Experiments with Unjustified Text

Abstract

Three separate experiments are described in which various settings of unjustified text are compared: 1) passages with line endings determined by syntactic considerations were compared with passages set in a standard unjustified form; 2) passages with approximately one-third of the lines ending with hyphenated formats were compared with the same standards; 3) unjustified double-column formats of different widths were compared with each other. No significant differences in reading speed were found in any of the three experiments, although a significant sex difference was found in Experiment 3 when a scanning method was used. No significant differences were found in comprehension scores. Attitudes expressed by students in Experiments 1 and 3 tended to favor the shorter lines with more uneven endings.