Wooyong Yi
ABSTRACT
The style of text, including number of columns, line spacing, typeface, and font-size, may affect e-book readers' understanding, readability and satisfaction. Along with the recent appearances of e-book devices such as Amazon's Kindle, Apple iBooks, and Barns & Nobles' Nook, user experiences reading with e-books is considered critical. In this study, we investigated the issues in terms of readability, comprehensibility, and satisfaction by systematically measuring two major typographical factors: number of columns and line spacing. The study showed that these two independent variables are critical for e-book experiences from these three key aspects. Finally, the implications of this research are discussed.
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Index Terms
- e-book readability, comprehensibility and satisfaction
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Reviews
Michael G. Murphy
Now that electronic books (e-books) have gone mainstream in the consumer market (for example, the Kindle from Amazon, the Nook from Barnes and Noble, and iBooks from Apple), the issue of their electronic information interface is particularly worthy of investigation. In this paper, the authors address the specific issues of readability, comprehensibility, and satisfaction, with a focus on line spacing and number of columns used in e-book displays. The paper reports on an extensive literature review and includes 33 references. The authors clearly indicate that this research is limited to line spacing and number of columns. Other issues of future interest might include gender differences, device design, screen display size, weight, price, portability, font sizes and types, indentation, and blank size. All of those possibilities aside, the user issues of readability, comprehensibility, and satisfaction are very appropriate in assessing the effectiveness of an e-book. The research methodology and results are carefully presented. One missing component is the device actually used (for example, Amazon's Kindle) by the test subjects. The results indicate that a single column with line spacing that is 1.5 times the font size is optimal from several perspectives. The paper is interesting and contributes to the scientific study of e-books. As indicated above, there are many other issues that might be considered in the future. One slight annoyance is that the English is rough at times and there are a number of typographical errors. However, the essence of the paper is clear. Online Computing Reviews Service
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