curts@mako.UUCP (08/07/84)
From: mako!curts (Curt Stephens)
[]
About a month ago, I polled the members of net.general for their opinions
about the best way to display text on the terminal and on a printed page.
My intent was to ask whether people preferred to read ragged right
(unjustified) or justified text.
Unfortunately, I used a bad example to try to make my question clear.
Fortunately, everyone guessed what I meant and answered my question
with caveats that eliminated the ambiguity within my questions. I apologize
for not making myself clear. The questions were;
1. Which format (ragged or justifed) looks better on your terminal?
2. Which format (ragged or justifed) looks better on a printed page?
3. Which format would look better for a long article on a terminal?
4. Which format would look better for a long article on a printed page?
5. Which format appears most often in the books you read?
The answers could be A. (justified) B. (ragged-right) C. (don't know or care )
Out of 132 responses, the results were:
1. A=34 B=91 C=7
2. A=96 B=27 C=9
3. A=25 B=93 C=14
4. A=89 B=27 C=16
5. A=91 B=5 C=36
The ambiguity, that I accidentally included, involved my not specifying how
the text would be justified with regard to spacing. More that 80% of the
respondants pointed out my oversight; a majority suggested that they would
prefer justified over ragged-right only if the text was justifed by using
porportional spacing. Monospacing (all that is available on most terminals)
was definately out.
Curt Stephens
Engineering Computing Systems
Tektronix, Inc.
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