AN 8 EXPERIMENT SEQUENCE TO DETERMINE READING EQUALITY

An eight experiment sequence was conducted to compare the speed and re tention resulting from reading material. The text was justified in eac h of four different ways: ragged-right (unjustified); fill justified; equal-fill justified; and micro-fill justified. Retention was measured by recall and by recognition tests. For reading time, only one signif icant difference was found among the eight experiments. For retention, no statistically significant differences were found. Although our res ults are in direct contrast to those of other researchers, the consist ency of our results make suspect any claim for reading time (or retent ion) superiority of ragged-right text. These eight experiments demonst rate that all forms of justification read equally well (discounting th at micro-fill justification did have an edge in one of the five experi ments in which it competed). (C) 1998 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved