAA tried introducing this feature to English in an attempt at explaining the advantages of DRM. Not only did they fail, they sued one another for copying the other's idea.)
You're interested in learning more about Rubish, I can tell. I recommend Prattling Rubish, part of the Prattling Penmen series. The book itself is written entirely in Rubish. It's three pages long and takes most people a couple of weeks to decipher.
Re:Dr. Seuss (Score:5, Insightful)
I noticed several things that make it difficult for me to actually evaluate the difference. First each uses a different font, then the one that is supposed to be inferior ends with an incomplete sentance "A cell is" - making it gramatically inferior, if you zoom in you'll notice that the inferior sample didn't compress well in the jpg, the fonts are different sizes, and finally live link labeling the new sample as "Section 1:" provides more contextual information making it in fact more informative. While these changes are subtle each by themselves they are all time tested methods for improving text. Don't blur the text, add contextual info, complete your sentances and use standardized grammar. If this is the standard output from their software then this is truly not impressive. Aside from these issues, haven't people used collumns for a long time too?
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Dr. Seuss (Score:5, Insightful)
I'm not sure that should have been rated "funny". (Score:3, Interesting)
I'm not sure that should have been rated "funny". I actually find the block text to be easier to read than the poetry-style lines. First of all, the color interferes with my ability to keep the whole sentence together. My brain actually ends up sticking the black text together in one group, and the red text together in another group. That really slows me down.
So I started thinking about why I read block text so fast.
Let's go over that
Re:Dr. Seuss/Trying again with correct format (Score:4, Funny)
I'm not sure that should have been rated "funny". I actually find the block text to be easier to read than the poetry-style lines. First of all, the color interferes with my ability to keep the whole sentence together. My brain actually ends up sticking the black text together in one group, and the red text together in another group. That really slows me down.
So I started thinking about why I read block text so fast.
Let's go over that last "funny" post. Yeah, it was written in the style of tongue-in-cheek quips, but I'm not sure the guy was joking.
Maybe it's just me, but I don't discard the extra 'noise' that I get from reading. I read roughly every second or third line
Okay, I read approximately one phrase (line) at a time. When I'm speed reading, I don't bother to understand the words of that line until my eyes are already on the next line. It feels like I'm reading every second or third line, but I'm actually hitting every one.
build up a composite image of the paragraph, tokenise it in parallel
I then attach a significance to the phrase, and approximate what the relation of the phrases are, according to ifs, ands, and buts, as well as punctuation.
and then parse it from that.
Then I discard the lines that seem relatively unimportant, giving me a basic summary of the paragraph. From this, I fit the other sentences back in as needed. What that means, realistically speaking, is that I look at the paragraph, identify the main topic, and glance through it as needed to understand the specifics.
It's a much better fit with how the optical system works than how people tend to describe reading, and possibly why I read a lot faster than most people I know. This new system slows my reading rate a lot.
Which is what I've experienced, too.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Oh the horror.
Re:Dr. Seuss (Score:5, Interesting)
Their "revelation" about how the eyes scan a page is well known and understood in page design and layout. Also, the idea that the brain has to remove "clutter" from the surrounding words is false. The brain uses the pattern of the text above and below to help the eye scan back to the beginning of the line quickly. Also the brain interprets the surrounding text to get an earlier chance to parse what is coming. The line underneath is processed before it is consciously read, kind of a warm-up run.
Sadly I can't remember where I read this, or find a reference to it...
Re:Dr. Seuss (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Dr. Seuss (Score:5, Interesting)
No joke. For those of us aural thinkers, this is the most annoying presentation possible. You stop in the middle of a phrase. If they diced it up by phrases, it wouldn't be bad, but hearing the words "I think" followed by a pause while your eye scans down to the words "I can" in the next line.... It's worse than children's books. It is absolutely horrible for me to read those samples.
Here's a version of that paragraph rewritten in this style. Tell me if you have a harder time reading it.
No joke.
For those
of us aural thinkers,
this is
the most annoying presentation
possible.
You stop
in the middle
of a phrase.
If they
diced it up
by phrases,
it wouldn't be
bad,
but hearing the words
"I think"
followed by
a pause
while your eye
scans down
to the words
"I can"
in the next line....
It's worse
than children's books.
It is
absolutely horrible
for me
to read those samples.
