SUBJECTIVE IMPRESSION OF THE WEIGHT OF TEXT CORRELATES WITH MEASURED L-WIDTH

An image quality survey has demonstrated that text quality in terms of its apparent weight (i.e., character broadening) is well represented bg measurement of the width of lowercase L's. The survey has shown tha t an 1-width of about 410 mu m for fonts of 12-pt Times Roman style is the preferred width for prints produced by today's copiers and printe rs. The survey uas run using two methods: (1) paired comparisons and ( 2) acceptability judgement. Both methods gave virtually identical resu lts indicating that the method of paired comparisons using a limited n umber of internal judges may be a good surrogate for otherwise extensi ve image quality surveys made in the field.