Understanding how people read is essential for designers, particularly important to those who create products that involve reading experience such as graphic, user interface or user experience designers, etc. Through explanations on researches of how people read and comprehend it, this essay clarifies the reading and understanding activity of humans; argues the myth of all cap paragraphs being hared to read to be unconvincing; and demonstrates how to improve your text by using the Flesch-Kincaid Readability Formula.

Overview:

Reading is the complex intellectual process of deciphering symbols in order to derive meaning, and reading comprehension is used as a measure of success for this process (Kong 2019). Designers should understand how people read in order to create the right design for the audiences as well as the right level of readability.

1. Reading is not fluid

While reading, we may believe our eyes are moving smoothly through lines and pages, which is not exactly the truth. Rayner (1998) points out our eyes when reading has quick, sharp jumps with short rests in between. Those two events are called respectively ​saccades​ and ​fixations (approximately 250 milliseconds) (Hessels et al., 2018). Rayner’s study (1998) demonstrated during these jumps, we cannot see anything or it can be said that we are “blind” but it happens so fast that we cannot tell.

Our eyes when reading has quick, sharp jumps with short rests in between. Those two events are called respectively ​saccades​ and ​fixations

In short, humans have two types of visions: central and peripheral. While central vision handles direct and focuses look, peripheral vision covers the rest of the vision field — areas that human eyes can see, but not looking directly. The reason why people are still able to read forward but not being stopped to read each individual word at a time is thanks to peripheral vision.​

Additionally, human eyes, although most of the time moves forward to read, spend 10% — 15% of the time to jump back and re-read the previous words (Rayner, 1998).

According to Goodman (1996), each saccade can cover from seven to nine letters; yet with peripheral vision, the number doubles. His study shows humans use peripheral vision to see the next word when reading (Goodman, 1996). An example of this pre-reading is singing karaoke or singers and musicians reading musical notation.

Though we preview about 15 letters at a time, only a portion of this range can be understood. (Goodman, 1996).

Humans use peripheral vision to see the next word when reading

2. People read by recognizing and anticipating words

There is a myth among typography designers or text enthusiasts: the upper case is harder to read than the lower case or mixed case.

The explanation for this conclusion is people recognize words or a group of words by the outline made around the word shape (Cattell, 1886). Mixed case or lower case has significant shapes while uppercase has similar shapes: a rectangle.

Therefore, in theory, it is harder to identify. This explanation may sound reasonable yet not absolutely correct. Larson (2018) argues from his synthesis that there is not enough evidence so far to prove that shape of a word can help us read faster or more precisely.

This model of word recognition originated from James Cattell, a psycholinguistic, in 1886; but later researches have shown that people read by recognizing and anticipating letters; then based on letters, we recognize words, as discussed above (Paap, 1984; Rayner, 1998). Therefore, although most of us do read all-caps slower, it only because we are not familiar and have not to use all-caps frequently. Most of the text we receive every day is lower case or mixed case so we are used to reading them.

The upper case being harder to read is not absolutely correct.

3. People remember based on their point of view

Kong (2019) claims not everyone who reads the same piece of text can remember exactly the same.

Anderson and Pichert (1978) carried out a study where the participants are allowed to read a story about a house with some details of that house. One group was asked to read the story as the potential buyers of the house, the other group with a perspective of a burglar (Anderson & Pichert, 1978). The information collected from what they can remember is significantly different, based on their initial point of view (Anderson & Pichert, 1978).

4. People may read but may not understand

The information remembered does not only varied from each person’s perspective but also their previous knowledge and experience. Sometimes, when you read a piece of text, you cannot comprehend or may spend more time to do. ​

Weinschenk (2011) points out new knowledge takes time to be gradually absorbed and installed in current intelligence. An example of this is sometimes, during a messaging activity, or a typo in a paragraph, you can still read and understand the word when the text is messed up with the letter order. As long as the first and the last letter in the right place, you can read it with probably a slower pace (Weinschenk, 2011).

As basically, reading is anticipating. While reading, people don’t accurately absorb each individual word and interpret it, but predict what comes next (Rayner, 1998). The greater the amount of knowledge we have beforehand, the easier it is to predict and interpret words (Rayner, 1998).

5. Flesch-Kincaid Readability Formula

From the above researches and synthesis, we have understood how people read and how they are able to understand the text.

