Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83 (MC830919); site haring.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!floyd!harpo!seismo!philabs!mcvax!haring!jaap From: jaap@haring.UUCP Newsgroups: net.followup, net.text Subject: Re: Readability (and justification) Message-ID: <181@haring.UUCP> Date: Fri, 3-Feb-84 22:07:19 EST Article-I.D.: haring.181 Posted: Fri Feb 3 22:07:19 1984 Date-Received: Wed, 8-Feb-84 03:28:32 EST References: <2334@fortune.UUCP> Organization: CWI, Amsterdam Lines: 20 Apparently-To: rnews@mcvax.LOCAL Ahhhh, readability. Legibility is probably a better word. Quoting from "An essay on typography", of Gill (from the Gill sans-serif), and likely incorrect since I don't have the book by hand: ``An argument in favour of (right-) justified text is the observation that trained readers tend to scan and so read a text in a boustrophidonical manner, and are capable to read right to left as long as the text isn't too complicated. This is also true for unjustified text, as long as the differences in the length of the lines are small. Too much difference on the other hand, will disturb the smooth eye movements, and will make the text more difficult to read (or scan).'' Well, it looks like another religious discussion is popping up in this group, just like wombat's, creationists, waterbeds etc. If we have beaten this horse to death, we can start to fight about the ``advantages'' of sand-serif fonts. I suggest we move this discussion to net.text. Seems the right place for this, (waterbeds to net.rec, creationists to net.religion or /dev/null). Jaap Akkerhuis (mcvax!jaap)