Don't get me wrong, block text is hard to read, but this can be improved significantly through using fonts that are large enough to read, using a serif font to provide additional clues about letter shapes, leaving more space between lines, and limiting your paragraphs to no more than about three or four lines of text. You don't have to insult the intelligence of the reader to get a point across...
like my post
seems
to do,
but really
doesn't.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
The problem is, when it gets implemented on many websites, there will be loads of ads on either side of the text, completely distracting and ruining any advantage offered by the text format.
At least that is my fear based on my expectation that this method wouldn't work well when I read the summary. Whenever I see narrow columns of text now it's surrounded by distracting ads that make it more difficult to read.
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
No, you just did short lines with the same left margin, not the style shown in the samples.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Others think primarily visually (can you see what I mean?) Some think spatially (do you need to organize your thoughts? Seeing this from a different angle? Wrapping your mind around it?). Some think tactilely (can you feel what I'm getting at here? Getting a grip on it?). Some think kinetically (am I moving you at all? Finding common ground?) I'm sure there are others which I'm forgetting.
Any means of processing in
Re:For me, the vertical text was awful (Score:5, Interesting)
Also, if you try to read
something that
is randomly
broken
along indeterminate
points in a sentence,
then it will be
much harder to
read than if it has
been dissected into
parts that pay attention
to the natural
breaks in the language.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
== quote==
Scientists at a small startup
called Walker Reading Technologies in Minnesota
have determined that the human brain
is not wired properly
Scrolling (Score:5, Insightful)
looks good.
It breaks the text down
into phrases
like poetry.
(It looks sort of
like code.)
But, for anything
other than a short document,
you will be scrolling a long time,
baby.
Just up the css line-height to 2, and call it a day.
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2)
phrases are
so small you
can just wait
a second
or two and have
the page
autoscroll
down like
pressing the
down arrow button.
Re:Scrolling (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Scrolling (Score:4, Insightful)
Did they do such a shoddy job in the study? Why is there no link to a peer-reviewed study?
Re: (Score:3, Informative)
Did they do such a shoddy job in the study? Why is there no link to a peer-reviewed study?
They do link to an actual journal article [readingonline.org], and you'll find the same link on Live Ink's website. I don't know how respectable "ReadingOnline" is, but why are you assuming that this magazine article is the total of Live Ink's "research"? The example image you're talking was generated by Venture Beat, and not by Live Ink, and the example is only meant to give an idea of what Live Ink does.
Re: (Score:2)
I read the text
looking for rhymes!!!
Looks like a haiku.
Re:Scrolling (Score:4, Insightful)
It's actually quite annoying, and I prefer block text.
Who needs Live Ink? (Score:5, Funny)
just start typing
all our messages
just like this!
Nah, that might
be too annoying...
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Because if you didn't
type it this way
I might have
skipped over
your post.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:Who needs Live Ink? (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Who needs Live Ink? (Score:5, Informative)
Which may not be all that relevant to the comprehension of written language [thehindujobs.com].
One aspect the linked article emphasizes is that spoken language is ephemeral, whereas written language is permanent. This is a large difference, as anyone who can read a second language with relative fluency but understand the spoken form hardly at all knows.
For this and many other reasons (no one speaks like a textbook or scientific paper for a reason--writing is far more effective at conveying certain types of information) it is problematic to claim without proof that "making writing more like speech is a good thing." In some cases it is probably true. In lots of other cases it may well be false. It will depend on the nature of the information being conveyed.
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem I have with the examples are that they are really easy to read aloud, either in one's head or vocally, but very difficult to read fast without actually verbalizing the script. Some of the research notes support this view:
After several students requested to read the syntactically formatted textbooks aloud in a low voice, and were permitted to do so, a majority of students elected, at least from time to time, to read these texts aloud. Although poorer readers in the VSTF group would read aloud regularly, one-fourth of the students in the VSTF group preferred to read silently and alone. This request to read aloud never emerged from the control groups , who, by contrast, generally resisted or declined reading aloud.
In other words, the VSTF format seems to be geared toward verbalizing the sentence, either in one's head or vocally. That makes it good for 'slow' reading for facts in complext texts, like all of their tests were (college a
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Some people who have trouble reading speedily might be trying to "silently speak out" what they're reading, acting like a narrator and a listener in one, instead of just absorbing and processing the incoming stream of 2-3 lines at a time (and a line or two during the backscan, if you're into boustrophedonic reading).
For them this layout may help. For experienced readers, not so much.
Re: (Score:2)
Newspapers (Score:3, Interesting)
to some degree.
They use narrow columns when
formatting their text so
people can read it faster.
