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

While research on the issue of line spacing in relation to adult reading material has led to useful insights, it cannot be assumed that these results can be applied directly to material for beginning readers. It would seem reasonable to suppose that the same factors will operate, but to what degree? As Tinker (1968) points out, much of his work with adults involved tests of the speed of silent reading, which is of course not appropriate for beginning readers. There has been very little experimental work on line spacing in books for children who are learning to read, and the results have generally been inconclusive (Tinker, 1968). Nevertheless, Tinker argues that some level of additional space between lines is indicated for beginning readers because at that stage the return sweep of the eye from the end of one line to the beginning of the next has not been perfected, so generous line spacing 'will promote greater accuracy in doing this and thus reduce regressions of readjustment near the beginning of lines' (Tinker, 1968, 319). His recommendation for 'Grade 1' children (six- and sevenyear-olds), based on legibility findings for older children, was 14- to 18-point type in relatively short lines of up to about 22 picas (5.7in or 9.3cm), and 6 to 8 points of additional line space (Tinker 1968, 320). Yule (1988) asserted that in books of the late 1980s the line spacing was usually wide enough to prevent most children's eyes slipping from line to line in reading.

In one of the few experiments conducted with children as participants, Hartley, Burnhill and Fraser (1973) asked ten- and eleven-year-olds to read aloud stories set in different type sizes and with different line spacing, but the same line length. They found no significant differences in terms of either reading time or errors. More recently, Rosemary Sassoon has been particularly concerned with type design and children's perception (Sassoon, 1993). She reports on a study in which one-hundred children, half aged between eight and thirteen with special needs, and half eight-year-olds in mainstream education, were shown text set in five differently spaced versions (which included two different line spacings) and asked which they preferred for reading. Sassoon concluded that where spacing is concerned, presenting findings as an average or norm is not always the most useful way to describe them, as children at different levels of reading have different requirements.

Hughes and Wilkins (2000, 2002) have conducted some of the most recent work on the legibility of children's books. They investigated the effect of type size and spacing on the ability to read at a distance, in order to help with the design of text in children's 'big books' (Hughes and Wilkins, 2002). They varied both letter spacing and line spacing in relation to type size, testing the visual acuity and reading speed of two-hundred children of six to twelve years of age. They concluded that 'children's reading would benefit by increasing the font size of the text and by expanding the spacing horizontafiy and vertically' (225). However, they varied the letter spacing and line spacing in such a way that the effects of each cannot be isolated, and while their conclusion might also be valid for materials intended to be read at a normal reading distance, we cannot be certain of it.