If a casual reader gets tired of reading a long horizontal line, then they’re more likely to skim the left edge of the text. Reading a long line of type causes fatigue: the reader must move his head at the end of each line and search for the beginning of the next line.… Too short a line breaks up words or phrases that are generally read as a unit. As James Craig wrote in his book Designing With Type (originally published in 1971, now it its fifth edition): We have multiple “rules” for facilitating a horizontal reading motion, one of which is to set text at a reasonable measure. He argued that this would assist readers by providing a consistent left (vertical) edge for the eye to return to after finishing each (horizontal) line. In 1928, Jan Tschichold dismissed centered text and advocated for left-aligned text. Typographers have been writing about the relationship between horizontal and vertical eye motion for almost a century. The constant struggle between horizontal and vertical eye movement results in the F-shaped patterns .
This constant struggle between horizontal and vertical motion contributes to the F-shaped reading patterns. This is especially true of those who read casually or scan with purpose.įinally, we know that readers anticipate the next line while moving their eyes horizontally along a line so, their eyes are drawn down the left edge of the text. We also know that people don’t fixate on every word, but tend to skip words (their eyes take little leaps, called “saccades”) and fill in the rest.
People use their foveal (central) and peripheral vision to read. People don’t read each word individually. Instead, they use their foveal (or central) vision to focus on a word, while using their peripheral vision to find the next spot on which to focus. We know that people read in three different ways, but let’s look more closely at how people read - how the F-shaped patterns are formed. ( View large version) Reading Is a Complex Process The Nielsen Norman Group explored the F-shaped pattern for reading in an engaged manner in 2006. When the intensity of reading dwindled because they lost interest (the corporate “About us” page might not have aligned with their interests), their eyes continued along the left edge of the text. There is more red (meaning more time spent reading) and less jumping around the page. The heat map below shows the eye movements of a person reading in an engaged manner. When they find an article or blog post they are interested in, they will slow down and read the whole text, perhaps even going into a trance-like state. ( View large version)įinally, people read in an engaged manner.
The Nielsen Norman Group explored the F-shaped pattern for purposeful scanning in 2006. Therefore, we do not see a strong vertical stroke along the left edge of the text. Then, their eyes jumped from section to section, looking for the search term. The person read the first two results more slowly. The heat map below shows the eye movements of someone scanning the results of a Google search with purpose. They might only read a word or the first couple of characters of a word as they scan the screen. People also scan with purpose, jumping from section to section, looking for a particular piece of information. The Nielsen Norman Group explored the F-shaped pattern for casual reading in 2006. The reader spent time looking at the image of the product, reading the first couple of sentences, then scanning through the bulleted list. The heat map below shows the eye movements of someone casually reading about a product. People read casually, skimming over text, reading words and sentences here and there to get a sense of the content. These variations aren’t surprising because people read in three different ways. As you can see below, the red and yellow areas form three variations of an F-shaped pattern. The areas where people looked at the most while reading are red, areas with fewer views are yellow, and the least-viewed areas are blue. In 2006, the Nielsen Norman group released images of heat maps from eye-tracking studies.