Re: A science of typography? Comments on Wheildon's _Type &

[Emily Skarzenski <eskarzenski -at- DTTUS -dot- COM>]

     Stan Brown <stbrown -at- NACS -dot- NET> wrote:

     > I question how far Wheildon's work is applicable to tech writing.
     > Some comments I've seen on the TECHWR-L Digest claim, for instance,
     > that Wheildon proved that we should be setting technical manuals
     > justified rather than ragged right. In fact, his work does not
     > warrant such a conclusion.

     Hmm. I have not seen any posts on TECHWR-L asserting that technical
     manuals should be set in justified type. In fact, the only posts I saw
     on TECHWR-L about Wheildon's book were my own... and I never stated
     that tech manuals should be set justified. (I don't do it in my own!)

     > The types of writing that Wheildon studied differ from technical
     > writing in several ways <snip>
     > tech writing is quite often of book length; its purpose
     > is at least 95% informative; at least some parts of a given piece
     > will often be read many times; and readers typically jump into the
     > middle and expect to find what they need. This last point seems to
     > me the most important.

     Essentially, Wheildon's study looked for things that readers
     considered to be *obstacles* to reading/understanding. As Stan points
     out, readers of manuals actually require texts to be even *more*
     readable/understandable than the average person reading an article.

     So I would think that his principles might easily apply to manuals.
     After all, if a certain typographical element is an obstacle in "easy"
     reading, wouldn't it be even more an obstacle in a difficult reading
     situation?

     > we must remain wary of interpreting Wheildon's findings outside
     > their proper sphere. To take an extreme example, Wheildon's
     > principle of Reading Gravity (pages 37-51) is stated as a universal.
     > But would it be valid in Israel, where right-to-left reading is a
     > significant tradition? or in Japan, where reading is in columns?

     Yes, of course. In the comments following my summary, I mentioned that
     his sample was both small and too homogeneous (in terms of education
     level and geography). Part of what I meant was that the sample was too
     ethnically homogeneous. His study didn't name the ethnic backgrounds
     of participants, but I assume they are descended mainly from
     Australian, British, or other western cultures that use a reading
     system similar to our own.

     Of course Wheildon's study of 224 Australians can't be universalized
     to the rest of the world. I'm not even sure they can be universalized
     to anything, considering the sample size; I don't know enough about
     statistics to know what a statistically signicant sample size would be
     for a study of this kind.

     > Similar questions need to be asked about his other conclusions,
     > including his deprecation of ragged right text and headings in
     > color.

     Actually, I don't this his research on headlines conflicts with our
     situation. Most of the manuals I see printed in two or more colors use
     the color for subheads, so that the subheads stand out from the rest
     of the text.

     Wheildon's findings on colored headlines were: (p. 79)

        - 61% of readers found high chroma colors attractive, drawing their
          attention quickly to the text.

        - 47% said they then found the headings hard to read.

     As Stan pointed out earlier, our readers tend to use a "random-access"
     approach; they want to find something quickly and then close the book.
     Therefore, I would say it's more important for subheads to draw the
     reader's attention than that they be particularly easy to read
     (especially considering their short length).

     > Before we are in a position to adopt his rules, we must see studies
     > of technical writing along the same lines as his studies of
     > advertising.

     I would love to see similar studies done on the technical writing
     genre. Anyone want to tackle it?


     Emily Skarzenski
     Deloitte & Touche/ICS - Chadds Ford, PA
     eskarzenski -at- dttus -dot- com