The Effect of Textual Aesthetics on Information Retrieval

摘要

Examines the effects of orthography on information retrieval (IR). IR systems use white-space normalization to produce graphic, or orthographic words, from text. The punctuation in graphic words is treated idiosyncratically by different database vendor systems. This two-step process produces the index terms that IR users must match when formulating IR queries. The argument advanced by this essay is that these index terms are often unpredictable and therefore difficult to match. In this manner textual aesthetics impedes IR. The textual aesthetics of the space, the hyphen, the apostrophe stopwords are discussed. Examples are given for the commercial database vendor systems of DIALOG, DataStar and OCLC EPIC. Implications are drawn for the manipulation of written language on the World Wide Web.