Report on the influence of school-books upon eyesight / British Association for the Advancement of Science.

  • British Association for the Advancement of Science.
Date:
1913
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: Report on the influence of school-books upon eyesight / British Association for the Advancement of Science. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.

    18/40 (page 16)
    Approximate uniformity in length is desirable ; but not absolute uniformity. It is doubtful whether the power of fairly rapid intelligent reading can be attained without the unconscious perform- ance of the swing from near the end of each line to near the beginning of the next. This swing may be compared with the motion of an oarsman’s body between the strokes. An occasional slight indentation in the lines helps the reader; but large ones, if frequent, hinder the acquisition of a good habit of swing. Children of eight years old should not have their reading confined to very short paragraphs, as the habit of swing has been found well established in good readers of between nine and eleven years of age. In other words, these readers made the necessary eye-movements with- out conscious effort and with great regularity. Unusual separation of letters should be avoided. For beginners, lines should not end in the middle of a word ; the whole word should be carried to the next line and not be hyphened. The admission in the table of a four-inch line for the large type is a concession intended to meet the difficulty of securing an even set of the letters in a line of shorter measure. Good margins are restful to the eye, and are well worth their slight cost. As a rule the margin at the top or ‘ head ’ of a page should be less than that at the bottom or ‘ tail ’ ; less on the inner side or ‘back’ than on the outer or ‘fore-edge.’ So many influences, including optical illusions, have to be considered in determining the proportion of margin that it is not thought desirable to propose formulae for the purpose. It should be considered a defect in a school-book if the width of fore-edge is less than half an inch, or of back-edge less than three-eighths of an inch, at any page of the book.