While You’re Reading by Gerard Unger

Published on 28^th May 2009 in Book reviews, tagged typography.

Reading is something most of us do all the time, more than walking, eating or writing. Text is everywhere, on signs and computer screens, in books and brochures. Consuming and processing all this language happens so quickly and so frequently that you barely even notice. It’s something we do automatically, something you’re doing right now, without even thinking. Yet we rarely stop to think how this actually works and what we can learn from it. This is something While You’re Reading sets out to answer.

Originally written in 1997, Gerard Unger’s book was revised and translated from Dutch into English a couple of years ago. Instead of taking a purely theoretical approach and only examining the science, While You’re Reading presents the subject matter from the point of view of a designer. Unger explains how the eyes and brain work together to interpret text, but focusses on how typography enables this to happen.

One thing I found particularly interesting is how we can read at such speed. In effect, we cheat. Our eyes jump from word to word in saccades, fixating on a portion, but not all, of a word. The more experienced a reader you are or the more familiar you are with the text, the more words you can fit into a saccade and the faster you can read. In fact, there are many words that we just skip entirely.

“Research has shown that practised and well-informed readers skip large numbers of words. In fact, they can skip some fifteen percent of content words (nouns, verbs and adjectives) – and up to sixty percent of function words (definitive and indefinitive articles, prepositions and conjunctions). On average, a good twenty percent of all words are skipped.”

Twenty percent! It’s no wonder that proofreading and editing feels like such a laborious task; you have to slow down and make sure you check every word instead of speeding ahead.

As you might expect from a book about sight and typography, While You’re Reading is well laid out and extremely legible. The text is slightly larger than normal with reasonably short line lengths and chapters never go on for too long, making them easily digestible. There are also plenty of illustrations to complement his assertions and although the citations are a little too prominent, it’s generally a very comfortable book to read.

While You’re Reading isn’t a typical typography book in that it’s not instructional. It doesn’t lay down rules about leading or spacing, but instead aims to explain why these work. It’s a great read for anyone who’s already read about typography and provides an interesting, alternative perspective on something we take for granted.