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

Of the children who chose the wide version, three mentioned the spacing (see tables III and IV). One of them commented that she only had to move her head a little bit to see the pictures, because the bottom of the text was nearer the picture than in the more closely spaced versions. Unusually, the child who chose the wide spacing on the basis of apparent type size thought that it had 'smaller writing.' Two children liked the wide spacing best because it looked 'more clear' to them, and this may be related to their perception of the space or the size of the type even if they could not explain exactly why it was clearer. One thought that the wide spacing 'is really attractive."

Reasons for choosing the normal version included comments on spacing, apparent type size and illustrations. The two children who chose the normal spacing on the basis of the apparent type size did so because they thought the writing was 'slightly bigger' or had 'big letters.' Perhaps related to overall impressions of the attractiveness of the books was the choice of the normal spacing book because of its 'funny pictures,' and because it 'looks real.' The former was a mistaken perception as all four books were open at the same double-page spread, but the latter comment is interesting. The normal spacing was the default version and perhaps more similar to the texts the child was used to reading, suggesting that some children may prefer what they are used to.

The one child who chose the close spacing claimed that it had 'more writing' and presumably saw this as an advantage. Of the live who chose the very close spacing, only one gave the spacing as a reason. The others gave less well-defined reasons such as 'ease' and 'attractiveness.'

CONCLUSIONS

The lack of significant differences in the number of miscues as a result of the four typographic arrangements tested here suggests that, with realistic reading materials used in a normal reading situation, children's reading performance is inlikely to be measured by affected by various in line spacing comparable with those used here. This is not to deny that differences might be revealed by more sensitive methods using specially constructed nonsense text (as used by Hughes and Wilkins, 200, 2002)), but our aim in this instance was to gauge the effect of line spacing on children's reading in a typical school or home situation.

While the children's reading performance was not significantly affected by the four line spacing versions, the qualitative data indicate that around three quarters of the children were sensitive to the variations in spacing even if they were unable to correctly identify the nature of the difference. Overall the children's comments suggest that line spacing comparable with our normal or wide versions is likely to be the most acceptable for the majority. Given that the normal spacing was typical of that seen in contemporary reading schemes for beginning readers, it would appear that current practice is generally appropriate but that no harm would be done by using slightly more generous spacing. However, some of the comments made by the children in this study do suggest that line spacing can be too open as well as too tight.