[Week 5] Essay - Ease of Reading

My notes for the Ease of Reading exercise:

1. 2/10 (no punctuation and improper capitalization)    7. 1/10 (caps, proper punctuation)

2. 2/10 (no punctuation, no capitalization, run-on)        8. 1/10 (no caps, proper punctuation)

3. 6/10 (no spaces)                                                          9. 7/10 (like #6 but with periods)

4. 2/10 (caps, no punctuation)                                        10. 4/10 (no spaces, every word is capitalized)

5. 4/10 (no spaces, caps each sentence)                         11. 3/10 (all words capitalized, no punctuation)

6. 8/10 (caps, no spaces, words continue to next line)     12. 4/10 (no spaces, punctuation)

(Japanese text from Wikimedia Commons)

                Number 6 was by far the hardest joke for me to read. The combination of all capitalized words, no spaces, and text that wraps around to the next line without any indication (like a dash) was brutal to my eyes. As someone who tends to skim too much, not having a visible word boundary almost makes it impossible for me to read. I don’t really mind the capitalization, though. With numbers 4, 7, and 11, I had little trouble reading because of the caps, regardless of whether or not punctuation was used. By far, the easiest texts for me to handle were the ones that had either spaces or punctuation (or both).

                I find it interesting that I have so much trouble reading text in English that doesn’t have spaces. As I’ve said in my blog several times, my second language is Japanese. It’s a language that is written in two different syllabaries (similar to an alphabet) with Chinese characters thrown in, and spaces aren’t used in writing. Sometimes I have trouble figuring out where Japanese words end and begin, but in general I can read quickly without trouble. I think this has something to do with the differences in writing systems. In Japanese, the first syllabary, Hiragana, is primarily used for grammar. The second, Katakana, is used for loan words and onomatopoeia. Chinese characters are used for nouns, adjectives, verbs, and basically anything that isn’t a conjunction, part of morphology, etc.

                English, on the other hand, has one alphabet for everything. When things run together they just look like a jumbled up mess of consonants and vowels instead of actual text. Although it’s difficult at times, maybe having three ways of writing in Japanese helps the brain quickly distinguish between parts of speech which makes reading without spaces easier. I’m taking a Chinese class right now and I can’t wait to become more advanced so that I can see if reading in Chinese is difficult despite having one writing system and no spaces.