Your fovias don't have
to bounce back and forth
as much.
Low tech workaround (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course it drives anyone reading over my shoulder nuts....
Re: (Score:2)
I also select and de-select icons or lines of text (double- and triple-clicking over and over) any time that I'm not actively working on something, like if I pause to think or to look at a picture. Annoys the crap out of people
Actually, I just caught myself doing that last thing as I was proofreading my post (blasphemy, I know). Heh.
Re: (Score:2)
P.S. are you blonde, by any chance?
So that means... (Score:2)
is now
well formatted
text?
let me be the first to say (Score:2)
the
frak?
If it was really better... (Score:5, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
What a bizarre claim! You're implying that there has been no progress ever, and furthermore, there can be no progress ever!
Re: (Score:2)
Why?
If you look carefully at the text we produce today, there are actually many similar examples. Poetry regu
Re:If it was really better... (Score:4, Insightful)
Because paper costs money and space is limited. Both of these explanations are superior to yours.
"Poetry regularly follows such patterns, using them to express a certain spoken "tone" within the meter."
Poetry is not a legitimate comparison. Poetry is frequently formatted with no regard whatsoever to how easy it is to read. Often, the formatting is done to preserve tings which actually make it harder to read, on purpose.
"So why can't we transfer it to regular text? There must be an overriding reason?"
Because paper costs money and space is limited. Both of these explanations are superior to yours.
"When you introduce a solution to a problem, you need to make sure that it's easily adoptable."
No actually you don't.
"Is the new solution truly superior if the supposedly superior solution is more difficult to use than the solution it replaces?"
Did you really say this? How many things did you learn as a child that you found a better way to do later, but had to learn first? If it's difficult at first, but then becomes more efficient after learning, then yes it is better.
It seems that ultimately your only real objection is that this is "inelegant", which has caused you to manufacture other spurious objections in order to justify your dislike of this methods aesthetics.
Re: (Score:2)
Besides, poets have been doing this for 100s of years. Hopkins anyone?
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
The new cues may change the overall meaning of the text resulting in a failure to communicate.
I think this might be my only objection to the idea. I went to their site and started reading Moby Dick, and it immediately occurred to me that, by changing the formating, it changed the way I was reading the text. I think it does make reading the text easier, but it made me read the text more like poetry, and in poetry, line breaks often have a sort of significance. A line break tends to change the timing, alm
Saw something similar before (Score:3, Interesting)
I was able to read quite a bit faster, but I did not have the money to spend on it at the time. I also wasn't sure how useful it would be outside of novels.
Re: (Score:3, Funny)
Layne
Re: (Score:2)
There were these little projectors you could take with you to a corner or wherever. The film strip had words on it and there was a dial you could turn. It displayed one word at a time. You set the dial to where you could barely keep up, and as you got more comfortable at higher speeds, you turned the dial up more.
Very effective.
--
BMO
Slower reading speeds? (Score:5, Interesting)
WTF? This is how I've always done speed-reading...
Re:Slower reading speeds? (Score:5, Funny)
Re: (Score:2)
However they seem to have done a fair job of arranging the data in a manner that emulates word span.
Though, their formatting forces you into a 2-3word span, which would be frustrating if you were used to a more liberal 6 to 7 word span.
Oh well, I don't think this will go anywhere due to printing arrangement problems and broken page down keys.
Re: (Score:2)
The example image in the article is incredibly poor. Personally I could read the "before live ink" at least twice as fast (if not for our five) as the "after live ink" version, and with a higher level of comprehension. I found the coloured text in the "after" image to be confusing, since it drew my eye to those words, and they seemed to be fairly randomly selected. Indeed since colouring implies emphasis, this made t
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
I have also wired myself to read quickly for years; I probably do somewhat parallellize the processing of the sentences.
Re: (Score:2)
But then I speed read, so I'm taking in almost complete paragraphs at a time anyway - having the eye process several lines simultaneously is what enables me to do that.
This is like training wheels for readers...perhaps that's why children's books have traditionally used lots of indentation and numerous line-breaks?
Re:Slower reading speeds? (Score:4, Interesting)
Looks Like an Ad or Poster (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:2, Interesting)
Less confusing? (Score:5, Interesting)
And what's the difference if my eyes are pulling words from the previous and next sentence or the pieces of the current one? It's still giving me information that I don't need -right now- in the sentence.
And the additional poem-like formatting is also confusing, as special formatting usually -means- something.
