Scientists Offer New Way to Read Online Text

An anonymous reader writes "Scientists at a small startup called Walker Reading Technologies in Minnesota have determined that the human brain is not wired properly to read block text. They have found that our eyes view text as if they're peering through a straw. Not only does your brain see the text on the line you're reading, but it's also uploading superfluous information from the two lines above and the two lines below. This causes your brain to engage in a tug of war as it fights to filter and ignore the noise. The result is slower reading speeds and decreased comprehension. The company has developed a product that automatically re-formats text in a way that your brain can more easily comprehend."

I for one

[Mipoti Gusundar]

I for one am welcoming our new automatic hayku [venturebeat.com] generatting overlord's!

Who needs Live Ink?

[morgan_greywolf]

We could all
        just start typing
              all our messages
just like this!

Nah, that might
      be too annoying...

Re:Who needs Live Ink?

[superpulpsicle]

No it won't.
    Because if you didn't
        type it this way
              I might have
                  skipped over
                      your post.

Re:Dr. Seuss

[smittyman]

You mean that we can use paper for printing letters and stuff? Does that come with many fonts and all?

Summary

[norminator]

I couldn't understand the summary... there is too much text there in one big block. Could someone please explain it to me... maybe reformat it so it's easier to read?

Wow.

[Rob T Firefly]

I guess there really is something to be said for haphazard scrawling of random broken sentences which trail annoyingly around the page.

It looks like there are quite a few Vogon-poetry hopefuls in sororities and coffeehouses to whom I owe an apology!

This is great...

[pointbeing]

The company has developed a product that automatically re-formats text in a way that your brain can more easily comprehend.

Pictures of Japanese schoolgirls?

Ode to a Filter

[adamjaskie]

I try to forrmat my writing In a way that is easy to read. But Slashdot has Lameness filtering That makes it difficult indeed.

Re:Dr. Seuss

[Nimey]

People would take that as license to write purple text on a red background.

Then Myspace would have to be invented.

Re:Ode to a Filter

[adamjaskie]

I try to forrmat my writing
In a way that is easy to read.
But Slashdot has Lameness filtering
That makes it difficult indeed.

The preview button yells to me
"Use me! Use me!" I hear it shout.
Alas, my naughty fingers flee
A bit to the left; I've lost this bout.

Re:Scrolling

[the_humeister]

You forgot the final line: "Burma Shave!"

Re:Slower reading speeds?

[WrongSizeGlass]

WTF? This is how I've always done speed-reading...

I always do my speed reading by skipping the article and just posting on /.

Seuss - No, it's Code Formatting!

[StCredZero]

They just went and put an indenter on the English Language!

Now someone needs to invent a variant of English that requires indentation as a part of the syntax. It would be the Python of natural languages. Pyglish?

Looks strangely familiar...

[shadowspar]

seeing the article
text, strangely familiar
where have I seen it?

the light bulb goes on
a haiku generator
can it truly be?

Re:If it was really better...

[flynt]

If it was really better someone would have already invented this "new" method.

What a bizarre claim! You're implying that there has been no progress ever, and furthermore, there can be no progress ever!

Re:Seuss - No, it's Code Formatting!

[thehickcoder]

No, that would be Pyg Latin!

Re:Saw something similar before

[SQLGuru]

I've been reading through straws (tubes?) since the early days of the Internet......I get most of my "news" online now (I use the term loosely because, well, I read /. afterall).

Layne

Re:If it was really better...

[Akatosh]

already invented, people talk like that all the time on irc

Re:Dr. Seuss

[ArsonSmith]

This has to work. I know I can read a page twice as fast if it is double spaced.

Re:Low tech workaround

[aegisalpha]

I do the same thing, annoying people that look over my shoulder is a good byproduct. Now if only I could make them stop actually touching the screen when they want to point at something...

Re:Dr. Seuss

[Anonymous Coward]

So basically
they are patenting
the annoying
way that
some
people send
IM's?

Python is so 4 years ago

[Anonymous Coward]

Ruby + English = Rubish

More readable version

[Jesus_666]

Summary:
        buy our product.

Re:Dr. Seuss

[GeckoX]

They just want us all to start talking like James T Kirk.

Oh the horror.

Smalltalk Rubish

[jdbartlett]

You're overlooking the simple elegance of Rubish word blocks. Some moldy old writers just don't see the problem with "sentences" and "paragraphs". The verbosity of these older techniques is what makes managing texts like "Ulysses" and "War And Peace" so difficult and complex. These works would barely be novellas if they had been written in Rubish.

Also, Rubish has excellent automatic garbage collection. PC Magazine was impressed when they saw a draft of The Complete Works Of John Dvorak in Rubish: a single exclamation mark in the middle center of an otherwise blank sheet of paper.

And let's not forget its other features: four levels of variable article, exception handling (one Rubishist summarized this as the "no ifs or buts" rule), advanced punctuation overloading (exclamation marks aren't just for shocks), and something I can't believe English STILL doesn't support: regular expression (say one thing, mean another. The RIAA and MPAA tried introducing this feature to English in an attempt at explaining the advantages of DRM. Not only did they fail, they sued one another for copying the other's idea.)

You're interested in learning more about Rubish, I can tell. I recommend Prattling Rubish, part of the Prattling Penmen series. The book itself is written entirely in Rubish. It's three pages long and takes most people a couple of weeks to decipher.

Re:Dr. Seuss/Trying again with correct format

[MickLinux]

I tend to read about 2-3 times faster than most "good" readers I know.

I'm not sure that should have been rated "funny". I actually find the block text to be easier to read than the poetry-style lines. First of all, the color interferes with my ability to keep the whole sentence together. My brain actually ends up sticking the black text together in one group, and the red text together in another group. That really slows me down.

So I started thinking about why I read block text so fast.

Let's go over that last "funny" post. Yeah, it was written in the style of tongue-in-cheek quips, but I'm not sure the guy was joking.

Maybe it's just me, but I don't discard the extra 'noise' that I get from reading. I read roughly every second or third line

Okay, I read approximately one phrase (line) at a time. When I'm speed reading, I don't bother to understand the words of that line until my eyes are already on the next line. It feels like I'm reading every second or third line, but I'm actually hitting every one.

build up a composite image of the paragraph, tokenise it in parallel

I then attach a significance to the phrase, and approximate what the relation of the phrases are, according to ifs, ands, and buts, as well as punctuation.

and then parse it from that.

Then I discard the lines that seem relatively unimportant, giving me a basic summary of the paragraph. From this, I fit the other sentences back in as needed. What that means, realistically speaking, is that I look at the paragraph, identify the main topic, and glance through it as needed to understand the specifics.

It's a much better fit with how the optical system works than how people tend to describe reading, and possibly why I read a lot faster than most people I know. This new system slows my reading rate a lot.

Which is what I've experienced, too.