Children's Responses to Line Spacing in Early Reading Books or 'Holes to tell which line you're on'

Abstract

This paper describes a study designed to find out whether children's reading would be affected by line spacing that is wider or narrower than the commonly used default values. The realistic high quality test material was set using a range of four different line spacing values, and twenty-four children in Years 1 and 2 (between five and seven years old) were asked to read aloud to the researcher. Audiotapes of the children's reading were analyzed, using miscue analysis to compare the number and kind of reading errors made on the different spacing versions. The children were also asked whether they could see any differences between the four versions, which they thought was easiest to read, which they thought was most difficult and which version they would like to take home with them. The results indicate that line spacing that was wider or narrower than the default value did not significantly affect the children's reading performance. However, three-quarters of the children did notice differences between at least the extreme versions, and there was a tendency for the more widely space versions to be perceived as the most difficult. Children who nominated the more widely spaced versions as easiest or preferred generally gave reasons related to the line spacing or to the apparent size or weight of the type; those who favored the more closely spaced versions tended to give less well defined reasons, or to cite nonexistent differences in the content or length of the text.