As prescription eyeglasses achieve proficiency for persons with short-sightedness, Lexend employs variable font technology to prescribe a personalized axis setting according to the Shaver-Troup Formulations.
The word is the condition for reading. The word consists of both white and black forms in rhythm units. If the rhythm is weak; the word is poorly formed. If the rhythm is absent; there is no word. Reading is a spatial manner of intervals in both length and breadth…. Ignoring the white by pedagogy places civilization at risk. What is civilization if not the cultural community dependent on reading?
Excerpts from “The Stroke” by Gerrit Noordzij
Source • Retrieved 30 August 2017
My name is Commander Smith and the spaceship that I command has been exploring the planet known as Earth for almost a year. We have discovered that Earth is very different from our planet. Our next job was to explore the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. These states make up the Southwest region.
First, we had to backtrack a little and fly east to Texas. This is a huge state— the map showed that it was more than seven hundred miles wide. Later we found out that Texas is the second largest state in size, after Alaska. It is also the second largest state in population, after California. We certainly saw a lot of really big things in Texas— big cities, big oil fields, and big ranches. In fact, we found out that there is a ranch in Texas that is bigger than the whole state of Rhode Island! Texas raises more cattle than any other state. The cowboy, a person who takes care of the cattle, is a symbol of Texas. In the late 1800s, Texas cowboys drove the cattle hundreds of miles to market in the northern states.
It was hard, dangerous, adventurous work, so many people thought of cowboys as heroes. Over time, the cattle ranches changed so that there was less need for cowboys. Today, there are not as many cowboys in
Texas. There are, however, many Texans who still dress like cowboys. They wear cowboy boots and a kind of tall cowboy hat they call a ten- gallon- hat because it looks as if it could hold that much water. Another symbol of Texas is the oil well. Texas produces more oil than any other state. Oil was first discovered near the city of Houston in the early 1900s.
Today, Houston is the largest city in Texas. The American space program has one of its largest workplaces there. One man told us that Houston was the first word spoken on the moon. He explained that when an American became the first human to land on the moon on July 20, 1969. The first thing he did was radio back to Houston. The United States was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. There have been six manned U. S. landings and numerous unmanned landings. To date, the United States is the only country to have successfully conducted manned missions to the Moon, with the last one in December 1972.
Time to read0ms
Words read0
Errors0
Words Correct per Minute0
WCPM
Reading-Proficiency is measured in fluency.
There is a consensus that reading fluency is one of the defining characteristics of good readers, and a lack of fluency is a common characteristic of poor readers.
Differences in reading fluency not only distinguish good readers from poor, but a lack of reading fluency is also a reliable predictor of reading comprehension problems. Once struggling readers learn sound-symbol relationships through intervention and become accurate decoders, their lack of fluency emerges as the next hurdle they face on their way to reading proficiency.
This lack of fluent reading is a problem for poor readers because they tend to read in a labored, disconnected fashion with a focus on decoding at the word level that makes comprehension of the text difficult, if not impossible.
Source
Fluency is measured in Words Correct Per Minute.
A student reads a story with 409 words in 1m 24s. She made 0 errors. To determine WCPM (Words Correct Per Minute):
-
Count the total number of words.
409 words -
Count the number of mistakes.
0 mistakes -
Take the number of words minus the number of mistakes = number of words read correctly.
409 words - 0 mistakes = 409 correct words -
Convert the time it took to read the passage to seconds.
1m 24s to read = 84s -
Convert the number of seconds to a decimal by dividing the number of seconds by 60. This is the total reading time.
84s / 60 = 1.4 total reading time -
Divide the number of words read correctly by the total reading time in decimal form.
409 / 1.4 = 292 Words Correct per Minute (WCPM)
The Shaver-Troup Formulations
As an Educational Therapist, Dr. Bonnie Shaver-Troup observed that reading issues masked the individual’s true capability and intelligence. Shaver-Troup theorized that these issues were a sensitivity to typographical factors. She began manipulating multiple text factors to find a match between text format and an individual’s optimized visual processing capabilities.
In clinical practice with both children and adults, Dr. Shaver-Troup used a fluency test to measure the effectiveness of the solution. Test results supported her theory; making the modifications to typography allowed the reader to instantaneously improve Words Correct per Minute (WCPM) scores, which research correlates to increased comprehension.
The Shaver-Troup Formulations Examined
Three factors were manipulated in increasing intensity. These factors were:
- Hyper expansion of character spacing
- Expanded font-outline shapes
- Sans-serif font to reduce noise
The Demonstration of Effectiveness
20 third graders, eight males and twelve females, read for one minute in five fonts.
All text was set at 16pt and the reading materials were two grade levels above the participants current grade level to ensure the typography was being measured, rather than reading competency.
Each student read out loud a passage set in a control of Times New Roman, then four of the Lexend Series — Regular, Deca, Mega, and Giga.
My name is Commander Smith and the spaceship that I command has been exploring the planet known as Earth for almost a year. We have discovered that Earth is very different from our planet. Our next job was to explore the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. These states make up the Southwest region.
