SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
posted by
Fnord666
on Friday May 11 2018, @12:26PM
from the BBC-thinks-it's-a-paragraph-break-after-a-period dept.
from the BBC-thinks-it's-a-paragraph-break-after-a-period dept.
Submitted via IRC for Bytram
In what may be one of the most controversial studies of the year, researchers at Skidmore College—clearly triggered by a change in the American Psychological Association (APA) style book—sought to quantify the benefits of two spaces after a period at the end of a sentence. After conducting an eye-tracking experiment with 60 Skidmore students, Rebecca L. Johnson, Becky Bui, and Lindsay L. Schmitt found that two spaces at the end of a period slightly improved the processing of text during reading. The research was trumpeted by some press outlets as a vindication of two-spacers' superiority.
This discussion has been archived.
No new comments can be posted.
Two Spaces After Period Are Better Than One, Except Maybe They Aren't, Study Finds
|
Log In/Create an Account
| Top
| 81 comments
| Search Discussion
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Whenever you find that you are on the side of the majority, it is time
to reform.
-- Mark Twain
(Score: 5, Insightful) by AthanasiusKircher on Friday May 11 2018, @04:14PM (1 child)
Well, I respect you, but honestly I'm not sure what to make of your opinion, which I think is likely uninformed in this case.
If this were an exploratory study in an area that no one had ever investigated empirically before, I might have a view similar to yours. However, that's not true. This is a well-studied area where I'm pretty sure there are at least several dozen previous studies on the topic of sentence spacing, reading speed, comprehension, etc. Many of those studies were poor and/or significantly flawed too. But the rigor with which this study was done was pretty atrocious compared to many previous efforts.
I'm not going to bother to critique the study, as a link in TFA already has a detailed critique [practicaltypography.com] already. And that's from someone who is sympathetic to the study's findings too.
The difference between your son's experiment and this one is that this one is being trumpeted as legitimate empirical research in a professional journal. And, as I said, it can't even get away with the "well, it's the first time someone tried doing this, so our conclusions may be preliminary" argument, as this is well-trodden ground.
The place for that is science-fair projects, not professional journals. I'm all for the kind of thing your son did, and I support kids doing stuff like this. But this is not a study for kids or by kids -- it's ADULT researchers who should know better. And it's ADULT journalists who are trumpeting this study to draw unsupported conclusions.
In a post-fact world, we should NEVER champion crappy science. Because you know who else champions crappy science? The President and his advisors!! They draw on "studies" that cherry-pick data deliberately, or even "studies" that come from a "faith-based" perspective or whatever. But then they throw out some numbers and "data" and suddenly it's supposed to look like "science."
That's NOT science -- that's voodoo dressing up as science. It's more important than ever these days to champion rigorous standards in science to differentiate the crappy studies that make headlines every day from good, legitimate research. One thing that's often forgotten these days is that stuff like Wikipedia's standards is what has led to our modern "fake news" era. Because it's not actually "post-fact" in some sense. It's possible, using the Wikipedia-like standard of "verifiability" to find facts that -- often taken out of context -- appear to support your position. But it's just as easy to construct a BS argument using such "verifiable facts" as it is to make stuff up.
At least the president is somewhat honest about his perspectives -- "I like this stuff because it agrees with what I think, and smart people agree with me." Yep -- that's nonsense, but it's just stating straight out that he doesn't give a crap about rigor. "Science" that dresses up BS conclusions in the veneer of math and respectibility is ten times more insidious and should be fought just as strongly.
I stand by the assessment of the GP I agreed with -- this study is garbage.
(Score: 2) by requerdanos on Friday May 11 2018, @07:24PM
I readily admit that this is so, and I believe that our areas of agreement vastly overshadow any minor areas of actual disagreement.