Now, I would like to introduce one of the methods to test and improve the readability of text: the Flesch-Kincaid Test. The Flesch-Kincaid test is commonly used to calculate the readability of text in English, including Flesch Reading Ease (in terms of legibility) and Flesch-Kincaid Grade Level (by grade level). The higher the Reading Ease score in the paragraph, the lower the Grade Level score.

“Flesch — Kincaid” (F — K) reading grade level is built under the contract of the US Navy with Mr. J. Peter Kincaid’s team (Kincaid, 1975). This US Navy study led by Kincaid delves into high-tech education (providing technical information), demonstrating the usefulness of the easy-to-read Flesch — Kincaid formula, illustrated format for teaching general submission, etc (Kincaid, 1975).

The F — K formula was first used by the Army to evaluate the difficulty of a technical manual in 1978 and soon thereafter became the US Military Standard. Pennsylvania was the first US state to require auto insurance policies to be written at no higher than 9th-grade level (age 14–15) in reading difficulty, as measured by the formula F– K. This is currently a common requirement in many other states and for other legal documents like insurance policies. Rudolf Flesch, later on, devised a way to evaluate Reading Ease. J. Peter Kincaid developed a Grade Level evaluation for the USN.

By applying the Flesch-Kincaid Test to the website text, UX writing, marketing content, blog, etc (as long as it is written in English), we measure the readability and reach of users. with the text we use.

Readable.com is a handy tool if you want to apply the Flesch-Kincaid formula. In addition to giving scores based on the FK test, Readable also pointed to long sentences, vocabulary that is difficult to reach, percentage reach for the main audience and the general public, length of time reading and speaking text, and usefulness. for the writing skill in IELTS is to calculate the corresponding band score, etc.

In conclusion

People read by recognizing and anticipating words, so all cap or lower case letter does not affect how fast or correctly people read

>> Instead, you can make use of capital letters for headlines when you need to grab the users’ attention

People are active readers. What they can understand based on their previous knowledge, experience, perspective when reading, and the instruction in advance.

>> Therefore, designers should not assume that what they deliver is exactly what people understand and remember.

People have levels of comprehension of your text.

>> Designers should refine the text they want to send to readers based on legibility and use simpler and fewer syllable words to reach a wider audience.

References

Anderson, R. C, & Pichert, J. W. (1978). Recall of previously unrecallable information following a shift in perspective. ​Journal of Verbal Learning and Verbal Behavior, 17(​ 1), 1–12. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0022-5371(78)90485-1

Cattell, J. M. (1886). The Time Taken up by Cerebral Operations. ​Mind, 11​(44), 524–538.

Hessels, R. S., Niehorster, D. C., Nyström, M., Andersson , R., & Hooge, I. T. C. (2018). Is the eye-movement field confused about fixations and saccades? A survey among 124 researchers. . ​Royal Society Open Science​, ​5(​ 8). https://doi.org/https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.180502​0

Goodman, K. S. (1996). ​On Reading.​ Heinemann

Kincaid, J. P., Fishburne, Jr , Robert P., Rogers, R. L, & Chissom, B. S. (1975). ​Derivation of New Readability Formulas (Automated Readability Index, Fog Count and Flesch Reading Ease Formula) for Navy Enlisted Personnel.​

Kong, J. (2019).​ I​ nvestigating the Role of Test Methods in Testing Reading Comprehension: A Process-Focused Perspective​. Springer Singapore Pte. Limited.

Larson, K. (2018, February 5). ​The science of word recognition — Typography.​ https://docs.microsoft.com/vi-vn/typography/develop/word-recognition?fbclid=IwAR3 VWbK62AlViJD256KsOHhsvIkjC9m5HIBv5sMOXS9Rn8XlnORugzn1zfc​.

Paap, Kenneth R, Newsome, Sandra L, & Noel, Ronald W. (1984). Word shape’s in poor shape for the race to the lexicon. ​Journal of Experimental Psychology. Human Perception and Performance, 10(​ 3), 413–428. ​https://doi.org/10.1037/0096-1523.10.3.413

Rayner, K. (1998). Eye Movements in Reading and Information Processing: 20 Years of Research. ​Psychological Bulletin, 124(​ 3), 372–422. https://doi.org/10.1037/0033-2909.124.3.372

Roser, M., & Ortiz-Ospina, E. (2016, August 13). ​Literacy​. ​https://ourworldindata.org/literacy​. Weinschenk, S. (2011). ​100 things every designer needs to know about people​. New Riders.