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Originally Posted by JSWolf
I did take a look and could not find any proper study that shows that left justified without hyphens allows one to read faster. I would be interested in reading such a study if anyone can link one. Thanks.
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I did find several such studies when I was looking at this a while back. The problem is that the increase in reading speed using ragged right was not that great and the number of people who read faster reading justified text was not a negligible minority.
Like most such studies involving humans, the results are not usable to predict the individual person.
One study from 1986 (
Readability of Computer-Generated Fill-Justified Text ) had the following abstract:
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This paper describes two studies designed to explore the effects of reading fill-justified text on reading speed and comprehension. A common contemporary practice is to use the power of microcomputer-based processors to produce printed material that is fill justified(i.e., both left and right margins are straight). Fill justification is frequently accomplished by inserting varying numbers of extra spaces between words. Both studies compared the reading speed of two groups, one that read a fill-justified passage and the other that read the same passage printed with a ragged right margin. Comprehension was investigated in the one study by comparing performance on a test made up of recognition questions; in the other, performance was compared on recall questions. Results indicate significant increase in reading time (that is, slower reading speed) for groups reading fill-justified text. No differences in comprehension were detected.
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This one stuck with me since it was in a rather small minority that described the reading speed increase as significant.
Looking at some of studies almost makes me regret that I no longer have the affiliation needed to access the full papers.