Training myself to read this, which is only used online and only if licensed by this company, would be a hassle. And used very little.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, the verbs have the colors - I presume they do this because our brains tend to prefer actions over concepts, so by making "action" words more pronounced, we can more quickly grasp the meaning of the text.
Personally, I normally hate ideas like this (and I've tried a few, and found they all either caused massive eye stra
This study subsidized by the paper industry (Score:2)
To add insult to injury, I found the new version to look like evil dada poetry, essentially incomprehensible. The bright red bold words made my brain hurt even more.
Summary (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Summary (Score:5, Insightful)
More readable version (Score:4, Funny)
buy our product.
Wow. (Score:3, Funny)
It looks like there are quite a few Vogon-poetry hopefuls in sororities and coffeehouses to whom I owe an apology!
FAQs (Score:4, Insightful)
what we're used to (Score:2)
The example picture is also manipulated unfairly. It has colour changes in the text, which unfairly breaks the smaller blocks of text up, where as the single block is confusing because it is clearly not ment to be read in such a way. It is written like a chil
This is great... (Score:5, Funny)
Damn (Score:2)
Seriously.
I was working in the realm of CHI, and had come up with the concept that whatever you're looking at *now* is most important, so I had come up with the concept of "bifocal text windows", where you had a bifocal effect, making a part of the text larger.
Re: (Score:2)
Seriously.
Serioulsy.
Had you stuck with it you could have been on
Ode to a Filter (Score:3, Funny)
Re:Ode to a Filter (Score:5, Funny)
In a way that is easy to read.
But Slashdot has Lameness filtering
That makes it difficult indeed.
The preview button yells to me
"Use me! Use me!" I hear it shout.
Alas, my naughty fingers flee
A bit to the left; I've lost this bout.
Ever read poetry? (Score:3, Insightful)
Also, while it is true that people stumble on the text above or below a line, this effect can be helpful if you're skimming. It would be a pain to skim a ten (block paragraph) page of text in this poetry format. Not only would there be a lot more scrolling, but you can't just "image" a paragraph at a time to find the piece you're looking for. I'll admit, the modern way of formatting text may not be the best, but it is so entrained that'd be tough to change without all sorts of unintended consequences.
Biased images? Nahhh.... (Score:5, Informative)
1) The block text version is actually blurred. Compare the initial "M" from each side... there's a major difference in clarity of the image.
2) I find the "clear" version nearly impossible to read. It's a bit too randomly coloured and formatted.
3) The people who did this research are idiots.
OK, so two of the three are subjective. But I'm pretty certain about the first, and I think the third is pretty likely.
Add in the points other people have mentioned -- long scroll times, loss of standard formatting tricks to convey meaning -- and this all starts looking pretty useless to me.
Not surprising to me (Score:2)
Blocking 2 lines above and 2 below (Score:2)
Looks strangely familiar... (Score:5, Funny)
text, strangely familiar
where have I seen it?
the light bulb goes on
a haiku generator
can it truly be?
Actually I understand this (Score:2)
and what they're describing is a big part of my problem.
When I read,
I can only focus on two or three words at a time,
and I have to scan across to read a whole line.
I've always been amazed
at people who claim that they can read a whole line at a time
without scanning,
even if it's just a narrow newspaper column.
And the succession of undifferentiated lines in standard block text
makes it easy to lose one's place and have to bac
E-Paper (Score:2)
If there was a way to do this with the new digital formats then waste will not be an issue.
700 Words Per Minute (Score:4, Interesting)
In other words the effect that this process is fighting can be used to read much faster than most of us do. I can't do it for more than a few minutes but if you trained early enough or hard enough I think you could get there.
Old News (Score:2)
This is really old news in the neglected educational development communities. No surprise though given the broad and deep benign neglect for public education.
Haiku anybody? (Score:2)
But is it really efficient when reading fiction? The difference between reading fiction and reading a fact book is the flow of reading. In a fiction story the reader can make different picks and speed through some parts and concentrate on other parts without losing the story. In fact books each sentence is there for a reason. (sorry fiction-writers, that's the reality biting).
Anyway this doesn't mean that the parts that one
Finally (Score:2)
This would make an excellent teaching aid (Score:3, Interesting)
What I see in this new method of formatting is that the sentences are being being broken up very similar to how their natural spoken rhythm would flow, making it much easier for a struggling student to read aloud. It shouldn't be a crutch, but I can picture a kid being shown the entire written text, and then this version of it. Have the kid read the Live Ink version aloud into a microphone and play back the recording for him to hear how it sounds, then try to do that with the "normal" text.
