Literature review

Literature review

What various smart people have said

Over the course of many years, a lot of smart people have said a lot of different things. Some of it has even been researched well.

State of the art

Geraci (tips til utforming)

Side 55

  • Reading efficiency is increased when text is double spaced (Bates, Holton, and Seyler, 1996)
  • Text displayed in all capital letters is difficult to read. Text should contain a mixture of upper and lower case characters (Bradshaw, 1998).
  • Some researchers suggest that sans serif typefaces be used for computer and projected material (because thin serifs do not generally project well) (Bradshaw, 1998). Geraci - 52
  • Results indicated a lack of satisfaction with the assigned font sizes of 10 and 12 points, however they were satisfied with font sizes of 14 and 16points. Subjects preferred the 16 point size to the other font sizes (Chen, et al., 1996).
  • Most readers are able to comprehend a wide variety of typefaces with equal ease and rapidity, they exhibit strong preferences for fonts with serifs (Harrell, 1999).
  • A good choice is to use a serif type such as Times New Roman or Georgia for body text and a sans-serif face such as Verdana or Arial for links and navigation text (Horton, 2000).
  • Limit text to approximately 65 characters per line, or a maximum of 8-10 words per line (Lee and Boling, 1999).
  • Select a typeface with a simple, clean style and use a few typefaces in any one screen or program. Most screens look best with no more than two different fonts, using different sizes and weights of each (Lee and Boling, 1999)
  • Text size should correspond with the average viewing distance. For every 8 feet in distance from the instructional text, add 1/4 inch to letter height (Oliver, 2002).
  • If possible, use fonts designed for the web such as Georgia or Verdana since they are easier to read (Skaalid, 2001).
  • In addition to proper leading, it is also recommended that you provide blank spaces between paragraphs (Torgerson, 2000).

Most of the research into screen density is founded upon the notion that users can become overwhelmed with long, continuous presentations of information. Research on “memory load” generally holds that students need to receive information in smaller, more digestible chunks, which promote the formation of concept building and associations in the learners’ minds.

PDF: Unfit for Human Consumption

Jakob Nielsen's Alertbox, July 14, 2003:

As the last quote shows, even when a PDF file has its own navigation aides, they don't typically help because they're nonstandard and based on a paper metaphor rather than hypertext navigation.

Demand for E-books in an Academic Library

Ellen Safley (2006)

Brown (2001) suggested that learners using digital text are not read- ing sequentially but are searching, scanning, selecting, cutting, and pasting in segments. Other researchers have suggested that Internet use and scanning texts online are changing how students conduct research.

The effects of reading speed and reading patterns on the under- standing of text read from screen

(Mary C. Dyson and Mark Haselgrove 2000)

The influence of reading speed and line length on the effectiveness of reading from screen

(Mary C. Dyson and Mark Haselgrove 2001)

How physical text layout affects reading from screen

(Mary C. Dyson 2004)

Further studies are needed to explore the interactions between characters per line and eye movements, scrolling movements, reading patterns and familiarity with formats.

Electronic documents enable multiple navigation routes and different ways of reading, which produce a set of research questions for reading from screen that do not have a parallel in reading print.

Guidelines

Some of these are , than they are for reading

The difference between the two are that a self-contained "ebook style" web based text could avoid linking to external sources or avoid linking alltogether

A great many of these studies focus on the non-linear way of navigating