First, we had to backtrack a little and fly east to Texas. This is a huge state— the map showed that it was more than seven hundred miles wide. Later we found out that Texas is the second largest state in size, after Alaska. It is also the second largest state in population, after California. We certainly saw a lot of really big things in Texas— big cities, big oil fields, and big ranches. In fact, we found out that there is a ranch in Texas that is bigger than the whole state of Rhode Island! Texas raises more cattle than any other state. The cowboy, a person who takes care of the cattle, is a symbol of Texas. In the late 1800s, Texas cowboys drove the cattle hundreds of miles to market in the northern states.
It was hard, dangerous, adventurous work, so many people thought of cowboys as heroes. Over time, the cattle ranches changed so that there was less need for cowboys. Today, there are not as many cowboys in
Texas. There are, however, many Texans who still dress like cowboys. They wear cowboy boots and a kind of tall cowboy hat they call a ten- gallon- hat because it looks as if it could hold that much water. Another symbol of Texas is the oil well. Texas produces more oil than any other state. Oil was first discovered near the city of Houston in the early 1900s.
Today, Houston is the largest city in Texas. The American space program has one of its largest workplaces there. One man told us that Houston was the first word spoken on the moon. He explained that when an American became the first human to land on the moon on July 20, 1969. The first thing he did was radio back to Houston. The United States was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. There have been six manned U. S. landings and numerous unmanned landings. To date, the United States is the only country to have successfully conducted manned missions to the Moon, with the last one in December 1972.
Time to read0ms
Words read0
Errors0
Words Correct per Minute0
WCPM
The p value in this experiment (0.014) says the chance of the results presented happening by random was 1.4%. In statistics, a result is considered significant if it’s below 5%.
00/00
had better scores with Lexend over Times New Roman
0
had the best score with Times New Roman
0
had the best score with Lexend Regular
0
had the best score with Lexend Deca
0
had the best score with Lexend Mega
0
had the best score with Lexend Giga
000
Avg WCPM for Times New Roman
00.0
Avg Improvement in WCPM
A Virtue of Variable Font Technology
As the study demonstrates, while the Lexend series were beneficial to a large sample of students, no one setting worked best for all students. Diverse readers need different axis settings like people require different eyeglass prescriptions.
Eyeglass prescriptions are not six strict settings. There are more granular settings possible.
Variable font technology allows for continuous selection of the Lexend Series to find the specific setting for an individual student.
My name is Commander Smith and the spaceship that I command has been exploring the planet known as Earth for almost a year. We have discovered that Earth is very different from our planet. Our next job was to explore the states of Texas, New Mexico, Arizona, and Nevada. These states make up the Southwest region.
First, we had to backtrack a little and fly east to Texas. This is a huge state— the map showed that it was more than seven hundred miles wide. Later we found out that Texas is the second largest state in size, after Alaska. It is also the second largest state in population, after California. We certainly saw a lot of really big things in Texas— big cities, big oil fields, and big ranches. In fact, we found out that there is a ranch in Texas that is bigger than the whole state of Rhode Island! Texas raises more cattle than any other state. The cowboy, a person who takes care of the cattle, is a symbol of Texas. In the late 1800s, Texas cowboys drove the cattle hundreds of miles to market in the northern states.
It was hard, dangerous, adventurous work, so many people thought of cowboys as heroes. Over time, the cattle ranches changed so that there was less need for cowboys. Today, there are not as many cowboys in
Texas. There are, however, many Texans who still dress like cowboys. They wear cowboy boots and a kind of tall cowboy hat they call a ten- gallon- hat because it looks as if it could hold that much water. Another symbol of Texas is the oil well. Texas produces more oil than any other state. Oil was first discovered near the city of Houston in the early 1900s.
Today, Houston is the largest city in Texas. The American space program has one of its largest workplaces there. One man told us that Houston was the first word spoken on the moon. He explained that when an American became the first human to land on the moon on July 20, 1969. The first thing he did was radio back to Houston. The United States was the first manned mission to land on the Moon. There have been six manned U. S. landings and numerous unmanned landings. To date, the United States is the only country to have successfully conducted manned missions to the Moon, with the last one in December 1972.
Time to read0ms
Words read0
Errors0
Words Correct per Minute0
WCPM
At the end of the 2018 project, Thomas identified research by Dr. Nadine Chahine on reading proficiency in Arabic. The conclusion and implication of her research support the reasonable proposal to apply the Shaver-Troup Formulation into an Arabic variable font.
Aspects of hyper-extension are already familiar in Arabic. The lengthening of text for justification is named kashida which can aid in legibility:
The kashida is used to give a better character layout on the baseline, and to lessen the cluttering at the joint point between two successive letters of the same word
Mohamed Jamal Eddine Benatia,Mohamed Elyaakoubi and Azzeddine Lazrek Source
Working with Dr. Chahine and financial support from Google, the Lexend team wishes to investigate if the Shaver-Troup Formulations applied to the Arabic script has the same beneficial fluency properties as we have demonstrated in the Latin script. If proven true, the implications are the following:
- A richer understanding of human perception that is cross-cultural in scope
- Demonstration of evidence-based design practices in regard to legibility
- A contribution to expanding reading-proficiency around the world
h1, p { font-variation-settings: 'LXND' 100; }An illustration of potential for using this concept for Arabic typography
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