This could really be something huge for education. I'm about to go talk to our special programs director about it, this looks like it could be very useful.
Sign of an Aliterate Society (Score:2)
This is not to say that our schools are doing a bad job teaching reading or I.Q.s are dropping, but fewer and fewer people take the time to really read anything longer than a magazine article or a blog.
You may bash me when ready.
Prior (literary) art (Score:2)
I seem to recall an old typographer's rule of thumb that a line of text should contain no more than 60 characters, including spaces. consequently, large folio volumes--like Gutenberg's 42-line Bible-- were printed in two columns, with hanging hyphens, and are surprisingly readable, despite the very dense Rhenish blackletter typeface.
I wonder how much of this research is language-dependent, though. In languages like German (and Latin) verbs often come at the end of a sentence. Line-breaking as shown on
The Education of T. C. Mits, 1944-prior art? (Score:2)
It was intended to popularize mathematical concepts for laymen ("the celebrated man in the street," hence T. C. Mits), and it used exactly that style of formatting. As I recall, the introduction said something along the lines of
This is not
free verse
but is simply
an way to
make re
Read line by line? That's crazy slow (Score:3, Interesting)
You shouldn't be like a beginner reading one of those children's books with 3 words a page.
Learn to read stuff chunk by chunk - keep your eyes further away from the screen if the whole column is to wide to fit - that's why newsprint is in narrow columns. Most human eyes don't have a wide angle of view especially with those crappy blind spots.
Brains definitely can do parallel processing, and read multiple lines at a time. And brains can learn and adapt. Trust me, you do not want to adapt to reading like a beginner.
Often I can spot spelling mistakes after just a glance at an entire page of print - they just stick out. And sometimes at a glance, my brain notices that there's an unusual word somewhere, and I become aware of it, but just don't know where I saw it on the page (but just a brief search and I'll find it). I think there must be editors (real ones not slashdot ones) out there who do this much better.
In this day and age where there's lots of textual data I don't think it's a good idea to teach people to read stuff in a format where they have to keep doing "next page" every second.
Life is too short.
These are basic design issues. (Score:4, Informative)
I see three glaring problems making text difficult to read, especially online.
1) Text blocks are too wide. This is the biggest problem I see. It's difficult to follow progress when you're reading 10pt text running all the way across the screen. One of the biggest things I hate about websites is when they stretch EVERYTHING including text. Open the window too wide and you get these ridiculously long lines of text. Slashdot is guilty of this.
The solution to this is to restrict the width of any copy, even if the page itself can stretch. A line of text shouldn't really be run any longer than roughly 10 long words. I'd say a good example of line width can be found in paperback novels.
2) Not enough leading. Leading is the space between lines. This alone solves the problem mentioned where a reader starts getting distracted by words above and below the sentence currently being read. Again, this is basic design and it's something completely disregarded on the internet where lines of text are crammed together.
The solution here is especially simple. Increase linespace, and I suggest being fairly liberal with spacing.
3) Poor font selection and small point size. The standard browser fonts are somewhat readable. Serif fonts, like Times New Roman, are more legible than san-serif fonts like Verdana and Arial. This is a minor problem but serif fonts are recognized more quiclky. But I'd say font selection is dependent on the overall design of the site. A bigger problem is when someone uses some wacky font that's difficult to read, although this is more of an issue in Flash where fonts can be embedded.
The bigger problem is font size. After all these years with dramatic increases in screen resolutions why are we still reading text online in 10 point? We should be at least at 12 point, and ideally 14pt or higher. There's no need to go huge, but it's time we start utilizing these screen resolutions more effectively. There's no need to cram a novel onto a single page. When a reader encounters a screen crammed with type, psychologically they're overwhelmed and less likely to actually bother reading anything. If course, with all the advertising appearing on some websites it's getting increasingly difficult to design a page that's actually easy to read.
If these scientists want to address online text legibility take a few basic typography courses.
not new (Score:4, Insightful)
In fact, childrens' book typesetters have known about this, ever since there have been childrens' books.
Now - for reading text on the web; I've noticed - particularly in ad-supported content, that there's a trend (who am I kidding? It's been the standard for over 10 years now - and before that; ad-supported print) - to condense text to make more room for ads. (which is why the text-size plugins for firefox are so great!).
Sorry, but I'm not too terribly impressed with this "study".
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)