Delimiting words in a display by colour instead of spacing
V. David Hopkin · Journal of the Institution of Electronic and Radio Engineers · 1986
Often in displays of alphanumeric data the maximum possible number of characters per line is not quite sufficient to meet the needs of tasks fully. Some of the available line capacity is occupied by spacing, to separate groups of characters visually. A series of simple exploratory experiments has been conducted to examine the feasibility of substituting colour for spacing.Passages of English text were presented to be read aloud. Alternate words were delimited by one of several coding dimensions: differently coloured characters, differently coloured backgrounds or different brightness contrasts. Measures of reading speed, reading errors and comprehension were employed.In general, undelimited monochrome text without spacing was much more difficult to read than text delimited by any alternative means. The results seem promising enough to treat the idea seriously. Its main applications may be to alphanumeric tabular data rather than to text, and these applications are now being explored.