Children's Responses to Line Spacing in Early Reading Books or 'Holes to tell which line you're on'

Visible Language, 2006 by Reynolds, Linda, Walker, Sue, Duncan, Alison

ABSTRACT

This paper describes a study designed to find out whether children's reading would be affected by line spacing that is wider or narrower than the commonly used default values. The realistic, high quality test material was set using a range of four different line spacing values, and twenty-four children in Years 1 and 2 (between five and seven years old) were asked to read aloud to the researcher. Audio-tapes of the children's reading were analyzed, using miscue analysis to compare the number and kind of reading errors made on the different spacing versions. The children were also asked whether they could see any differences between the four versions, which they thought was easiest to read, which they thought was most difficult and which version they would like to take home with them. The results indicate that line spacing that was wider or narrower than the default value did not significantly affect the children's reading performance. However, three-quarters of the children did notice differences between at least the extreme versions, and there was a tendency for the more widely spaced versions to be perceived as the easiest to read and to be preferred, and for the more closely spaced versions to be perceived as the most difficult. Children who nominated the more widely spaced versions as easiest or preferred generally gave reasons related to the line spacing or to the apparent size or weight of the type; those who favored the more closely spaced versions tended to give less well defined reasons, or to cite non-existent differences in the content or length of the text.

INTRODUCTION

The typography of school reading books for beginning readers is of interest for two main reasons. First, it is important that the visual characteristics of the text should not interpose themselves between the reader and his or her ability to deal with the semantic aspects of the reading task. This is of course true for adults too, but likely to be of even greater significance for children who are learning to read. Second, it seems likely that children's responses to the visual appearance of the text may affect their motivation to read.

While publishers have tended to establish their own typographic conventions for school reading books, these conventions are inevitably based largely on what teachers consider appropriate and suitable for use in their classrooms rather than on direct observation of children's reading behavior and preferences. Yule (1988) argues that designing for sales appeal rather than user appeal can be yet another factor in making learning to read more difficult. In a survey of teachers' opinions about books for five-, six- and seven-year-olds, Raban (1984) asked 270 teachers to rank the importance of fourteen selected features. Of the typographic features investigated she found that type size and then typeface were considered to be the most important, followed by word spacing and line spacing (which were ranked as being of more or less equal importance). The issue of type size has been addressed recently by Hughes and Wilkins (2000), and in previous studies the authors have investigated serif versus sans serif typefaces and the use of infant characters (Walker and Reynolds, 2002/03), and the horizontal spacing of words and letters (Reynolds and Walker, 2004). The study described here deals with the vertical spacing between lines of text. This is variously referred to in the literature as line spacing, linefeed, inter-line space or leading. The term 'line spacing' is used throughout this paper and it refers to the baseline-to-haseline distance between successive lines of text. This distance is equal to the point size of the type, plus any additional space (or 'leading') in points that is added.

In printed materials intended for adults it is generally accepted that, for type at sizes intended for reading at a normal distance, legibility is improved by the addition of two or three points of extra space between lines (Spencer, 1969). It is argued that the additional space makes it easier to follow each line, and facilitates an accurate return sweep of the eyes to the beginning of each successive line; it may also help with word recognition, as there will be less visual interference or 'contour interaction' from lines above and below that being read (see Hughes and Wilkins, 2002, 223). The optimum amount of space needed has been shown to depend on a number of factors. Tinker (1965) reports a series of experiments involving tests of silent reading speed with adults. He found that while line spacing greater than the point size of the type conferred a significant advantage with some type sizes and line lengths, this was not always the case and too much space could be detrimental. He concluded that optimum line spacing depends on line length, type size and typeface. The greater the line length, the more important it is to add extra space between lines (though very short lines were also shown to benefit from additional space between lines). The spacing also needs to increase in proportion with the size of the type. Tinker (1965), again referring to adults, advised that for optimal sizes of type (9-, 10-, 11-, and 12-point), an interlinear space of one to four points can be added in order to increase legibility. The influence of typeface was confirmed by Becker et al (1970) who found that, according to readers' judgments of attractiveness, sans serif and italic types are likely to benefit from an additional point of line spacing as compared with roman types. The relation between line spacing and word spacing is also important. According to the principles of Gestalt psychology, there is a tendency to group elements in the visual field on the basis of their proximity (Bruce and Green, 1985). Given that the typographer's aim is to group words into lines, the space between lines must therefore be greater than the space between words. If this is not the case, distracting vertical 'rivers' of white space may be created. Hartley (1994) argues that to avoid Optical bridging' between lines, the minimum line spacing must be increased by an amount equivalent to the specified word spacing.