READING V. TYPES.

Dominion, Volume 5, Issue 1313, 16 December 1911, Page 5

READING V. TYPES.

Tho next generation of readers (savs a writer 111 the "Manchester Guardian") will probably grow up with stronger powers of vision than their predecessors, but there are many whose eyesight touay 1$ not what it onco was" who will sympathise w-ith 'n" in last weeks 'Athenaeum," who pleads for bolder type in. tho printing of letters, ngurea, and punctuatiou. One of the things brought home to the mind of a mlective reader by the coming of lessening eyesight is how exceedingly swift a process reading comes to be. It is certain that a rapid reader does not read c\ery letter in it word, but only enough to enable him to recognise it. Moreover, lie does not concern himself with all parts of the single letter equally, but, due to the fact that of the long'letters more rise above the line than project bencaui it, and that in the letters of ordinftPiiSlz? distinctive mark is uftener at the top than at the foot, his eye runs along tho tnnof the word and to the space which divides the line he is readmg from tho line above it. It is the s.ight interruption to this shorthand me. nod of rending that constitutes "SeptuagenananV trouble, and his experiencs suggest the obstacles to bo overcome in the schoolroom, where a i A contemplate individually each letter in a word and then piece them together into the who I *. Of course, the expediency of al f ering the shapes of letters so as to malo them more easily distinguishable to children has oftou been considered, and somo of the. results of •Tnvnl and others are useful not only to Jnnsf* interested in elementary; education, but ol c o to such as are in "PentuaTnaran's" ulinM, Thus it is found that the mo«t leqiWo tetters are w, m, p, v. i, and fr fandv lerrjli'n are h» r, g, Ic, b, x, • 1, n; the least legible are a. t. i. z. c. and °. riro often confounded. All the reforms whjeb surest* nre not practicable. Thus the fact that white lef-tsrs on a h'eeJc L'rouiid are more distinct than vice versa will not lead to the manufacture of a hWk naner and the of a whHe ink. Others however, are di-T n rent. Cerinhs. for exaninlp—the email terminal strokes on capital letters—should be used nnlv with meaning - , and not as mere flourishes; areas of Vdack and white in a letter should eneh be more in a mass; the letter a should be printed like an inverted v. or liVn a small c-mital a. whilo our old friend "cronVed wlvHi. along with "round o." u«rd to be so frWHv a character, should be superseded bv tho old letter that resembled f.